Elsevier

Ecological Economics

Volume 187, September 2021, 107105
Ecological Economics

ANALYSIS
Forest power: The impact of community forest management on female empowerment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107105Get rights and content

Abstract

Community forest management (CFM) systems have been implemented in developing countries as forest conservation initiatives with community development objectives. Women are often active in CFM by participating in non-timber forest product harvesting and management. Given the increasing presence of women in CFM, this study assesses whether participating in community forest management gives females more household decision-making power, a proxy for empowerment. This is a relevant issue because many development policies are implemented with female empowerment objectives, yet no existing rigorous quantitative studies have examined whether women's participation in CFM empowers them. Using an ordered logistic regression and an instrumental variable method, we analyze a household-level survey of forest-dwelling residents living in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala. We find that female's participation in CFM increases her intra-household bargaining power on average. The results demonstrate that CFM systems can have development benefits that extend beyond increased household income and welfare.

Introduction

Many tropical forests are located in developing countries that lack the financial resources to protect them. In response to increasing pressure to decrease deforestation globally, many developing countries have decentralized the management of forest resources to local communities to help minimize the financial burden (e.g., Edmonds, 2002; Agrawal and Chhatre, 2006; Blackman, 2015; Fortmann et al., 2017; Alix-Garcia, 2007, Rasolofoson et al., 2017; Takahashi and Otsuka, 2016; Robinson et al., 2018; Santika et al., 2017; Miteva et al., 2019). Decentralized community forest management (CFM) systems grant community members closely-monitored land use rights over an area of forest that allow them to sustainably extract timber and non-timber forest products in exchange for protecting the land from overexploitation. Along with conservation goals, many of these decentralized management plans are created with development objectives. As such, exclusive usage rights over an area of forest allows members of the system to earn profits from the timber and non-timber forest products they extract as well as conserve and manage the forest for their long-term benefit.

The goal of this study is to examine whether participating in CFM gives females more household decision-making power, a proxy for measuring empowerment at the household level. Decision-making power has been used as an empowerment measure in previous literature (i.e., Mishra and Sam, 2016; Allendorf, 2007). This is an especially relevant issue because many development policies are implemented with female empowerment objectives (e.g., Ashraf et al., 2010; Ngo and Wahhaj, 2012; Valdivia, 2015). Previous studies have examined the effect of participating in CFM on household income or welfare (e.g., Bocci et al., 2018; Primack et al., 1998; Richardson et al., 2012; Kumar, 2002; Adhikari et al., 2004; Adhikari, 2001; Kimaro and Lulandala, 2013; Meilby et al., 2014; Gelo et al., 2016; Okumu and Muchapondwa, 2020). However, none of these studies have quantitatively examined the effect of participating in CFM on female empowerment despite women being active participants in many CFM systems globally (e.g., Hasalkar and Jadhav, 2004; Jimoh and Haruna, 2007; Giri and Darnhofer, 2010; Shackleton et al., 2011; Kimaro and Lulandala, 2013; Radachowsky et al., 2012; Stults, 2018; Bocci et al., 2018). For example, in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) concession member households in Guatemala, while men typically harvest timber and work in the lumber mills, women typically work with non-timber forest products (NTFPs) such as high-protein tree nuts called ramón and palm fronds used in floral arrangements called xate (Radachowsky et al., 2012; Stults, 2018; Bocci et al., 2018; Bocci, 2019). They gather NTFPs, then process and sell them for financial gain or use them for consumption for the family. Several studies have shown that forestry, especially harvesting non-timber forest products, is an important income source for women in the MBR (Baumanns, 2015; Carias Vega and Keenan, 2016; Stults, 2018; Grossman, 2020; Stoian et al., 2018). Additionally, women have traditionally used NTFP harvesting to supplement their household incomes in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Burkina Faso (Shackleton et al., 2011; Kimaro and Lulandala, 2013; Kassa and Yigezu, 2015). Furthermore, NTFPs contribute to both food intake and income for families in Nigeria (Jimoh and Haruna, 2007).

As shown in McCall and Minang (2005), with the use of geographic information system technology, participation in community forest management is positively correlated with increased community participation and empowerment in Cameroon. In addition, Leone (2019) finds that increasing the prevalence of women in forest management can have positive conservation outcomes. The number of advocates for increasing women's participation in community forestry is increasing (Adhikari, 2001). Moreover, there is growing evidence that women's income, asset, and memberships in co-operatives enhance women's bargaining power (Anderson and Eswaran, 2009; Doss, 2013; Friedemann-Sánchez, 2006; Heath and Tan, 2019; Kantor, 2003; Lecoutere, 2017; Mishra and Sam, 2016). Therefore, we expect that women's participation in CFM should also increase their household bargaining power. Although previous studies have examined gender issues, there are no studies that examine the relationship between concession membership and female empowerment to our knowledge. Using household-level survey data from forest-dwelling communities in the MBR in northern Guatemala, we empirically investigate whether participating in CFM gives females more household decision-making power, a proxy for measuring empowerment at the household level. We do so by using an ordered logistic regression model and a conditional mixed-process instrumental variable model.

Our results suggest that participating in concession management increases the household decision-making power of women in the household as defined by an index of who has the primary decision-making responsibility for medical expenses for children, medical expenses for themselves, educational expenses for children, basic necessity expenses, large purchases expenses, visits to friends and family, and how to use household money/income. These results lend support to the advocates that favor increasing women's participation and recognition in community forestry (Adhikari, 2001). Additionally, the results have broader implication in the literature. For example, increased bargaining power for women can result in increased household and societal welfare because households participate in community development projects and invest in human capital at the household level (Duflo, 2003; Janssens, 2010; Menon et al., 2014).

Section snippets

The Maya biosphere reserve (MBR)

The MBR was created in 1990 and covers about two million hectares of the Petén department, which is about one-fifth the size of Guatemala. It is divided into three zones: the core zone, buffer zone, and multiple-use zone (see Fig. 1 for details). The core zone is 36% of the reserve and consists of national parks and biotopes. It is generally reserved only for low impact tourism and scientific investigation and receives strict protection. The buffer zone is 24% of the MBR and forms a “buffer”

Empirical model

To estimate whether participating in a community forest concession impacts female household bargaining power, we conduct our econometric analysis primarily using two specifications: an ordered logit model and a Conditional Mixed-Processes Instrumental Variable (CMP-IV) model.2

Results

The odds ratios of the ordered logit models are presented in Table 4. The first column presents the results for the Base index, followed by the PCA index in the second column, and the DHS index in the third column. The results of all these indexes show that if a household is a member of a community forest concession, the female of the household is more likely to have the primary decision-making power over more household decisions compared to nonmember households. For example, our result from

Alternative specifications

In addition to the ordered logit and CMP-IV models used above, we explore the robustness of our results with three alternative estimations as described below.

Limitations

Although this analysis shows there is a positive and statistically significant effect of concession membership on female household decision making, there are some limitations to this analysis. One limitation is that we cannot compare female decision making of concession member households involved and not involved in NTFP harvesting due to lack of data. While we are able to identify concession member households, we cannot identify their primary forest harvesting activity since the concessions

Conclusion

Common property resource management systems have been used as conservation initiatives throughout the world (Ostrom, 1990). Many of these management systems are implemented with development objectives for local communities involved in managing the resource. Previous studies have examined the impact of participating in common property resource management systems, such as community forestry, on household welfare (i.e., Bocci et al., 2018; Meilby et al., 2014; Alix-Garcia, 2007; Burivalova et al.,

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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