Forests to the People: Decentralization and Forest Degradation in the Indian Himalayas

Jean-Marie Baland, Pranab Bardhan, Sanghamitra Das and Dilip Mookherjee

No dp-169, Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series from Boston University - Department of Economics

Abstract: Most analyses of the impact of community management of common property resources are based on cross-sectional comparisons in case studies or small samples, perception-based measurement of resource conditions, and absence of controls for unobserved community characteristics and non-random assignment of management types. This paper compares forests managed by local community groups called Van Panchayats (VPs), with protected and unprotected state forests in the Indian state of Uttaranchal. We utilize ground-level ecological measures of forest quality including canopy cover, biomass, lopping and regeneration in 399 forests accessed by residents of a random sample of 83 villages in the mid-Himalayan region of Uttaranchal. Raw differences between VP and non-VP forest quality indicate no significant differences. We find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that these understate the benefits of VP management owing to endogenous selection, since more degraded forests are more likely to be converted to VP forests. Controlling for forest geography, unobserved village characteristics and cross-forest spillovers, VP forests are significantly less lopped, and similar on other dimensions. The lopping differences are greater the longer the forest has been under a VP.

Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2008-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bu.edu/econ/ied/dp/papers/vpindia22.doc (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.bu.edu/econ/ied/dp/papers/vpindia22.doc [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.bu.edu/econ/ied/dp/papers/vpindia22.doc)

Related works:
Journal Article: Forests to the People: Decentralization and Forest Degradation in the Indian Himalayas (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bos:iedwpr:dp-169

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series from Boston University - Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Program Coordinator ().