From state to community: Forest land rights and forest conservation in India

Bharti Nandwani () and Ishita Verma ()
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Bharti Nandwani: Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research
Ishita Verma: Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research

Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers from Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of India's landmark Forest Rights Act (FRA), which granted indigenous forest-dwelling communities legal rights to manage and protect forests, on the incidence of forest fires. Combining high-resolution satellite fire data with a village-level panel, we exploit pre-reform variation in forest cover in a difference-in-differences framework to identify the causal impact of the FRA on the occurrence and intensity of forest fires. We find that, following FRA, villages with greater forest cover experienced significant reductions in the likelihood and severity of fires. District-level data on the actual distribution of forest land titles corroborate these results. We further show that the decline in forest fires is accompanied by broader environmental improvements, including reductions in PM2.5 concentrations and burned area, highlighting the ecological gains from community-based forest governance.

Keywords: Forest land rights; Property rights; Forest Fires; Environment; Common pool resources; Forest governance; Satellite data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 K11 O13 Q15 Q23 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2026-04
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2026-006

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