When governments cannot directly enforce forest conservation, they may try to give villagers a share of the harvest. We compare this Joint Forest Management policy to a simple benchmark and ask who prefers which.

Download

Abstract

When monitoring or enforcement is difficult, governments may find it impossible to manage village forest commons directly. Village-level institutions might be better able to manage these commons, yet villagers’ management objectives may not coincide with those of the state. We consider the effects of two different government policies on the local management of village commons. One policy tool attempts to induce villagers to conserve forest commons by giving them a share of the timber harvest. We investigate whether this Joint Forest Management scheme is preferred either by the villagers or the government to a simple benchmark policy under which the government harvests at random.

BibTeX

@Article{	  ligon-narain99,
  author	= {Ethan Ligon and Urvashi Narain},
  title		= {Government Management of Village Commons},
  journal	= {Journal of Environmental Economics and Management},
  year		= 1999,
  volume	= 37,
  pages		= {272--289},
  doi		= {10.1006/jeem.1998.1066}
}