Enabling Effective Community Forestry Through a National Co-Management Program: The Case of Thailand's Community Forestry Program

Rural communities have engaged in the governance and management of forest resources by developing institutions that prevent overexploitation of common-pool resources and maintain the basis of their livelihoods. Effective community forestry relies on several conditions, including secure tenure rights, an enabling regulatory framework, strong governance, and sufficient knowledge. Worldwide, customary community forests have gained legal recognition in the wake of tenure reforms with the expectation that this formalization would enhance tenure security. In Thailand, the Royal Forest Department (RFD) began in 2000 to legally recognize community forests and share formal rights and responsibilities with communities through a national co-management program. This program was further expanded to support the development of community forest networks. The RFD could not provide extension services to approximately 10,000 community forests and aimed to improve the information sharing among communities. The objective of this dissertation was to investigate whether both program elements, i.e. forest tenure formalization and community forest networking, could provide better conditions for community forests. It was of particular interest whether the formalization could enhance the security of tenure rights, which could affect the willingness of communities to invest in forest conservation. The intervention to enhance inter-communal networks is of particular relevance for the international community due to its uniqueness. A diverse set of methodological approaches was required to address each objective. A quasi- experimental design was used to analyze the effect of community forest management on deforestation and the impact of the subsequent formalization based on statistical matching and panel data analyses. Comparative case studies were investigated subsequently to better understand the relationships between formalization, tenure security, forest-related conflicts, and deforestation. Social network modeling was used to analyze how networking organizations affected the flow of information between communities. The findings indicated that community in Thailand have effectively protected their forests even before receiving legal recognition. The formalization procedure has improved the relationship between communities and RFD officials but it has not enhanced their ability to prevent forest encroachment as support from the State has been insufficient in the case of tenure conflicts. In the absence of state-led extension services, established networking organizations enabled communities to provide mutual support as indicated by the enhanced inter-communal flow of information on a provincial level. However, networking organizations still depended on external funding and support during their initial establishment. The co-sharing of forest tenure rights and responsibilities between communities and the RFD might have helped to build trust and acceptance. This study has, however, confirmed that formalization can only provide limited benefits to forest-managing communities if they remain unprotected from forest encroachment because their formal tenure rights are not being enforced. Thus, communities might become disillusioned if their rights are not protected against more powerful actors. The community forest networks have the potential to increase the political influence of these communities while also enhancing their capacity to share and develop new knowledge. However, communities require more financial resources as their responsibilities increase while their ability to generate financial returns remains legally limited. Thus, the regulatory framework can be changed to balance communal rights and responsibilities or expanded by developing financing mechanisms to fund community-based conservation activities, such as forest patrols and fire prevention measures.:Acknowledgements Summary List of Figures List of Tables 1 Enabling effective community forestry 1.1 Potential outcomes of community forestry 1.2 Conditions for effective community forestry 1.3 Policy interventions in Asia’s community forests 2 Justification and objectives 2.1 Impact of formalization on tenure security and local institutions 2.2 Impact of registration on forest loss 2.3 Impact of network administration organization on information-sharing 3 The history of community-based forest management models in Thailand 3.1 Expansion of state control over forestland 3.2 Forest Village Programs 3.3 Community forestry discourse 3.4 Community Forest Program 3.5 Conclusions 4 Designing impact evaluations for policy interventions 4.1 Quantitative impact evaluation 4.2 Qualitative impact evaluation 4.3 Social network analysis 5 The impact of community forest formalization on tenure security and forest co- management in Thailand 5.1 Abstract 5.2 Introduction 5.3 Background 5.4 Methodology 5.5 Results 5.6 Discussion 5.7 Conclusion 6 Community-based forest management moderates impact of deforestation pressure regardless of formalization in Thailand 6.1 Abstract 6.2 Introduction 6.3 Methodology 6.4 Results 6.5 Discussion 6.6 Conclusion 7 Network administrators facilitate information sharing among communal forest organizations in Thailand 7.1 Abstract 7.2 Introduction 7.3 Methodology 7.4 Results 7.5 Discussion 7.6 Conclusion 8 Synthesis, implications and outlook 8.1 Synthesis of key results 8.2 Policy implications 8.3 Future research 8.4 Critical reflections on research methodology Supplementary material for Chapter 6 Supplementary material for Chapter 7 References Supplementary materia