Plenty in common

CONFRONTING THE ISSUES

With the above in mind, the paper outlines some of the main perceived barriers to investment in community tenure and teases out some of the measures already confronting these challenges.

One barrier is equitable distribution of a resource’s benefits, particularly given entrenched social inequalities. “So we’ve shown some of the mechanisms that have emerged to address that,” says Lawry.

In the Nepalese case, for example, where social power is highly stratified in a caste system, the government and community user groups included a provision in the law that 35 percent of income generated by enterprises be set aside for members of lower castes.

Excessive interference from government agencies can also obstruct effective commons management, says Lawry. The community land tenure model places responsibility for many forest management decisions in the hands of community groups, requiring forest agencies to give up certain powers that they may be reluctant to relinquish.

Interview

When rights to land doesn't mean rights to resources

“It’s not unusual to see this tension,” he says, “when forest rights are devolved to communities and the forest officials have yet to work out new roles less related to policing and regulation and more related to extension services and capacity building.’”

And it’s understandable, he says. “These agencies have been mandated and organized to protect against loss of forest. We can’t expect them to change overnight.”

Adapting to new community-management circumstances requires some important rethinking for officials about how to relate to communities in a supportive way. “The state’s regulatory role on behalf of the larger public interest is valid and important,” Lawry acknowledges. “But all these things need to be re-calibrated in line with the fact that communities are meaningful rights-holders.”

The nature of these rights differ from context to context, depending on the type of reform that has occurred, says co-author and CIFOR post-doctoral fellow Iliana Monterroso. For example, in Guatemala, land in some protected areas still belongs to the state, yet concession rights were devolved to community-based organizations that have since successfully developed forest enterprises, established linkages with private banks and found new ways to engage with socially responsible finance.

In short, the case study “challenges the notion that ownership is the mechanism to secure tenure and ensure investment,” says Monterroso.

Importantly, while barriers to investment in community-tenured land do exist, they can often be resolved by devolving more rights, not less. This is reflected well in the Mexican case. Rights devolution began with agrarian reform in the 1910s, but even though communities possessed formal rights to large areas of forested land, they were not allowed to make management decisions, limiting their ability to benefit.

In the 1980s, community mobilization led to further land reform and regulatory changes that allowed indigenous institutions to make decisions over forests within their jurisdictions. A range of viable community forest enterprises emerged as a result.

READY, OR NOT?

While there is huge variation in the experiences of the different communities it studied, the research team was able to draw out some conclusions about the pathways taken to attract profitable and mutually beneficial private-sector investment.

The team identified three main stages of what it calls ‘investment readiness’. First, communities invest inward into housing, education and health, and forming institutions, which often requires significant donor and public-sector investment.

Photo essay

Community forestry pays off for Nepal

In the second phase, entrepreneurs emerge, and the first forest enterprises are formed, enabled in part by investment in roads and other essential infrastructure and capacity-building. Collective associations form at regional or national levels and advocate for favorable regulations, help build capacity of their members, and in some cases broker deals between local businesses and communities.

Finally, in the third phase, communities leverage their own ‘social capital’, or social strengths, to attract new forms of financial capital, enabling them to build and scale up their enterprises further.

Gnych highlights the important work that NGOs can do within this process.“They play a bridging role – connecting investors with communities and translating between the two. It’s incredibly important for getting the investments going, especially at the beginning.”

It also reduces risk for all parties. “It’s not only investors that want to reduce their risks, but communities need to protect their assets too. There have been countless cases of exploitation in the past that have made communities skeptical of private sector and government involvement,” she says. “The need for capacity-building, knowledge and education is on both sides.”

There’s also a clear need for more research on existing private sector investment, and on the changing capital needs of community user groups as they develop and grow. Quantitive data is still lacking.

But most importantly – and encouragingly – the research makes clear that while investment in community-owned land projects carries specific risks and challenges, they are not insurmountable. “These are problems to be solved,” says Lawry. And the solutions are within reach.

This research was supported by funding from the CGIAR research program on Policies, Institutions and Markets.