Trade-offs and synergies between carbon storage and livelihood benefits from forest commons

Abstract

Forests provide multiple benefits at local to global scales. These include the global public good of carbon sequestration and local and national level contributions to livelihoods for more than half a billion users. Forest commons are a particularly important class of forests generating these multiple benefits. Institutional arrangements to govern forest commons are believed to substantially influence carbon storage and livelihood contributions, especially when they incorporate local knowledge and decentralized decision making. However, hypothesized relationships between institutional factors and multiple benefits have never been tested on data from multiple countries. By using original data on 80 forest commons in 10 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, we show that larger forest size and greater rule-making autonomy at the local level are associated with high carbon storage and livelihood benefits; differences in ownership of forest commons are associated with trade-offs between livelihood benefits and carbon storage. We argue that local communities restrict their consumption of forest products when they own forest commons, thereby increasing carbon storage. In showing rule-making autonomy and ownership as distinct and important institutional influences on forest outcomes, our results are directly relevant to international climate change mitigation initiatives such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and avoided deforestation. Transfer of ownership over larger forest commons patches to local communities, coupled with payments for improved carbon storage can contribute to climate change mitigation without adversely affecting local livelihoods.

Fig. 1.

Trade-offs and synergies in multiple outcomes from forest commons. Forest commons in our sample are spread across 10 tropical countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The sample represents considerable variation in carbon stored as above-ground tree biomass and contributions to local livelihoods from forest commons, and very low association between the two outcomes.

Fig. 2.

Forest size, rule-making autonomy, and ownership of forest commons. (A and B) The impact of increase in forest size on the predicted probability of being overused and sustainable commons. Low benefits on both carbon storage and livelihoods (overused commons, A) are less likely for larger forests. Conversely, larger forests are more likely to provide high levels of carbon storage and livelihood benefits (sustainable commons, B). Together, A and B suggest that size of the forest is an important factor in determining joint outcomes from forest commons. (C) The impact of “local autonomy” on joint outcomes. The area shaded green in C represents the increase in the probability of a forest being classified as sustainable commons when the community managing it has high rule-making autonomy; the area shaded brown represents the decline in the probability of a forest being overused commons when the community managing it has high rule-making autonomy. The effects of local autonomy vary with the size of the forest common. (D) How ownership of forest commons affects the likelihood of the forest being in the category of deferred use or unsustainable commons. Government ownership is associated with a higher probability of overuse (low carbon storage and high livelihood benefits), and community ownership is associated with low livelihood benefits but high carbon storage as communities defer use.