Over the last two decades, community-based forest management has graduated from being an experimental strategy to becoming a much more mainstream approach. In developing countries, an estimated 22 percent of forest estate is owned by or reserved for community and indigenous groups. Now a SANDEE...

This paper seeks to understand whether decentralized management of forests can reduce forest loss in developing countries. In South Asia, large-scale experiments in decentralization -- Joint Forest Management in India and community forestry in Nepal, in particular - have changed the relationship...

In this study, we undertake a choice experiment in order to identify differences in local demand for watershed services in the Koshi basin of Nepal. We first examine the possibility of using a non-monetary numéraire to estimate household willingness-to-pay for watershed services. Survey results...

Decentralized forest management is an important policy issue in India and elsewhere. Yet there are few careful studies of the impacts of community forestry. The authors try to fill this gap by analyzing National Sample Survey data from 524 villages in five states in India. Their analysis seeks...

Community-based natural resource managementis an important strategy to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and wildlife in Namibia. The authors examine the extent to which conservancies have been successful in meeting their primary goal of improving the lives of rural households. They...

Irrigation management transfer is an important strategy among donors and governments to strengthen farmer control over water and irrigation infrastructure. This study seeks to understand whether irrigation management transfer is meeting the promise of its commitments. The authors use data from a...

In this paper, the authors seek to answer three questions about poverty and forests in Malawi: (1) What is the extent of biomass available for meeting the energy needs of the poor in Malawi and how is this distributed? (2) To what extent does fuelwood scarcity affect the welfare of the poor? (3)...

The paper discusses how developing countries can generate some of the resources they need for sustainable development. Developing country government already spend significant amounts of resources on a variety of activities, but the evidence suggests that sometimes, there is substantial scope for...