Does Collective Action Sequester Carbon? : The Case of the Nepal Community Forestry Program

Bluffstone, Randy ; Somanathan, Eswaran ; Jha, Prakash ; Luintel, Harisharan ; Bista, Rajesh ; Paudel, Naya ; Adhikari, Bhim

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: PHOTOSYNTHESIS;    WOOD;    FOREST DEGRADATION;    ALTITUDE;    COMMUNITY FORESTS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7327
RP-ID  :  WPS7327

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper estimate the effects ofcollective action in Nepal’s community forests on fourecological measures of forest quality. Forest user groupcollective action is identified through membership in theNepal Community Forestry Programme, pending membership inthe program, and existence of a forest user group whoseleaders can identify the year the group was formed. Thislast, broad category is important, because many communityforest user groups outside the program show significantevidence of important collective action. The study findsthat presumed open access forests have only 21 to 57 percentof the carbon of forests governed under collective action.In several models, program forests sequester more carbonthan communities outside the program. This implies thatpaying new program groups for carbon sequestration creditsunder the United Nations Collaborative Programme on ReducingEmissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developingmay be especially appropriate. However, marginal carbonsequestration effects of program participation are smallerand less consistent than those from two broader measures ofcollective action. The main finding is that within theexisting institutional environment, collective actionbroadly defined has very important, positive, and largeeffects on carbon stocks and, in some models, on otheraspects of forest quality.