These Rights Have No Use? Forest Land Rights and the Economic and Subjective Wellbeing of Indigenous People in India

land rights;forest rights;land tenure;indigenous;India;School for Environment and Sustainability

Rice, MelissaHardin, Rebecca ;

University of Michigan

关键词: land rights;    forest rights;    land tenure;    indigenous;    India;    School for Environment and Sustainability;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/137968/Rice_Melissa_Thesis_2017.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

The formalization of rural people’s rights to agricultural and forest land is a keypolicy focus for many developing countries (Larson et al. 2010; Deininger and Hilhorst2013). These reforms can improve marginalized people’s wellbeing by securing their hold ondurable income-yielding assets, especially where land ownership is culturally prized (Holdenet al. 2013; Lawry et al. 2014). However, other studies suggest that formalizing de facto landtenure may have negligible or detrimental effects, both economic and subjective (Sjaastadand Cousins 2008; Bose 2011, 2013). India’s Forest Rights Act of 2006 formalizes the rightsof indigenous people to the government forestland that they have been using illegally(Government of India 2006). To estimate the results of this major reform, the author and herresearch assistant conducted 200 household surveys and 42 interviews with indigenousfarmers in Gujarat, India.Although the Forest Rights Act is one of the most thorough attempts at forest tenurereform in South Asia, there is little published research on its results. This paper usesregression models complemented by qualitative data to estimate the effects of formalforestland rights on households’ economic outcomes and subjective life satisfaction. Logisticregressions indicate a strong correlation between indigenous households’ land rights andaccess to government benefits. According to these models, a household with formal landrights was 8.9% more likely to have received a subsidized borewell, and 16.5% more likelyhave received a home renovation subsidy, than an identical household without rights(p=0.041, p=0.009). There was no significant correlation between formal rights and farmincome, rights and food security, nor rights and life satisfaction, perhaps due to pre-existingtenure security or the small amount of land covered by formal rightsii