Fair ways to share benefits from community forests? How commodification is associated with reduced preference for equality and poverty alleviation

Martin, Adrian ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2916-7712, Kebede, Bereket ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4163-6614, Gross-Camp, Nicole, He, Jun, Inturias, Mirna and Rodriguez Fernandez, Iokine (2019) Fair ways to share benefits from community forests? How commodification is associated with reduced preference for equality and poverty alleviation. Environmental Research Letters, 14 (6). ISSN 1748-9326

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Abstract

This research is concerned with the trend towards commodification of forestry, in the context of community forest governance for sustainable development in the tropics. In these contexts, commodification takes different forms, including sales of certified timbers and sales of carbon credits. In addition to the general aim to enhance income, these market-based forestry interventions typically aim to align with sustainable development agendas, including a) safeguarding ecological integrity and b) promoting poverty alleviation. Our concern here is that the process of forest commodification might lead to a shift in local norms of benefit-sharing, in ways that can hinder these key components of sustainable development goals. We report the results of a survey (N=519) conducted across sites in Bolivia, China and Tanzania that shows that switching from non-monetary to monetary benefits is associated with changes in preferences for distributional fairness in ways that may be detrimental to the poor. In particular, we show that forest commodification is associated with a lower likelihood of of selecting pro-poor or egalitarian approaches to benefit sharing and higher likelihood of selecting to distribute benefits in a way that rewards individual contributions or compensates losses.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: sdg 1 - no poverty ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/no_poverty
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Global Environmental Justice
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Impact Evaluation
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Gender and Development
University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural and Experimental Development Economics
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 25 Mar 2019 08:30
Last Modified: 14 Jun 2023 13:42
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/70323
DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab114f

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