6. TENURE ON THE COMMONS APPROACHING THE COMMONS

In some instances the forest is a no-man's land where use is on a "first come first served" basis. There may exist observable patterns of forest use but not rights of use (Moench 1988). Garrett Hardin (1968) propounds a "tragedy of the commons" thesis, contending that resources held in common are inevitably overexploited and degraded. In the true open access situation, this danger is clear, but Hardin's use of the term "commons"--with its associations of community ownership and potential for control--for an uncontrolled open access situation is unfortunate and misleading.

Over against the open access situation is the true commons, property held and used in common by an identifiable community. A communal forest is a commons, as is a village woodlot, or a common pasture with trees. The concept of the commons presumes the existence of a community, the proprietor of the commons, whose members are the persons entitled to use of the commons. The very nature of "property" implies a right held over against others, the non-members of the community. The authority to exclude non-members from common property may be difficult and/or costly to exercise, but the right to exclude is central to the concept of common property. Community property provides the basis for management of use by members, and the possibility of control and restraint of use in the common interest.

Our understanding of common property management has been deepened considerably by the research of the last decade and these insights need to be applied to the management of trees as common property. The difficulty of such management will differ from case to case. Scale is a factor--contrast the management challenge of a large communal forest with those of a village woodlot--but in no case is such management a simple matter. The dismal history of a generation of village woodlot projects has driven development planners back to common property theory to understand why their efforts miscarried so badly (Bruce and Noronha 1987: 136-139).

The agendas and preconceived notions of outside observers have often kept community forestry invisible. For example, the Chinese have been concerned with forests and the effects of deforestation for centuries. But both Chinese and European observers provided only the most fragmentary information on forest practices of local communities, requiring a heroic effort to piece together even a minimal view of community control. Menzies reports from such an effort in China, in the excerpt which follows. For-their part, state and national governments have no particular reason to acknowledge the rights or competence of community foresters since historically central governments have competed with local communities and local people for control of forest land. All over the world, for centuries, peasants and the state have been slugging it out in the forest (Fortmann and Bruce 1988: 273).

Why do we care about trees on the commons? Wouldn't it be possible to focus exclusively on the holding to meet forestry needs? In fact there are a variety of situations when communal forestry continues to meet important needs: (1) in situations where intended beneficiaries are landless or for other reasons cannot plant on their holdings, forestry on the commons may be the only option for reaching them; (2) where the trees are of species that require frequent and complex care, perhaps involving special equipment, they may be more easily planted and managed on the common woodlot by a few trained individuals representing the community; or (3) where it is specifically desired to generate through tree-growing the income to fund needed community activities. Even where trees are grown on individual holdings, the nursery may well be on a commons area.

How do we set about examining tenure in trees on the commons? Commons management has a community dimension which cannot be captured through household interviewing alone. It must be approached initially through the small group and key informant interviews suggested earlier. As a household may have a multi-tenure holding consisting of several parcels, so a community may have more than one commons. It may have two pieces of commons with the same tenure regime, or it may have several commons under different uses and subject to different tenure rules. It may, for instance, have a communal forest; a common pasture on which trees grow; as well as uncultivated interstices between parcels and holdings. These commons areas must be identified and their various uses assessed. The managing group must be identified, its membership clearly understood, its institutional nature and potentials gauged, and its various mechanisms for control of member behavior evaluated. The insert from Bruce and Fortmann which follows sketches out some of these information needs in greater detail.

Tenure in trees or the commons must however also be examined from the viewpoint of the household. Households' tenure extends to the commons: households which are members of the group have rights to use the commons and may even have specific rights in certain trees on the commons under a system of tree tenure. One must evaluate the extent to which those rights provide effective incentives for households and individuals to support and observe the rules which control the use of the commons.

Three of the sections which follow deal with assessment of the current realities and potential for the management of common property in trees and the land on which they grow. They suggest the importance of identifying the "community" clearly, assessing the various institutions, and understanding their mechanisms of control. The fourth deals with the diversity of interests which households may have in a commons, and how this can affect their commitment to effective management of the commons.

IDENTIFYING THE COMMUNITY

We cannot begin to think about common property management unless we have a clear sense of what precisely is the community which controls the resource; unfortunately, consultants' reports and project documents are often hopelessly vague on the point. This is usually not a very difficult matter to clear up, but assessors often work from dubious assumptions based on their experience elsewhere and never rigorously pursue the question. In some cases the matter will be complex. Community control of resources is primarily associated with geographically-bounded communities where ties of kinship buttress territorial ties. In these times of high population mobility and extensive economic interdependence, community and community membership have become harder to define and enforce effectively.

Even if we take community to mean a geographically specific place, community membership could be defined by present or previous residence, by property ownership, by kinship ties, or by some combination of these factors, a broad range of community-level institutional forms which engage in tree planting. Tree planting may be organized in certain societies by communities, small groups, associations, age groups, religious communities and women's groups (Cernea 1985). A single individual will belong to a number of communities, often greater or lesser importance. The definition of community membership determines who may lay what claims against community resources. The limits placed by definition of membership, if they can be enforced, regulate pressure on the resources. Yoruba communities have distinguished "strangers" as a separate category of residents who have a restricted set of rights to community resources (Lloyd 1962; Berry 1975). Similarly, Swiss communities have restricted access to communal summer pastures and forests to their citizens, a category that appeared in written documents as early as 1473 (Netting 1981: 60). Thus, residence and even private property ownership in the village did not necessarily result in access to communal property. A clear identification of the community which can use and control use of a resource is the essential first step toward understanding commons management.

How does one gather information which defines the community in relation to the commons? In the group and key informant interviews one could begin with a set of questions such as:

1. Are there areas of land which are not held by households, but used by all of you or by a group? Suggest observed land areas which appear to lie outside households' landholdings. Then in each case ask:

2. How large is it?

3. How far away?

4. Is the use seasonal, or year round?

5. What uses are made of it, in order of importance? 6. Are there trees on it?

6. What species?

7. Are the trees self-sown or planted (by species)?

8. If planted, by whom (by species)?

9. Who has a right to use the commons?

10. Is use limited by one or more factors?

11. Is the group defined automatically to include everyone with certain characteristics or is membership voluntary? If the former, what are those characteristics? Specify them clearly in each case.

a. Location of residence?

b. Descent?

c. Political allegiance?

d. Contract?

e. Other?

12. If group membership is voluntary, what portion of the local residential community is included? What portion of members do they constitute?

13. If voluntary, why do some join and not others? What are the characteristics of those who have joined?

14. Does everyone in the group in fact use the commons? If not, who does not use it?

15. Does everyone in the group use all parts of the commons equally, or is use localized or otherwise limited to a sub-group of the community in some way? If it is localized, how is it done?

16. If localized or limited, is this a matter of right, or just proximity and convenience?

17. If the former, what is the basis of the right?

Needless to say, although the commons areas tend to be some distance from villages, it is essential to visit the commons. A tour of the commons is often informative about the level and effectiveness of community control of the commons. For instance, does everyone seem reasonably sure of the location of the boundaries of the commons, or does it take quite a lot of discussion to establish them?

THE VARIETY OF INSTITUTIONS

By institution here is meant organization. Groups can be organized in very different ways and many different types of groups face the task of managing the commons. The manner in which the local community organizes itself as an institution to manage the commons will create important limits and opportunities for community forestry. The institution may be a traditional model or an organizational innovation for the community, such as a cooperative. Traditional authorities have not been indifferent to the destruction of the resources upon whose continued productivity the livelihood of their people depend. While their efforts at conservation have sometimes been overwhelmed by the weight of economic forces, it is important to note that they have sometimes used their powers as traditional land managers in attempts to conserve trees (Schapera 1943: 416, Duncan 1960: 95). Prevailing thought would suggest that common property arrangements arise when the user population lives close to the resource and is relatively small; in this situation supply is only moderately scarce compared to demand, and is subject to multiple uses requiring management and coordination. Groups seem to survive if they have clear-cut rules that are enforced by both users and officials, internally adaptive institutional arrangements, the ability to nest into external organizations for dealing with the external environment, and different decision rules for different purposes. And their chances are better if they are subject to slow exogenous change (Ostrum 1986).

Where such systems fail, it is often because government actions or new economic forces have undermined the authority of traditional managers. Commons management often must rely to some extent on state forestry personnel as well as the local community and local institutions to ensure the survival of seedlings. State forestry personnel often have only sporadic local presence and limited effective authority. Control by a professional forester on behalf of the Swiss community described by Hosmer (1922) requires that the value of the off-take from the forest be sufficient to pay a salary. Often local authorities and foresters exist in uneasy relationships. Only a small fraction of the trees planted in the Lesotho woodlot program examined by Turner (see insert) have survived. This is not to suggest that there is no role for national forestry programs. The excerpt from Openshaw and Moris provides examples of successful "decentralized" forestry management under centralized direction from China and South Korea.

How can we set about inquiring into the institutions which manage the several commons which may exist in a community? In practice, this is difficult to separate from our next. question: what are the mechanisms utilized to control use of the commons. A set of questions which covers both areas is presented at the end of the next section.

MECHANISMS OF CONTROL

Over recent years, a great deal of largely unsatisfactory experience has been acquired with "village forestry." In some cases the trees were to be planted for erosion control purposes; in other cases, in "community woodlots" as a source of fuelwood. Trees for community woodlots are generally planted on common land near the village, but if erosion control is the objective, planting may be on mountain slopes used primarily as common pasture. Thomson, writing of the Sahel in the excerpt which follows, examines what he refers to as the "village woodlot fallacy," focusing on villagers' skepticism about the feasibility of local collective action. Organizing the protection and eventual disposition of trees planted on community land has been difficult, though often the matter has been approached naively (Brain 1980;'Noronha 1980; Noronha 1981; Blair 1982; Hoskins 1982). The difficulty of what was being attempted was clearly underestimated. There is little evidence that there were any community tree planting schemes before the advent of modern community forestry programs.

A critical question is how community control is to be enforced. Community ownership of a resource does not automatically lead to effective community control over it. Such control requires the ability to both exclude outsiders and control the behavior of community members themselves.

Successful "Decentralized" Tree Planting Under Centralized Direction: China and South Korea . . . In both countries, visits by qualified observers at earlier periods painted a dismal picture of culturally entrenched land misuse and declining forest productivity. . . . But in each of these instances a concerted national effort linked with community responsibility did succeed: the Chinese claim to have increased their land in forest use from 5 percent in 1949 to nearly 13 percent in 1978, while large areas of South Korea have been transformed . . . By the end of 1977, Eckholm (1979) says 643,000 hectares of village woodlots had been established. Of course, both of these consist of governmentally-inspired programmes undertaken in nations with a demonstrated capability to ensure mass compliance. Both, too, have chosen what is in effect "decentralized forestry" as their option--a nationally safeguarded system of communally utilized woodlots. Here the South Koreans have incorporated innovations that are of general interest, since the lands being planted remain under private ownership: 1. One village as a whole calculates its fuel requirements and determines which lands will be put under the VFA [Village Forestry Association] allocation. However, owners have the choice of reforesting the lands themselves or of putting them under VFA management in return for one-tenth of the future proceeds. Those doing the work get the major benefits (Eckholm 1979). 2. A linkage of enforcement measures against traditional use of the forested plots for firewood litter with a strong extension campaign. 3. Improved design of cooking stoves and other measures to conserve fuel at the farm. 4. New sources of energy in the system: a. methane generation and kerosene heaters, b. the mixture of fast-maturing species such as Lespedeza into the forest woodlots to permit early offtake of fuelwood (a practice termed the "suchon method") (Arnold 1978). . . . Eckholm stresses that while these two cases are not typical of most agroforestry efforts, at the least they do establish that the combination of strong political commitment by leaders with communal participation and shared benefits by villagers can be made to succeed despite the negative impact of entrenched cultural practices favouring land misuse. K. Openshaw and J. Moris, "The Socio-Economics of Agroforestry," in Proceedings of a Conference on International Cooperation in Agroforestry (Nairobi: International Council for Research in Agroforestry, 1979), at pp. 338-340.

Local Collective Action Conditions in the Sahel . . . In many contemporary Sahelien communities, local political conditions render long-term collective activities impossible. . . . . . . Implications for participatory renewable natural resource management on a collective basis are devastating. In such milieux, local political conditions dictate that villagers cannot, for lack of effective local political frameworks, jointly protect and culture village woodlots, live fencing or windbreaks during critical initial years until they become established. They cannot as a group police woodstock or pasture use on village lands. They cannot develop and systematically maintain watershed management by collective action over the lands of all holders in a single watershed. Joint soil conservation operations and the like are impossible where these depend on the capacity to enforce collective decisions, because that capacity does not exist. . . . Private Rights in Trees. . . . The current system of national ownership and subsidiary usufructuary rights could be replaced by village, quarter or individual ownership of specific parts of the woodstock (woodlots, trees located on fields, common bushlands, state forests, etc.). Such a tree tenure system assumes the more direct property rights would give user-owners a strong incentive to control exploitation and provide for adequate future supplies. Is this assumption justified? The evidence suggests it is in some places, but not in others. . . . Localizing Tree Tenure Legal Process. Privatizing tree tenure rights implies as a practical corollary localizing legal recourse and enforcement. This would markedly reduce costs to tree owners of defending their woodstock rights. A villager can generally find his quarter head, village chief, earth priest, or local Muslim cleric much more easily than he can track down a roving forestry agent. Thus authorizing local notables to handle tree tenure disputes would encourage litigation in defense of tree property rights. Such proceedings would slowly clarify those rights in local moots open to all. Decisions would be publicly debated rather than being handled in administrative proceedings between forester and violator. The latter often exclude non-interested parties. Moot proceedings would help inform locals of the new system of tree tenure rights, as well as defining content of rights. James T. Thomson, "Participation, Local Organization, Land and Tree Tenure: Future Directions for Sahelian Forestry," in Whose Trees?: Proprietary Dimensions of Forestry, eds. L. Fortmann and J.W. Bruce (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), at pp. 206, 210-212.

How are controls on use formulated? There are two broad categories of strategies for community control: exclusion of non-members of the group and control over use by members. The former must rely to some extent on policing, but it is reciprocity which ultimately determines the effectiveness of such arrangements. The latter may be through impositions of quotas on individual or household use. One way of implementing such quotas is by assigning tree tenure--that is, assigning rights to use particular trees or types of trees on the commons to particular households or individuals. A second approach is to monitor off-take, which is difficult except in the case of a very small, closely managed commons. Alternatively the community will arrange for the trees or wood products to be harvested and distribute them among the members. Third, reserves may be created which are removed from community use until tree cover has renewed itself, or matured after planting, as in the case of the village woodlot. This diversity can be seen in several examples. In 1639 in Hampton, New Hamphire, three men were appointed wood's wards to control forest use and to assign a cutting quota to each household (Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters 1932). Community councils in Swiss villages marked trees to be cut for fuelwood and allotted timber shares by the drawing of lots (Netting 1981: 189). Leaves for fodder are auctioned and the proceeds used for community projects in India (Brara 1987).

Generally, the more extensive the commons the more difficult is control over its use. Trees on rangeland, such as those on the seasonal trek routes of nomads, pose particularly challenging problems. These are highlighted in an excerpt which follows, from the report of a working group on tree and tenure in Africa.

How can we structure inquiries concerning organization form and mechanisms of control? In small group and key informant interviews a series of initial inquiries along the lines set out below are suggested, in the case of each type (by use) of commons area.

1. Are non-members prevented from using the commons? What institution does this, and how?

2. From where does its authority to do this derive?

3. How is the institution constituted? For instance, is it hierarchical, as with the office of chief, or elected, as might be the case with a committee of elders?

4. How does the institution make decisions? Does it make rules? Does it execute them? Are there others responsible for executing its decisions? If so, who are they, and how are they chosen?

5. Does this or some other institution plant trees on the commons? Do individuals do so? If so, who actually does this work and how are they compensated? Where do seeds and seedlings come from and who bears their costs, if any? Is there a nursery?

6. Does the institution or some other institution create reserves which are closed to cutting to recover? If so, how large a portion of the whole area is currently in reserve?

7. Does the institution or some other institution directly cut branches, leaves, or trees? If so, does it distribute these, and by what system? Or does it market them, in which case how are revenues distributed? Do members feel assurance that they will receive this benefit? Why or why not?

8. Does the institution seek to regulate levels of member use? If so, does it do this through tree tenure or by setting and monitoring use levels? If the latter, how is this done?

9. What sanctions can the institution mobilize against members when its rules or orders are disobeyed? Can it cut off use rights, temporarily or permanently? Can it fine or imprison? Are there other sanctions used, such as corporal punishment? For what offenses are particular penalties characteristically imposed? Are they effective?

10. What sanctions can the institution mobilize against non-members?

11. Is a particular ministry or government agency responsible for institutions of this type? If so, what is the nature of the relationship?

12. Are government officials or the courts ever asked to enforce a decision made by the institution?

13. How are disputes concerning use of the commons settled? Disputes among members? Disputes between members and non-members?

INDIVIDUAL INCENTIVES AND RIGHTS IN THE COMMONS

A commons is community-administered, but its existence ultimately depends upon whether the members of the community consider that its benefits to them outweigh its costs. A common property tenure arrangement provides for effective management of a forest to the extent that it mobilizes those incentives. The ability to enforce rules is often so modest that a substantial degree of concensus, and hence self-enforcement, is necessary. This is not easily obtained because communities are diverse. Their members have different degrees of interest in both trees in general and in the various uses of trees. The fact that trees are multi-purpose plants creates the possibility of a heterogeneity in the community concerning the relative priority to be given to the different uses of trees. For instance, a household with livestock will have a more substantial interest in trees as fodder-producers than a household which has no livestock.

It is necessary to understand this diversity of interests. Afforestation or conservation efforts have often proceeded as if a village or a community were homogenous, as if all members had an equally strong interest in the use and husbandry óf tree resources. Far from being homogeneous, communities are usually divided by factors such as class, caste, religion, ethnicity, gender, geographical origin, length of settlement or even household cycle considerations. This diversity combined with the multiple and sometimes mutually exclusive uses that can be made of trees complicates the equitable distribution of rights to access to tree resources. Trees cut for timber cannot be used for fodder, and lopping a tree for fodder may reduce its value for timber.

Different strata of the community, households in different stages of their household life cycle, and even different members of a household have different needs for trees and tree products. The poor in dry regions of India are more likely to use common resources including the village forest for fuel and fodder while the rich use them as a supply of timber (Jodha 1986). Community level attempts to control resources are likely to reflect community struggles and cleavages.

The myth of the homogeneous community may lead the unwary into simplistic plans that fail to take community diversity into account. It is of course possible to set aside particular parts of a forest common resource for use by sub-sets of the community with relatively uniform interests, though this rapidly becomes complicated. But careless exclusion has serious results. Molnar (1985b: 8) describes a Nepalese village in which the men decided to protect their village forest from degradation by closing the forest "to all grazing and cutting, only allowing villagers a few, days per year to enter the forest and cut small wood and leaf fodder." The result was that the women, who had not been consulted in the decision, were forced to steal wood from the forest of the adjacent panchayat. The women of that panchayat, whose forest had been placed under similar system, did the same in the forest of yet another panchayat. This domino-effect was a direct result of village level decision-making without consulting the full range of the villages' tree users.

Women by virtue of their role in gathering firewood and other forest products in community forests require particularly careful consideration. Among the tenure niches, women particularly, depend upon the commons (Rocheleau 1987). Similarly, the poor and landless have a special dependence upon the commons and regulation of its use must be considered not only in terms of the impact on the community as a whole but also in terms of the impact among its most economically marginal members.

There are some issues particular to the community woodlot situation or any community forest situation in which use is deferred and, as is often the case, harvesting is done not by individual members but by agents of the group, as where wood is cut and sold on the market. In these circumstances the assessor must examine whether there are (1) institutional arrangements for protection of the trees, (2) provisions specifying benefit distribution in the long term, and (3) short-term incentives for good husbandry.

Arrangements for eventual use and distribution of benefits from the trees are sometimes painfully vague, and the uncertainty of returns have led the community, with a sense of skepticism born of experience, to regard the whole exercise as unrealistic. In other cases, the benefits of a successful project have been appropriated by the wealthy or by community leaders.

How can the community members be assured that they will ultimately benefit from the trees planted in the woodlot? One way is through a written, clear and legally-enforceable contract among members of the community and with the government concerning distribution of revenues. Models are available for such arrangements; the excerpt from Hosmer which follows details one such model. On the other hand, one should not naively expect that such a compact will be honored where there are major disparites in power in the community, unless the responsible government agency backs the weaker parties. As indicated in the excerpt from Bruce and Noronha which follows, project planners often approach the issue of "who benefits" with an innocence not shared by rural people. The creation of short-term incentives for particular people to protect the seedlings seeks to counteract the effects of community doubts about who will benefit from the project in the long run. These short-term incentives should be incentives for individuals selected by the community to care for the trees, and can involve mechanisms such as a cash premium for a high rate of seedling survival.

The participation of the government in a community woodlot project is itself a problematic factor from a tenure standpoint. Where government plants trees, the community may see government as attempting to take the community's land. The community sees government as the owner of the trees--after all, the local people are not allowed to cut them--and therefore are concerned that government is asserting a claim to land by planting its trees on the land. Even where seedlings are provided by the government for planting on the holding, there may be a lack of incentive for protecting seedlings based on people's perception that the trees somehow belong to government (Murray 1988: 219).

Our objective here should be to first understand what rights households and individuals have and how these are defined and assured, and also how different uses of trees on the commons by different households and individuals create somewhat different interests in the survival and husbandry of those trees. For small group and key informant interviews about a community forest or trees on grazing commons, an initial line of questioning might go something like this:

1. Who uses the trees in the commons?

2. Do particular households or individuals have rights in particular trees?

3. Do these rights vary with species?

4. What is the basis of such rights?

5. What uses can the right-holders make of trees in which such rights exist?

6. Do women have the same rights as men? If they are different, specify.

7. If no such individual rights exist, what are the rights to use which community members have in the trees?

8. Do women have the same rights as men?

9. Do these rights vary with species?

10. Do all users use trees for the same purposes, or are particular uses more important to some households than others? To what groups within the community are particular uses especially important?

11. Can any member use the trees at any time or is use seasonal or otherwise limited?

12. Is there any limitation on the amount of tree resources used?

13. Can the tree resources be used for commercial sale or only for home consumption?

14. Can trees on the commons be cut down, and in what circumstances?

This set of issues can and should be also pursued in household interviewing. Two sample question schedule sections which get at use of trees on the commons are provided on the following pages.

Rights to Use Trees on s Commons, by Species

	A - N		0		P
1:	Managing institution/community	1:	Community members	1:	Browsing by animals
2:	Husband	2:	Other local	2:	Gather fallen wood
3:	Wife	3:	Itinerant users	3:	Lop leaves/branches
4:	Shared by (combined numbers: 2/3)	4:	Other	4:	Pick fruit
5:	Other household member	5:	None	5:	Cut down
6:	Not applicable			6:	Other
				7:	None

Relative Labor Requirements and Benefits for Species on a Commons

1: High for this group in relation to this species.

2: Significant for this group in relation to this species.

3: Minor for this group in relation to this species.

4: None for this group in relation to this species.

HH = Household