Beyond Committees: Hybrid Forest Governance for Equity and Sustainability

By Pushpendra Rana, Ashwini Chhatre
Forest Policy and Economics | May 2017

DOI

doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2017.01.007

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Citation

Rana, Pushpendra., Chhatre, Ashwini. Beyond Committees: Hybrid Forest Governance for Equity and Sustainability Forest Policy and Economics doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2017.01.007.

Forest Policy and Economics, 2017

Abstract

The overwhelming emphasis on ‘user committees’ under decentralized forestry management in recent timesmay further reinforce the segmentation of forest governance space regarding management strategies. This segmentation has appeared in the form of artificial boundaries such as “state-managed,” “community-managed,“private concessions” etc. Each of these governance modes, on its own, does not have all the strengths and capabilities needed for effective forest governance, especially public forests. These open access forests have multipleand overlapping uses, scale-determined production of goods and services, and high costs of excluding free-ridingindividuals. The paper shows that by selectively mixing useful elements from each of the modes of governance,we can achieve equity and sustainability in forest governance to a greater extent. These hybrid forms of governance mechanisms ensure accountable and transparent decision-making, include diverse and local perspectives,and co-produce innovative ideas to solve the complex and multi-scaler forestry problems. We demonstrate thisthrough an experiment in the Indian Himalayas, where the unique strengths of each mode - state (authority, scientific expertise), community (local knowledge), elected governments (democratic space and deliberations) -were selectively combined to address the principal weaknesses of the existing policy for the distribution of subsidized timber trees from public forests to local households. The paper calls for unpacking hybridity in forest governance through greater conceptual exploration of relational spaces in which different actors interact andnegotiate environmental aspects, and co-produce innovative solutions to complex, scaler and interdependentproblems. The study is highly relevant in the context that majority of forests in the developing world are stateowned and managed and any introduction of elements of hybrid forms through state-mode can potentially improve social and ecological outcomes.

Ashwini Chhatre is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy (BIPP) at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Professor Chhatre is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests broadly centre on the dynamic cross-scale interactions between governance, economic development, and environmental protection. He relocated to India from the US in 2014 to join the faculty at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. He spent 13 years in the US, including five in graduate school at Duke University, where he was awarded a PhD in Political Science. In 2006-07, Professor Chhatre became the first Giorgio Ruffolo Post-doctoral Fellow in Sustainability Science at Harvard University, before joining the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

Between completing his BA in Economics from the University of Delhi in 1990 and starting his PhD at Duke University, he spent 11 years working in different parts of India, primarily as a community organiser and social activist on issues related to natural resources such as land, forests, and water. A background in Economics, graduate training in Political Science, and a long-standing engagement with scholarship in Geography, Anthropology, Landscape Ecology, and Environmental History ensure that his research is never confined to a single discipline.

Professor Chhatre’s main research interests lie in exploring the intersection of democracy, environment, and development, with a focus on decentralised forest governance, climate change vulnerability and adaptation, and multifunctional agriculture. Over the past 20 years, the scope of his research projects has ranged from household-level to global analysis, consistently bridging research, policy, and practice.

He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of World Development Perspectives (2016-19), served as Senior Editor of Conservation Letters (2009-2014), and has published one book and several articles in leading journals including Science, and PNAS.

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