State Involvement and Forest Co-Governance: Evidence from the Indian Himalayas

By Arun Agrawal, Ashwini Chhatre
Studies in Comparative International Development | September 2007

DOI

doi.org/10.1007/s12116-007-9004-6

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Citation

Agrawal, Arun., Chhatre, Ashwini. State Involvement and Forest Co-Governance: Evidence from the Indian Himalayas Studies in Comparative International Development doi.org/10.1007/s12116-007-9004-6.

Studies in Comparative International Development, 2007

Abstract

This article contributes to the literature on collective action around environmental co-governance by statistically analyzing original data on the experiences of 95 communities in the Indian Himalayas. We compare the performance of co-governance versus indigenous governance institutions, taking into account the causal influence of five classes of independent variables. Our analysis suggests that close involvement of government officials is negatively associated with efforts to manage forests sustainably. We identify contextual conditions that help explain why involvement of state officials has adverse consequences on resource governance outcomes. Our findings are relevant for studies of decentralization policies related to natural resource management that governments are currently pursuing in more than 60 countries.

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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