This project is focused on developing research to evaluate the medium to long-term social and environmental impacts of a major forest sector governance reform implemented in Uganda in 2003. In addition to estimating social and environmental impacts, the project will examine the role of both formal and informal political institutions in determining social and environmental outcomes. The 2003 reform, which changed the governance of 85 percent of Uganda's forests, involved the creation of new organizations and institutions following divergent models of devolution: democratic decentralization to local government; and devolution to a for-profit parastatal. Specifically the project is focused on the following three questions: 1) Has the reform achieved its stated objectives of forest-based poverty reduction and environmental sustainability?; 2) What are the determinants of synergies and trade-offs with respect to the joint outcomes of poverty reduction and environmental sustainability?; and, 3) How do formal and informal political institutions mediate governance reform outcomes? The proposed research builds on high quality baseline and early outcome data to understand household-level welfare impacts of two models of devolution relative to a case where forest management in Uganda has remained centralized. Remote sensing data are used to estimate changes in the rate of deforestation before and after the reform took place, and in study sites under different governance regimes. To successfully develop the proposed research three major activities will take place. First, the baseline socioeconomic data require pre-processing to match villages in intervention sites (i.e., villages in areas affected by the reform); and control sites (i.e., villages in areas that remain under centralized forest management). Second, quantitative models that integrate socioeconomic and spatial data will be developed with collaborators. Finally, qualitative data on formal and informal political institutions from an evaluation of early outcomes undertaken in 2007 will be analyzed to provide solid grounding for core hypotheses related to the causal role of political institutions in determining social and environmental outcomes. Intellectual merit: This research focuses on one of the most mature forest sector governance reforms in sub-Saharan Africa. The ability to analyze long-term impacts using high quality data on political institutions, social welfare and forest cover change is entirely novel and provides a unique contribution to the literature on natural resource governance reforms. This study is also unique in that it gives equal attention to changes in welfare and forest cover change; most studies of natural resource governance reform focus on either socioeconomic OR biophysical outcomes. A primary objective is to understand observed outcomes in the context of the governance and institutional arrangements that mediate forest and land use decisions. The combination of longitudinal socioeconomic data, detailed multi-scale data on institutions (i.e., rules, incentives, constraints, heterogeneous actors), and spatial data over an extended time frame provide a unique opportunity to understand how governance reforms mature over time. Broader impacts: The project will provide important information to policy makers in Uganda on the effectiveness of forest sector decentralization. Uganda is at a critical juncture as it reaches the 10-year anniversary of the forest sector reform. Early evaluation research and anecdotal evidence suggests that the reform has not achieved the desired outcomes. As other nations in the region (e.g., Kenya and Rwanda) embark upon governance reforms in their natural resource sectors, understanding the role of institutional choice and the factors that strengthen or mitigate desired policy outcomes for local resource users is of critical importance. Further, empirical analysis of the welfare and sustainability outcomes associated with decentralization is critical for informing the design and implementation of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) projects and policies. There is an emerging debate about the appropriate level of governance for achieving carbon emission reductions, while doing no harm to the local populations that rely on forests. Very few studies provide rigorous and long-term empirical perspectives on the implications of decentralized regimes.
Uganda was one of the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to undertake a large-scale decentralization of its natural resource sector. As part of a series of reforms in the early 2000s, the heavily centralized Forest Department disbanded and new institutional structures were put into place. These reforms changed the governance structure of 85% of Uganda’s forests. The aims of the reform were three-fold: to reduce high rates of deforestation under the centralized system; to increase economic opportunity for both small-scale farmers and people interested in developing small and medium-scale forest based industries; and to curtail rampant corruption and rent seeking in the sector. This study evaluates the environmental and economic impacts of Uganda’s forest sector reform 10 years post implementation. We combine baseline remote sensing and socioeconomic data in the pre-reform period with similar data from 2007 and 2013 to evaluate both the medium and long term outcomes associated with the reform. Our study area is western Uganda where the majority of high value tropical forest is located. We have three study sites. The first is a set of villages around the perimeter of Rwenzori Mountains National Park. These villages serve as a comparison group in our study as forestry activities in this area have been managed by the centralized Uganda Wildlife Authority since prior to the forest sector reform. The second study site is in the Bugoma region where the majority of forests are privately owned. The villages and households in this study site represent the intervention of democratic decentralization to local government. The third study site includes villages around Budongo Central Forest Reserve, where the National Forestry Authority has overseen forest management since 2003 when the reform was enacted. We use MODIS 500x500 meter resolution data to undertake a remote sensing analysis of forest cover change prior to and at intervals in the post reform period. By creating 10 kilometer buffers around village centroids (N=18) we assess the trajectory of land use change including key transitions from forest and woodland to other land uses. Our analysis of forest reliance and overall household welfare uses 3 waves of household income survey data for a sample of approximately 500 households nested within 18 study villages. Finally, we undertake spatial regression analysis to understand the role that land use change is playing in determining forest income and overall welfare for the households in our sample. We find that under democratic decentralization, annual rates of deforestation remained roughly the same in the period immediately after the reform (2003-2007), but increased after 2007. In the DFS governed Bugoma field site, the rate of forest degradation more than doubled immediately following the reform. In the Budongo field site where the NFA is the dominant forest authority, rates of deforestation after declining slightly between 2003 and 2007 almost doubled from those in the pre-reform period. However, annual rates of forest degradation have declined in the study area. In the comparison group site, rates of deforestation declined by almost half during the study period. Forest degradation exhibited a similar trend. Our socioeconomic analysis finds modest gains in forest income for households in both the intervention sites in the period immediately following the reform (2007). However, we find that relatively poor households have experienced a decline in forest income, while relatively well-off households have experienced considerable gains in forest income, particularly in the Budongo forest site where illegal timber harvesting continues unabated. Our analysis of the 2012 household data suggest a similar pattern but with the share of income from forests slightly declining. Conversely in the Rwenzori site, we find an overall decline in the share of income from forests both in 2007 and again in 2012. Further, unlike in the other sites we find that the poor are benefiting more than the relatively well-off from forests. Our study highlights the difficulties of finding win-win outcomes. Under decentralized governance relatively well-off households are diversifying their income sources and capitalizing on opportunities to exploit forest resources, but they are also the primary agents of deforestation and degradation that continues unabated due to both clearing land for agriculture and illegal timber harvesting, despite the transition to more decentralized forest governance. In the Rwenzori site, where a centralized authority manages forests, forest income has a pro-poor profile, but continues to diminish over time, and deforestation and degradation is on the decline.
