Illegality and inequity in Ghana's cocoa-forest landscape: How formalization can undermine farmers control and benefits from trees on their farms
Illegality and inequity in Ghana's cocoa-forest landscape: How formalization can undermine farmers control and benefits from trees on their farms
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加纳可可林景观的非法和不平等：正规化如何破坏农民对农场树木的控制和收益
DOI：
10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.02.014
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发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
7.1
通讯作者：
Hirons M
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hirons M
基于正规化、维持森林覆盖和地方福利之间的假定联系，促进可持续森林管理的计划越来越注重解决木材生产中普遍存在的不正规问题。这一趋势的典型代表是欧盟森林执法、治理和贸易倡议和相关的自愿伙伴关系协定，旨在消除伙伴国家与欧盟之间的非法木材贸易。然而，人们担心，这种举措可能会对当地资源使用者基本上非正式的权利产生不利影响。为了告知正规化议程，更详细的分析当地权利的运作，以及他们如何可能受到特定计划的影响是required.This paper focuses on Ghana as a country with a most informal wood sector that has signed a VPA with EU for express purpose of rapid formalisation.我们的分析是由一个框架来评估哪些类型的权利可能会被特定的正式化方法所改变，以及这可能对特定地方环境中的森林和人民产生的后续影响。然后，我们将此框架应用于深入的本地案例研究，在加纳中部地区的可可林景观内的农场木材治理，以研究如何运作的正式和非正式的实质性和程序性的权利形状谁控制，并从农场木材生产中受益。然后，我们根据这些地方现实分析VPA的内容，并评估其潜在影响。我们的研究结果强调，国家赠款公司的实质性权利如何与通过拒绝采伐农场木材的权利机制授予农民的程序性权利相平衡，对可可作物损害的赔偿以及与私营公司谈判社区一级的社会责任协议。然而，这些正式的权利与农民现有的非正式权利的比较表明，农民的控制和获得的好处，从他们的农场树木在“非法”链锯为主的非正式部门比在“法律的”国家为基础的系统显着更高。农民们选择在农场里种植可可树，既是为了给可可树遮荫，也是为了从非正式的销售中获利。然而，VPA旨在消除所有非正式的农场木材生产，从而威胁到现有的地方权利和利益获取，同时减少了保持农场树木的激励措施。与其进一步将地方木材治理制度定为犯罪，不如通过以下方式更好地维护树木覆盖率和地方利益分享：1）逐步取消农田木材特许权，2）放弃农场种植树木和本地树木之间的区别，3）理解，承认和尊重农民现有的非正式权利，传统当局和链锯伐木者之间就获取和控制农场树木和木材的方式进行谈判。总的来说，案例研究对正规化是可持续森林管理的必要条件的说法提出了质疑，并要求对特定形式的法律的和政策改革的假定成本和效益进行更细致和更有背景的评估。
Schemes to promote sustainable forest management have increasingly focused on addressing widespread informalities in timber production, based on the presumed links between formalisation, the maintenance of forest cover and local welfare. This trend is typified by the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative and associated Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) aimed at eradicating the trade of illegal wood between partner countries and the EU. Yet there is concern that such initiatives might have detrimental impacts on the largely informal rights of local resource users. In order to inform the formalisation agenda, more detailed analysis of the operation of local rights, and how they might be affected by particular schemes is required.This paper focuses on Ghana as a country with a largely informal wood sector that has signed a VPA with the EU for the express purpose of rapid formalisation. Our analysis is guided by a framework for assessing which types of rights might be transformed by particular approaches to formalisation and the subsequent effect this might have on forests and people in particular local contexts. We then apply this framework to an in-depth local case study of on-farm timber governance within a cocoa-forest landscape in Ghana’s Central Region to examine how the operation of formal and informal and substantive and procedural rights shape who controls, and benefits from, on-farm timber production. We then analyse the content of the VPA in light of these local realities and assess its potential impacts.Our findings highlight how the substantive rights the state grants to companies are presumed to be balanced with the granting of procedural rights to farmers via the mechanisms of right of refusal to harvest on-farm timber, compensation for damage to cocoa crops and the negotiation of community-level Social Responsibility Agreements with private companies. Yet a comparison of these formal rights with farmers’ existing informal rights reveals that farmers’ control and access to benefits from trees on their farms are notably higher in the ‘illegal’ chainsaw dominated informal sector than in the ‘legal’ state-based system. Farmers choose to maintain trees on farms both to shade cocoa and in anticipation of benefits from their informal sale. The VPA, however, aims to eradicate all informal on-farm timber production and thus threatens existing local rights and benefit capture while diminishing incentives to maintain trees on farm. Rather than further criminalising local systems of timber governance, the maintenance of tree cover and local benefit-sharing would be better served by 1) phasing out timber concessions on farmland, 2) abandoning the distinction between planted and native trees on farms and, 3) understanding, recognizing and respecting the existing informal rights of farmers, traditional authorities and chainsaw loggers to negotiate among themselves patterns of access and control of on-farm trees and timber. In general, the case study challenges the assertion that formalisation is requisite for sustainable forest management and mandates a more nuanced and contextually informed assessment of the assumed costs and benefits associated with particular forms of legal and policy reform.