Evaluating the Welfare and Forest Cover Impacts of Uganda's Forest Sector Governance Reform

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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.