Power relationships: Their effect on the governance of community forestry in the Philippines
Introduction
As a broad paradigm, ‘good governance’ is widely reported as being critical to the success of community forestry in rural areas of developing countries. Community forestry is a generic term for the devolution of power from the State to local resident groups, (i.e., CFGs) to manage government-owned forest and land. Land and tree tenure arrangements may vary but the overriding principle is that devolving power to local resident groups will provide an incentive for sustainable forest management (Baynes et al., 2015a). As an ideal and normative goal, good governance, both from governments to CFGs and within CFGs themselves, aims to redress unequal power relations by supporting equity in decision-making and control over access to forest resources (Dressler et al., 2010). In contrast, poor governance produces and reinforces unequal power relationships between state agencies, forest user groups and rural people and leads to unequal and inequitable distribution of costs and benefits. Poor rural people who are at the margins of decision-making in CFGs, lose access-and-use rights and perceive a loss of control over their livelihoods. Resistance emerges and manifests with time (Brown and Corbera, 2003). Hence, governance itself is more about the power to make, implement and enforce decisions, rather than just the formal arrangements about how decisions are supposed to be made (Fisher, 2003, Mayers et al., 2013). However, much of the literature concerned with community forestry governance tends to focus more on the relationship between governments and CFGs and less on the power sharing between CFGs, their members and local people and how this influences local people’s access and use of forests (e.g., see Hodgdon, 2010, Schusser, 2013).
Smallholder farmers in developing countries are riddled with insecurities (Heim, 1990) and so are less able or willing to manage CFG affairs beyond local power relations and structures. Affluent members typically acquire a disproportionate amount of resources (Chhetri et al., 2012). The benefits to poorer members are thus reduced and the incentive for them to sustainably manage the forest resource is lessened (Thanh and Sikor, 2006, Coleman, 2011, Paudel, 2012), social conflict increases, becomes protracted and difficult to manage (Corbera et al., 2007). Lower-tier governance and power relationships are therefore important to the success of community forestry.
The principal opportunity for addressing lower-tier governance and power relationships lies with powerful social actors. Such actors include government land management agencies with the ability to influence the behaviour of another ‘regardless of the latter’s will’ (Schusser, 2013). Typically, governments only partially decentralise or devolve power to CFGs, retaining key powers themselves (Cronkleton et al., 2012). Power devolution can then become ‘a matter of half-hearted paper legality’ (Egbe, 2001) and governments also recentralise control over forests by requiring lower level officials to be directly accountable to their superiors (Pulhin and Dressler, 2009). An unfortunate result is that when governments retain power, it disempowers weaker actors and discourages equitable lower level governance. As noted by Colfer (2011), in a supportive environment, local people are demonstrably capable of monitoring and sanctioning members of their own group, and adapting their behaviour, provided they see that it is in their interests to do so. Given the crucial importance of lower-tier governance to CFGs, how might it be improved?
This paper examines the effect of unequal power relationships between central government, local officials, CFGs and local people, on the governance of reforestation and timber harvesting on the island of Biliran in the Philippines. We investigated governance as actions which were imposed by DENR head office in Manila on local DENR officials and then downwards to CFG leaders, their members and local people. Our particular focus was the reactions of local people in support of, or against governance which was imposed on them. This investigation occurred as part of research conducted by Australian Centre for Industrial and Agricultural Research (ACIAR) Project ASEM/2010/050 ‘Improving watershed rehabilitation outcomes in the Philippines using a systems approach’. We present the conceptual approach to the research, the background to the CFGs and the context and methodology of the investigation. We then describe how governance problems affected the success of reforestation and harvesting projects. Finally, we discuss ways in which governance may be improved and the implications of our research for community forestry in other developing countries.
Section snippets
Theoretical background: Bourdieu on power relationships
Social theory developed by the French anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu resonates with researchers who deal with the power relationships between social actors. Bourdieu suggested that cultural practices are central to struggles for power and dominance in social relations, including politics and economics, in contrasting institutional contexts (Vogt, 1980). The interpretive power of his theories has seen them re-interpreted and published as compilations (e.g., see Wacquant, 2005, Sapiro, 2010) and
Community forestry in the Philippines and the two studies
Following intensive logging of native forest in the 1950–80s, the sawmilling industry in the Philippines collapsed. After the failure of centralised forest management and the concession system, community forestry was established in the Philippines by then President Ramos in 1995 as the government’s flagship program for democratising access to forest resources and protecting remaining forests (Pulhin and Dressler, 2009). Legislation established a ‘community-based forest management’ (CBFM)
Research methods
We investigated upper-tier governance between DENR and the CFP-BA. Lower-tier governance was investigated between CFP-BA leaders, their members and local people. Upper-tier governance measures included requirements for the CFP-BA to provide labour in exchange for NGP funding and compliance, (e.g., through necessary documentation) with harvesting legislation. The key measure of lower-tier governance was the manner in which benefits from NGP funding or timber harvesting were shared with CFP-BA
Upper-tier governance issues affecting the CFP-BA in relation to timber inventory and harvesting
As the government forest management authority, DENR staff control the issue of timber harvesting permits. However, the ACIAR forester who was assigned to assist the CFP-BA found that power sharing between DENR and CFG’s is affected by a nationally standardised approach to the approval process. Local DENR officials are not permitted to approve Resource Use Permits (RUPs). The approval process and the documentation are precisely specified in DENR memoranda and administrative orders. For this
Discussion
Whereas the CFP-BA’s reaction to poor governance was negative but largely passive, reactions from local people were closer to physical, rather than symbolic violence. Farmers who rely on shifting agriculture are some of the poorest and least empowered people in Philippine society. Hence, their opposition to a perceived threat ˗ in this case reforestation and a potential loss of land ˗ is hardly surprising. It is understandable that they may either harvest from forests claimed by others to
Conclusion
For this research, Bourdieu’s concepts of symbolic capital, power and violence helped us to understand the consequences of poor governance which results from unequal power relationships. Other work in the Philippines implicitly supports our findings that successful community forestry requires devolution of power to less-powerful social actors. However, our research has explicitly illustrated that without genuine devolution to each tier of power—downwards from central government to local staff
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). No contribution to the collection, analysis and interpretation of data was provided by ACIAR.
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Cited by (0)
- 1
University of the Sunshine Coast, Qld, Australia.
- 2
ARC Future Fellow, School of Geography, University of Melbourne, VIC, Australia.