Preferences for forest benefits: are distributive justice principles reflected in values for Ecosystem Services?

Abstract

Forest resources have an important role in supporting the livelihood strategies of rural communities in Malawi, especially for the poorest village members, and can have an important equalising effect. The management system of forest ecosystems determines how those resources are distributed to local users and therefore influences total societal welfare. The current management policies in Malawi are evolving toward a community-based management scheme, i.e. co-management policies, where local communities become responsible for all the harvesting activities. The committee-based configuration adopted in Malawi establishes new local institutions responsible for the management and the distribution of forest resources. The aim of this PhD is to assess how the implementation of CBM influences the welfare of the local forest users both by determining the level of personal consumption and the fairness of the overall distribution using rational choice theory and economic valuation methods. The relative importance of the fairness of the overall distribution depends also on the procedures used to allocate decision-making power over forest resources. Therefore, this PhD evaluates also whether individual’s distributive behaviour is influenced by procedures, and its fairness. Finally, because the socio-ecological system is embedded in a broader ecological system this PhD performs an integrated assessment of the welfare impact of CBM policies on beneficiaries by quantifying the aggregate availability of forest resources given the ecological status of the forest and the total societal welfare according to how those resources are distributed to local users. This thesis demonstrates that the individual rational choices on how to distribute forest resources are determined both by self-interested preferences and societal values and that individuals are willing to forego some personal benefits to achieve a fairer outcome that benefit all community members. Indicating that individual’s welfare is influenced both by the total amount of forest products that can be consumed at personal level but also by the magnitude of resources distributed to others. However, the relevance of fairness concerns for the individual when choosing how to distribute resources between village members depends on the fairness of procedures employed in defining the decision-making roles. Finally, the thesis shows that the current consumption patterns are not ecologically sustainable and that without intervention many sub-areas of the forest reserve would be completely degraded in 15 years. Introducing co- management policies to limit consumption within sustainable levels would overall benefit the population as indicated by the welfare effects gain. We also show that different distributional rules are found to influence greatly the total welfare gains and how our welfare analysis approach can be used as a useful tool to inform decision-making when fairness and distributional rules are deemed as relevant for societal welfare.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Ilda Dreoni: orcid.org/0000-0001-8420-522X

ORCID for Marije Schaafsma: orcid.org/0000-0003-0878-069X

ORCID for Emmanouil Mentzakis: orcid.org/0000-0003-1761-209X

ORCID for Felix Eigenbrod: orcid.org/0000-0001-8982-824X

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