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This study uses household-level data from the Chimaliro and Liwonde forest reserves under the pilot forest co-management programme in Malawi to address the following questions:
- Do the poor benefit from participating in the forest co-management programme as intended?
- Are there any biases in the distribution of forest income among different participants and, if so, what are the sources of inequality?
The paper applies the propensity score matching and decomposition techniques to measure how participation in the co-management programme affects the forest earnings of vulnerable households, especially female-headed and low-income households. Matching techniques are commonly applied in evaluating social and training programmes. The authors argue that this is the first study to combine these econometric techniques to assess the impact of participation in the forest co-management programme using household survey data from a developing African country.
In conclusion, the paper states that:
- evidence from this analysis helps to assess the effectiveness of forest comanagement programmes as a pro-poor strategy for enhancing the contribution of forests to rural livelihood
- with the high priority given to poverty reduction by the government, it is vital to assess whether the poorest and most vulnerable households actually benefit from participating in the programme
- the paper helps to identify which people are negatively impacted by the programme in order to design suitable policy prescriptions or compensatory mechanisms to mitigate the negative effects from the programme
- results from this study yield important insights and lessons necessary for designing better interventions in the future. |
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