Factors Supporting Equity in Bhutan

The high level of economic equity in Bhutan was attributed to supportive government policy, which was affected by Bhutan’s environmental conditions, socio-cultural conditions, and strong extension support.

Supportive Government Policy

Bhutan’s community forestry policy provides strong support for CF user groups. The policy directly addressed three of the four attributes that Ostrom (1999) found were associated with successful CFs, and the three studied CFs were found to exhibit all four of the attributes.

Perhaps the most important of Ostrom’s forest attributes is that the forest should not be so degraded that it is useless to organize or so underutilized that there is little advantage from organizing. All three of the studied CFs were well stocked and regularly utilized by the members, who were concerned about potential degradation in the future.

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Bhutan’s policy of handing over well-stocked forests for community forestry is unusual:

governments in many countries have only been willing to hand over degraded forests for community management (CARTER 2005; MENZIES 2002), as has generally been the case in India and Nepal (HOBLEY 2005). Initially Bhutan’s community forestry program was intended to be only implemented on degraded land, but in 1992 DOF decided to give villagers a stronger incentive to participate by stipulating that CFs should be approximately 50% well-stocked and 50% degraded (CHHETRI 1992; UPADHYAY 1992). This provision was included in the 2000 and 2003 versions of the FNC Rules (MOA 2000, 2003). It may have enhanced the equity of CFs, since the more powerful members may be more likely to postpone demanding their share of timber until they actually needed it.

The community forestry policy in Bhutan was certainly affected by the abundance of forest resources: although Bhutan has only 60% as much per capita agriculture land as Nepal and 46% as much of India, the country has eight times the per capita forest land of Nepal and more than 22 times the per capita forest land of India (WRI 2007). However, the policy probably reflected a genuine willingness by the DOF to give up control of some forests in order to promote economic development at the village level. In Nepal the DOF has been less willing to give up control of valuable timber resources: the new forest policies since 2000 have restricted the handover of well-stocked forests in the Terai/Churia regions while

continuing to promote the handover of relatively low value forests in the mid-hills (AGRAWAL and OSTROM 2001; BHATTARAI 2006). In India, the Forest Department also reportedly retained control of the most productive forest land and allocated fragmented and degraded patches for community management (AGRAWAL and OSTROM 2001).

The community forestry policy of Bhutan also addressed most of the attributes of successful user groups listed by McKean (2000) and Ostrom (1999). The assessment of the three CFs found that the user groups exhibited all of McKean’s positive attributes and all but two of Ostrom’s positive attributes, which were partially exhibited. Not surprisingly, the two partially exhibited attributes had direct linkages with political equity:

• The users should trust each other and relate to one another with reciprocity.

• The users should have learned at least minimal skills of organization though participation in other local associations or learning from neighboring groups.

Socio-cultural Conditions

The socio-cultural conditions in rural Bhutan may have enabled the CFs to exhibit so many of these positive attributes. Each of the three studied user groups was ethnically homogenous, shared a common language and did not observe the caste system. In Nepal, on the other hand, ethnic heterogeneity has been identified as the main cause of conflict in community forestry (UPRETY 2006), and there are many reports of ethnic heterogeneity contributing to inequity (ADHIKARI et al. 2004; BUFFUM and CHETTRI 2000; CHHETRY et al. 2005;

MALLA et al. 2003; NIGHTINGALE 2003).

The status of women in Bhutan may have also been a positive factor. More than half (51%) of the members of the three studied CFs were female. This contrasted with the situation in Nepal and India, where female membership in the studied user groups was 3.5% and 10%

respectively (AGRAWAL and OSTROM 2001), and where cultural norms discouraged women from participating in CF meetings (SPRINGATE-BAGINSKI et al. 2003). The female respondents in Bhutan were observed to have strong views on forest management and be comfortable expressing their views during group meetings, even though men held most of the influential positions in the CF management committees.

Women in Bhutan tend to be actively involved in forestry issues (NAMGAY and SONAM 2006; TFDP 2000) and participate actively in community meetings (UNESCO 2006). Several studies of the role of Bhutanese women in natural resources management reported that women and men had almost equal roles in forestry, and that cultural or educational barriers

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did not inhibit direct interaction between women and male extensionists (TFDP 2000). This may be due to inheritance practices: daughters traditionally inherit the family home and farm, whereas the sons are expected to move to their wives’ homes after marriage (UNESCO 2006). As a result, women take greater responsibility for house maintenance, taking the lead in deciding when timber was needed for house repairs or construction (DUBA et al. 1998).

Forestry Extension

Another important factor affecting equity in Bhutan was the intensive forestry extension program. The three forestry extension agents responsible for the studied CFs lived within a few km of the sites and had regular contact with the user groups. They provided strong support during the management planning phase, which relied heavily on participatory rural appraisal (PFA) exercises to increase the involvement and awareness of the users. The development of a standard set of monitoring formats for use by CFs enabled the users to monitor their own compliance with the rules, which has been identified as being a key attribute of successful user groups (GIBSON et al. 2005).

Many authors have stressed the importance of strong extension support for community forestry programs. Menzies (2002, p. 26) analyzed six reviews of community based forest management around the world and noted the importance of “crafting and building community institutions which can ensure equitable, inclusive and just governance with mechanisms to counter the possibility of corruption and elite domination.” Nurse et al. (2003) highlighted the importance of extension support in Bhutan during the management planning process in order to avoid subsequent equity problems. Agrawal and Gupta (2005, p 1104) also noted the importance of extension support: “government officials often decide about the objectives of the community-level groups, the obligations of members, and the benefits they receive.

Careful initiatives can reduce costs of local collective action substantially. Ill-designed interventions can undermine all possibility of widespread participation“

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