Forests Sourcebook - HCV Resource Network

NOTE 5.1
Decentralized Forest Management
Dissatisfied with centralized approaches to governance,
many developing countries and countries in
transition—it is estimated that 80 percent of them
have embarked on some form of decentralization, transferring
authority and responsibility for government functions
from the central government to subnational governments or
civil society and private sector institutions.
Given the right conditions, decentralization of forest management
can lead to superior outcomes, improving the effectiveness
of public forest institutions by matching the demand
for public forest services with their supply by local governments.
Decentralized local institutions of the public forest
administration can be closer to local people, their demands,
and priorities, and thereby offer opportunities for government
to become more relevant to local conditions. By emphasizing
subnational governmental autonomy, forest decentralization
can promote democratic decision-making processes
and free top executives of the public forest administration
from many routine decisions. If decentralization leads to
greater local voice and participation, it can contribute to
greater accountability and to reducing forest-related corruption
and government misuse of forest resources. Local participation
can also induce design of and experimentation with
creative and innovative programs that make use of local
knowledge and that are tailored to local settings, moving
away from the application of standardized actions designed
by the central government. Furthermore, forest decentralization
can help improve equity through greater capture and
local retention, as well as democratic distribution, of forest
management benefits. Because of this, decentralization can be
instrumental in reducing local conflicts over the use of forest
resources and the allocation of resulting benefits and costs
among institutions and local people. Thus, decentralization
can lead to better governance and improved efficiency, equity,
and environmental management outcomes.
However, there are potential risks associated with
decentralization. It is an extremely complex undertaking
involving multiple levels of government, agencies with
different functions, and stakeholders with diverse, sometimes
incompatible, interests. Authority, responsibility,
and financial and human resources as well as a variety of
administrative functions can be decentralized to different
degrees, thus creating countless possible pathways to
decentralized forest administration. Decentralized forest
institutions often cannot function adequately if they are
not endowed with sufficient resources and authority.
Imbalances in the allocation of authority and responsibility
to the various levels of government, possibly
because the process is still incomplete, also make efficient
public forest service delivery difficult. Regardless of the
path to decentralization, inadequate subnational capacity
is almost always a limiting factor.
Some obstacles to effective forest decentralization have
their origins in the drastic changes in power structures
within the government apparatus that are associated with,
and required for, effective decentralization, and that occur
during the redistribution of authority and resources from
the central government to subnational governments. Government
officials at the center often resist these reallocations
of power. Furthermore, when powers are redistributed
to subnational levels, decentralization often also
increases the possibility of regulatory capture by local
interests. Local government officers and politicians can be
even more subject to corruption than those of the central
government.
In addition, unless some key functions of government
remain at the center, such as defining national forest policy
parameters, overall policy coherence in the sector may
be lost. The challenge for forest sector planners is to shape
and manage decentralization processes in a way that
secures its potential benefits while avoiding associated
pitfalls. Some of the main promises of decentralization
and the corresponding limitations it faces are listed in
table 5.2.
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