Does Collective Action Sequester Carbon?

This paper estimate the effects of
collective action in Nepal’s community forests on four
ecological measures of forest quality. Forest user group
collective action is identified through membership in the
Nepal Community Forestry Programme, pending membership in
the program, and existence of a forest user group whose
leaders can identify the year the group was formed. This
last, broad category is important, because many community
forest user groups outside the program show significant
evidence of important collective action. The study finds
that presumed open access forests have only 21 to 57 percent
of the carbon of forests governed under collective action.
In several models, program forests sequester more carbon
than communities outside the program. This implies that
paying new program groups for carbon sequestration credits
under the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing
may be especially appropriate. However, marginal carbon
sequestration effects of program participation are smaller
and less consistent than those from two broader measures of
collective action. The main finding is that within the
existing institutional environment, collective action
broadly defined has very important, positive, and large
effects on carbon stocks and, in some models, on other
aspects of forest quality.