Misa Masuda

The Institutional Design and Effectiveness of Timber Benefit Sharing under Joint Forest Management in Madhya Pradesh, India

This paper explores the institutional design of timber benefit sharing under the Joint Forest Management (JFM) policy and its effectiveness as an incentive for forest protection in Madhya Pradesh, India. Institutional analysis and case studies including household surveys for five committees were carried out. Except for plantations newly created under JFM, the places and times of timber harvesting were determined solely by the state forest department according to the division-level working plan. The sharing of the monetary benefits was determined by the state government and paid in equal amounts to committees in a lump sum, without taking the committees’ differing degrees of performance into consideration. Except in one committee, only a few respondents knew about the benefit sharing. In a committee where the shared benefits had been paid, even though little collective action had taken place, the money was used without communal decisions. It was confirmed that benefit sharing from timber production in Madhya Pradesh had not been implemented with flexible calculation and payment systems based on local people’s involvement in the decision-making process. Information provided by the concerned forest officers was the only way to motivate local people, and yet the appropriate information provisions were not likely to be in place. At the very least, improvements in the information provision with a change in the forest officers’ perceptions and attitudes are desirable.

Small-scale rice irrigation technology in southern Ghana: the challenges for sustainable uptake

Promotion of small-scale irrigation in rain-fed rice lowlands is reckoned a key strategy for filling the escalating gap between rice supply and demand in sub-Saharan Africa. Though studies acknowledged the farmer-centred nature of small-scale rice irrigation technology, along with its effects on yield improvement and soil and water conservation, empirical diagnosis for the sustainable uptake remains lagging. This paper illustrates the sustainability and its mechanism from a case study of inland valley irrigation schemes in southern Ghana. Based on a time-series statistics of the scheme participation, we found the sustainability continued low in the study sites. The factor analyses indicated that securing land tenure, mechanisation, and collective action, which were considered beneficial to rice irrigation farming, contributed little to its sustainment, whereas field management individualised by plot allocation facilitated it. The results, at odds with the prevailing assumptions, are attributed to the gap with farmers’ scopes and behavioural characteristics observed during field survey. Further analyses revealed that they tend to have continued rice irrigation farming with selective crop and water management. Development efforts are thus required to devising its approach built more on local adaptive strategies from which a lead may be derived for sustainable application of small-scale rice irrigation technology.

Tropical Forests and International Cooperation

報告では，まず熱帯林をめぐるグローバル化の流れとして，植民地期における林野制度の近代化. 1990年代以降における木材市場の拡大，および 1990 年代以降，国際社会主導のもとに展開する熱帯林対策という 3つの段階に分けて概観した。次に，近年普及した参加型手法ならびにステイクホルダーという概念に照らして熱帯林をみたのち，日本の林業分野における国際協力のあり方について検討した。その中で新たに登場してきた社会林業について，その背景をなす分権化の問題点をインドネシアの黒檀産地を事例に考察し，国際市場に翻弄される産地の脆弱さ，および地方政府の有するキャパシティの問題として整理した。