Community management refers to a small group or community of people that informally develop and mutually enforce their own rules of individual behaviour to solve some group problem, without the involvement of any government authority. These arrangements or certain aspects of them may be adaptable to contemporary times to encourage proenvironmental individual behaviour. Community forestry aims to reduce illegal logging and deforestation by creating local village institutions. Local people patrol the forest looking for loggers or signs of damage (Lambrick, 2014).
Community officials doing patrols to prevent illegal logging
Since 1980s, Indonesia, China, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam are experimenting with policies that involve communities in public forest management to curb deforestation. Communities can play a huge role in helping to detect illegal logging activities in the forests of Southeast Asia. For example, in the Philippines and Cambodia, local government officials and communities engage in forest patrols to ensure that illegal logging and timbre theft does not occur (Brunner, Seymour, Badnnoch, 2014).
Research by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford looked at how effective community forestry is in reducing deforestation and supporting livelihoods in the Prey Long forest area of Cambodia. People living in Prey Long continue to actively defend the forest – both through officially recognized community forestry and through the work of the Prey Long Network (Lambrick, 2014).
Communities play a huge role in minimizing forest crime and protecting forests of their community. However, relevant authorities should also come up with policies to step in and reduce deforestation.
Conditions for good community management of resources (forests)
Resource characteristics
- Forests has clear boundaries
- Forests is within boundaries of communities
- Changes in forests abundance can be monitored (e.g satellite imaging)
- There are no substitutes for the forests
- Costly for community to leave the area
- Resource use is manageable
Community characteristics
- Stable community
- Limited population growth
- Relatively closed group
- Well-connected social network
- Information sharing flows through community
- Easy to enforce rules
- Community mechanisms for conflict resolutioShared community norms
- Good knowledge about the forests
Characteristics of rules
- Community gets to participate in any rule-making regarding the forests
- Perceived as fair by the community
- Community monitors others and performs enforcement
- Rules exclude outsides, restrains insiders
- Rules are mutable and can change when conditions change
- There are incentives to abide by the rules
- Easy to identify rule-breakers and to punish them