Abstract:
Extant literature on Joint Forest Management (JFM) impact evaluation has concluded that it
generally does not provide sufficient incentives to justify the costs that forest use restrictions
impose on local people. However, there is a dearth of evidence concerning whether alternative
JFM intervention with improved market linkages for non-timber forest products has similar
implications. In this study, we evaluated the income and distributive effects of a JFM program in
Ethiopia in which additional support was provided for improved market linkages for non-timber
forest products (NTFPs). Exploiting exogenous variation in customary rights across eligible
groups of communities that participate in JFM programs, as well as using heteroskedasticitybased
instrumentations, we identified the income and distributive effects of the program. Our
analysis shows that the program has raised the income of the households who chose to
participate by approximately 400 Ethiopian Birr or 26% of per capita expenditure; that result was
robust to various specifications. We also found that this effect is largely driven by marketing
incentives to use non-timber forest products. However, we found that the program’s benefit is biased toward the upper end of the income distribution, a result that points to the inequality-reinforcing effects of the program.
