Land Tenure and Natural Resource Management: A Comparative Study of Agrarian Communities in Asia and Africa
本书通过社区和家庭调查、遥感及多种计量方法，比较亚洲和非洲农业社区的土地使用制度、森林砍伐和农业管理，揭示制度如何影响资源退化，对研究发展中国家资源管理的学者和研究生有价值。
Otsuka, Keijiro, and Frank Place. Land Tenure and Natural Resource Management: A Comparative Study of Agrarian Communities in Asia and Africa. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, 416 pp., $69.00 cloth, $38.00 paper. Perhaps as much as in any field of applied economics, explaining land-use behavior requires a proper accounting of institutions. Institutions in rural areas of developing countries are especially difficult to measure and compare because they are often informal, swiftly evolving, and idiosyncratic. Generalizing the effect of these institutions on behavior requires one to compare communities, thereby exacerbating measurement issues and straining data collection. In Otsuka and Place's ambitious and important study, the editors and contributors use community surveys, household surveys, remote sensing, and various estimations to improve our understanding of land-use institutions, deforestation, and agricultural management. As stand-alone studies of Ghana, Sumatra, Malawi, Uganda, Vietnam, Nepal, and Japan, the applications are valuable. Land degradation and poverty previously have been chronicled to shocking effect at national levels in the developing world. Yet, Otsuka and Place (p. 6) seek to offer “clearer indicators of natural resource problems” at the community level and a richer understanding of the incentives that motivate degradation at the household level. I find the picture of degradation at the micro levels to be more vivid and to convey the pressing nature of these problems more effectively than those suggested by aggregate numbers. In this regard, the descriptive material may be useful for students, though the econometrics (OLS, 2SLS, logit, tobit, fixed and random effects) limits the classroom audience to graduate students. Nevertheless, the main contribution of this book is more important than the sum of the applications. Otsuka and Place have designed a consistent structure for sampling, measurement, operationalization, quantification, and modeling, which facilitates comparative results on the joint effects of land-use institutions, deforestation, and agricultural management. Although this is an edited volume, the contributions read more as a division of labor than a collection of perspectives. Indeed, the application chapters have similar subheadings and are guided by a clear research plan (Chapters 1 and 2). The theory chapters review the property rights literature and develop models to motivate empirical work in the applications. “Extensive” studies seek to explain how different institutions evolve and behavior changes in reaction to “relative factor scarcities” (p. 37). Population pressures play a leading role. The “intensive” studies of household behavior focus on investments, profits, and land/labor tradeoffs. In five of the applications the predominant land tenure is customary, where uncultivated forestland is owned communally and where cultivated land is assigned to households. The evolution of these individualized rights is a major theme in many of the applications. Private, state, and common property regimes are also explored. Each application explains selection procedures for the communities, reviews the data collection procedures, describes the communities qualitatively and quantitatively, and assesses how well the communities represent the country as a whole. Chapters 3 to 8 also adapt the extensive and intensive analyses for their cases, estimate various models, and offer policy conclusions. Parts of many of these applications have already been published in one or more journals, but the book's depth of coverage goes beyond what is possible in an article. This suggests one possible use of the book for those working in this area; the journals ensure rigor, whereas the book chapters elaborate the study and conveniently collect the analyses. A sample of the comparative results demonstrates the value of the consistent applications. Customary tenure in agricultural land and forestland tends to evolve toward private ownership as population increases. Investment and land markets often follow. But customary land tenure is not necessarily less efficient for managing agricultural and forestland because individual efforts, such as tree planting or terracing, are generally rewarded with increased recognition of individual rights. Customary and state ownership of forestland is found to be least able to resist degradation, however. Some applications also offer suggestive findings on sustainability, profitability, and outcomes for women under different tenure systems. All applications present many specific results and are well developed, though they vary somewhat in breadth of analysis. Because of what is accomplished in these applications, future research questions immediately spring to mind. For instance, I see empirical game theory as a natural complement to help understand situations in which households compete for access to customary property. Either for completeness or to allay fears that their conclusions pointed to the superiority of individualized rights, Otsuka and Place build in an investigation of those factors that recommend common property as opposed to private management of forests (Chapter 9). By comparing post-war Japan with Nepal, results suggest that common property may be effective when there is low demand for major forest products and enforcement costs are high. Although the presence of Japan is admittedly (p. 43) out of place in a study of the developing world, the evidence and discussion intend to provide empirical evidence on this important and heretofore mainly theoretical debate. It is not clear how robust these results are in other areas, however. Otsuka and Place compare the analytical results and draw lessons for policy in Chapter 10, “Toward New Paradigms of Land and Tree Resource Management.” Institutions affecting agricultural land, but not forestland, are found generally to be appropriate for efficient management. Strong conclusions about the efficiency of various forest management regimes are made, subject to the importance of minor forest products to households in the community. Policy recommendations include the dissemination of forest production technologies and market development. Other policy suggestions are important but will be more challenging to implement, such as limiting migration to areas near marginal forestland. The synthetic work struck me as very valuable for its comparative results and the way in which theory was validated by the empirical results in the applications. I do not perceive, however, that the results offered new theory, and so I have some difficulty looking toward the “new paradigms” of the chapter title. I also feel that Otsuka and Place are too aggressive in qualifying the successes of private rights. Nevertheless, the breadth, depth, and quality of this book make it an important contribution to the literature. Otsuka and Place have ambitiously tackled many of the difficult issues of resource management in developing countries. By the end of the study, some results are tidy, especially the effect of institutions on degradation. Other results are suggestive and will help define further studies—particularly, the results on equity, common property, and the effect of institutions on women. Those interested in how institutions affect natural resource management in developing countries will appreciate this contribution and will use it to formulate other valuable research questions.