Lauren Persha A triple win? Charles Meshack The impact of Tanzania’s Joint Forest Management programme on livelihoods, governance and forests March 2016 Impact Environment and Governance Evaluation Report 34 About 3ie The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) is an international grant-making NGO promoting evidence-informed development policies and programmes. We are the global leader in funding and producing high-quality evidence of what works, how, why and at what cost. We believe that better and policy-relevant evidence will make development more effective and improve people’s lives. 3ie Impact Evaluations 3ie-supported impact evaluations assess the difference a development intervention has made to social and economic outcomes. 3ie is committed to funding rigorous evaluations that include a theory-based design, use the most appropriate mix of methods to capture outcomes and are useful in complex development contexts. About this report 3ie accepted the final version of this report, Is Tanzania’s joint forest management programme a triple win? Understanding causal pathways for livelihoods, governance and forest condition impacts, as partial fulfilment of requirements under grant OW3.1109 issued under Open Window 3. The content has been copyedited and formatted for publication by 3ie. Due to unavoidable constraints at the time of publication, a few of the tables or figures may be less than optimal. All of the content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not represent the opinions of 3ie, its donors or its Board of Commissioners. Any errors and omissions are also the sole responsibility of the authors. All affiliations of the authors listed in the title page are those that were in effect at the time the report was accepted. Any comments or queries should be directed to the corresponding author, Lauren Persha at [email protected] Funding for this impact evaluation was provided by 3ie’s donors, which include UK aid, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation and 12 other 3ie members that provide institutional support. A complete listing is provided on the 3ie website at http://www.3ieimpact.org/en/about/3ie-affiliates/3ie-members/ Suggested citation: Persha, L and Meshack, C, 2016. A triple win? The impact of Tanzania’s Joint Forest Management programme on livelihoods, governance and forests, 3ie Impact Evaluation Report 34. New Delhi: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) 3ie Impact Evaluation Report Series executive editors: Jyotsna Puri and Beryl Leach Managing editor: Deepthy Menon Assistant managing editor: Kanika Jha and Tara Kaul Production manager: Pradeep Singh Copy editor: Hutokshi Doctor Proofreader: Mathew PJ Cover design: John F McGill Printer: VIA Interactive Cover photo: FAO/Simon Maina © International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), 2016 A triple win? The impact of Tanzania’s Joint Forest Management programme on livelihoods, governance and forests Lauren Persha University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US Department of Geography and Curriculum for Ecology and the Environment Charles Meshack Tanzania Forest Conservation Group 3ie Impact Evaluation Report 34 March 2016 Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank 3ie for funding this impact evaluation study of Tanzania’s Joint Forest Management (JFM) program, and for technical review and support throughout the study. We are grateful to the Tanzania Forest Service (TFS) and the Forest and Beekeeping Division (FBD) of the Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism (MNRT), and the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology, for their support and cooperation throughout the study. We especially appreciate the support and collaborative assistance of the Participatory Forest Management (PFM) coordinator in FBD, Joseph Kigula, and the Chief Executive Officer of TFS, Juma Mgoo. We thank our field team for their hard work and enthusiasm in conducting surveys across much of the eastern part of Tanzania: David Alila, Abdalla Juma, Heavenlight Kizito, Peter Lorri, Daniel Lukas, Tumaini Mahuve, Marco Mchome, Regina Mtairo, Fatma Rashid and Amos Enos William. We acknowledge useful inputs on study design and execution from Tom Blomley, Neil Burgess, Nike Doggart, Theron Morgan Brown and Rahima Njaidi. We thank Matt Cooper and Chris Jones for research assistance with spatial data and Wen Liang for assistance with data entry programming. We are indebted to Paul Ferraro for his generous advice and guidance on our quasi- experimental study design and analysis methods. Lastly, L Persha acknowledges the excellent institutional support provided to this project by the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, including guidance on communications products, spatial and other data management services. The research discussed in this publication has been partially funded by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) through the Global Development Network. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of 3ie or its members. i Summary Estimated government and donor funding to support Joint Forest Management (JFM) in Tanzania since the early-1990s exceeds US$30 million. While there are many small- scale and site-specific studies on JFM in Tanzania, no large-scale, independent and rigorous studies have to date sought to examine the program’s impact. In the absence of strong evidence, implementers and policymakers have come to their own conclusions about whether JFM delivers on its core objectives of (1) restoring forests, (2) improving livelihoods, and (3) strengthening local governance. JFM in Tanzania reflects the increasing emphasis across developing countries on the use of collaborative management approaches between governments and local communities to conserve natural resources and improve the livelihoods of impoverished local communities, which bear the opportunity costs of resource conservation. Decentralization is hypothesized to conserve resources as well or better than centralized management by government agencies, while also strengthening the governance and livelihoods of local populations. Decentralization has been viewed as one of few potential tools to address conservation goals as well as the underlying social, economic, and governance challenges that drive unsustainable resource use and habitat loss. At the same time, its effectiveness as a conservation tool remains poorly understood. This study aims to contribute towards filling these knowledge gaps by assessing the impact of JFM in Tanzania on each of the three sets of outcomes. The study was supported by 3ie and implemented by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, in collaboration with the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group. The study was undertaken across 110 sites and 3,363 households in 7 regions of Tanzania. This included 42 control sites (forest reserves and villages not under JFM) and 68 JFM sites. Primary data was collected over a 16-month period between 2012 and 2014, using household surveys, focus group discussions with members of village institutions, key informant interviews with local government staff and data collection in forest plots. The study used rigorous impact evaluation methods to determine JFM impacts. Initial research was conducted to characterize how villages and forest reserves selected for JFM by government, donors and projects differ from those not selected for JFM, prior to implementation, across key factors that can confound outcomes under JFM. To overcome the effect of these administrative selection biases, a random pool of JFM and non-JFM forest reserves and villages was drawn up, such that the JFM sites were very similar to the non-JFM sites across these key confounders. The total number of sites was determined through a power analysis targeted at the detection of fairly fine- scale impacts from JFM, if they were present. Statistical analyses followed best- practices for quasi-experimental matching processes, including careful construction of the control group and matched sample, use of a difference-in-difference estimator where possible, which draws on baseline data prior to JFM implementation, and running sensitivity analyses and other robustness checks to assess confidence in the results. ii Key findings 1. JFM has a strong positive impact on local-level governance, particularly on the good governance functions of village natural resource committees and, to a smaller extent, on village governance overall. JFM has a positive impact on governance even in poorer villages and households, though the impact is not as great as in less poor villages and households. 2. There is no evidence of an impact (positive or negative) of JFM on livelihoods, but there are weak indications of improvements in subsistence forest product harvesting. We could not detect any impacts of JFM on overall household income, forest-derived income, or an asset-based measure of wellbeing. We also found that JFM slightly increases the number of forest products that households harvest from forest reserves, which may benefit household subsistence needs. 3. There is no evidence of impact of JFM on extreme forest degradation and deforestation, although there is weak evidence of JFM slowing forest degradation. We found no significant difference in deforestation rates between JFM and non-JFM forest reserves during 2000–2012. We found weak evidence that households in JFM villages viewed JFM reserves as improving over the same period. This may be linked