size," and the dynamics that might make it work... This is what I've
come up with:
First, in any community, there are going to be people who stand to gain
from regulations which lead to sustainable forest practices. These are
probably the majority of people--they stand to gain either because they
will derive some utility from living in a relatively more natural
environment, because of the tangible results of ecosystem degradation
(water sources running dry, etc.), or because they seek to gain more
through sustainable practices over the long term than by the short-term
gains of unsustainable practices that lead to deforestation.
On the other hand, there are probably people in any community who stand
to gain more by lower levels of regulation and enforcement, which will
permit them to harvest more over the short term (in an unsustainable
way). There are a number of reasons why these individuals might want
lower levels of regulation.
These may be individuals who, over the short term, possess the resources
to harvest large amounts of forest and realize that sustainable
management will give them a smaller piece of the pie.
These may also be people who heavily discount future gains, and want
their piece of the pie _now_. It isn't hard to imagine that there are a
lot of people like this in impoverished countries like Guate.
Even so, it might make sense that, in most places and at most times,
people will probably be pretty willing to forgo short-term gains for
greater long-term gains, even if they discount the future somewhat. So
it probably makes sense that, given these two factors, communities will
self-regulate in such a way that they produce a level of regulation
which is sustainable and provides the maximum amount of utility over the
long term. An equilibrium will result, which might be upset by a number
of factors, but in general, short term and long term gains might be
pretty well balanced.
The third point is key here:
In some places, there may be people who will not experience the utility
associated with living in a pleasant, forested environment, and
(probably more important) won't have to deal with the related negative
ecological effects. For example, they get their water somewhere else,
so they won't have to deal with the water problems.
But this problem is more likely where the size of the jurisdictions are
not optimal--in particular, where jurisdictions are large enough that
people in one area can go to another area to cut trees, where the
ecological damage will be felt by other people. Literally, where
jurisdictions are large enough that it is possible for people to
externalize the tangible ecological costs on another community.
So, what you get for any individual is this:
Ucut = M - E - F
where Ucut is the utility derived from cutting trees, M is the monetary
(economic) benefits of cutting trees, E is the ecological cost of
cutting, and F is the foregone cost of future cutting--if you cut it now
and sell it, that means there will be less to cut in the future. Say,
just for the example of argument, that these values all have a round,
positive number. For example, each of them (M, E, and F) are equal to 1.
If you're the guy who lives locally and feels the ecological cost, your
utility for cutting is going to be:
Ucut = 1 - 1 - 1
= -1
In this case, it's negative, which probably means you won't cut the tree
down. This is because (a) you'll gain some economic benefit from
cutting, but (b) you'll feel a cost from ecological damage, and (c)
you'll feel the cost of foregone long-term benefits (because you can't
sell the tree you cut down again).
But if you're the guy who comes from somewhere else, so you won't feel
the ecological cost of cutting, and there aren't any well-defined
property rights, and you're the guy with the resources to go a pretty
long distance to poach trees, your utility will look like this:
Ucut = 1 - 0 - 0
= 1
So, your utility will be positive. You'll do it.
Of course, this is a simplified model, and there are a lot of things
that can alter these values (they're really variables, not always equal
to one). But, this does help to produce some hypotheses:
1. Where individuals have clear property rights (so that the benefit of
trees cut today is a benefit foregone tomorrow), there will be less
forest degradation.
2. Where communities have clear property rights and well-developed
systems of decisionmaking regarding forestry, there will be less forest
degradation.
3. Where boundaries are more environmentally optimal--that is, where
boundaries between individuals' or communities' lands produce fewer
ecological externalities--forest degradation will be less.
In addition, at the municipal level, these individual-level effects will
have political consequences, but I think I'll save that for another blog
posting.
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