Community-based forest management moderates the impact of deforestation pressure in Thailand

Governments are legally formalizing an increasing number of community forests by sharing and transferring tenure rights over state-owned forestland in an effort to reduce deforestation. However, there has been little evidence on whether their conservation effectiveness could be further strengthened through formalization. In Thailand, the Royal Forest Department began to register community forests in 2000. The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of community forests in moderating the impact of deforestation pressures, highlighting the intrinsic ability of communities to protect their forests, and the effects of a legal formalization. In a spatial evaluation approach, statistical matching and fixed-effects models were used to analyze the effect of community-based forest conservation and its formalization on deforestation rates. Each analysis was conducted in provincial areas sampled from northern, north-eastern, and southern Thailand (680 community forests) to compare the impact of varying levels of deforestation pressure over a 14-year period from 2000 to 2014. The large majority of sampled communities protected their forests against substantial deforestation during the entire observation period, with 82 % experiencing less than 1 ha of deforestation and 60.15 % experiencing no deforestation at all. The median relative deforestation rate over this period was 0.21 %, with an interquartile range of 1.82 %. Their efforts reduced the likelihood of forest loss in regions of high deforestation pressure from approximately 30 % to almost zero. In contrast, the threat of deforestation did not significantly change after a formal registration. These findings were similar across different regions despite their biophysical and socio-economic differences. These findings suggest that while community efforts are central to forest conservation, the benefits of formalization in enhancing communal efforts appear to be subtle and thus remain inconclusive in the current context. Registered community forests are still affected by forest encroachment despite their successful conservation efforts. Thus, communities require stronger support from forest officials and local law enforcement agencies in both legal and technical capacities.