My research seeks to contribute to understanding the main motivations that forestry decentralization policies have created among indigenous people for developing timber harvesting in the context of broader forest governance reforms, and the extent to which they are achieving successful community logging, that is, the development of good timber management while obtaining the highest timber profits.
In order to study comprehensively the incentives that evolve from decentralization reforms and influence indigenous people in the context of timber harvesting, a comprehensive framework had to be developed. The current blueprint applied by many researchers studying these phenomena did not include all factors required in this study. I concluded that in order to be successful, timber user groups must overcome a set of triple-level challenges: structural, development and enforcement of rules-in-use, and development of an entrepreneurial setting, which define the "route of success" for commercial community logging in common-property areas.
This research takes place in Bolivia because it is the country where decentralization has been implemented most aggressively and can offer some lessons to help us understand theoretically its influence on indigenous people living in common-property forest areas. In this context, the overarching question of this research is the following: What are the impacts of forestry decentralization policies developed within Bolivia on the success of indigenous people's commercial community logging in common-property forests? In order to answer the preceding question, a multilevel research strategy was followed. The indigenous people's motivations to begin timber harvesting in 63 timber user groups were explored, then smaller numbers of groups were selected at each step of the analysis: first 45 timber user groups were selected, then 18 groups were chosen, and finally eight timber user groups were used in case-study research.
The main finding is that forestry decentralization policies in Bolivia are failing to promote successful timber harvesting among indigenous people. This is because timber user groups have been given the structural conditions to develop timber harvesting and are making efforts to develop sound institutions for timber management, but there is not an entrepreneurial setting in place to help them become profitable, which should be promoted by forestry decentralization policies.
