Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

To understand whether communities with higher rates of in and out migration are less likely to support community-based governance, I analyze support for forestry institutions among communities with varying rates of migration. This study is crucial because the determinants of successful forestry institutions are not well understood. Moreover, although migratory impacts on community bonds are extensively studied, the impact of migration on community-based governance has received insufficient attention. Focusing on Buvuma Island (Uganda), I use the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to analyze both the existing rules for governing forest reserves and the interactions in the action situation. The IAD-guided analysis allows me to formulate hypotheses and specify causal mechanisms concerning the relationship between the rate of migration and the level of support for institutions (in a community). I then test the hypotheses using recent data that was collected from 293 randomly selected heads of households in 12 randomly selected communities on Buvuma Island. Preliminary results suggest that community-based governance is more successful when a community has experienced low rates of previous migration. However, the same results indicate that community-based governance is not significantly affected by a community’s expectations about low rates of future migration. Taken together, the evidence goes a long way in making a case for adding ‘migration’ to the list of the key contextual variables to consider when trying to explain institutional phenomena.