Land Use Policy 30 (2013) 908–914 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Land Use Policy jou rn al h om epa ge: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol Measurement and evaluation of livelihood assets in sustainable forest commons governance Haiyun Chen a , Ting Zhu a,* , Max Krott a , José F. Calvo b , Shivakoti P. Ganesh c , Inoue Makoto d a Institute of Forest and Nature Conservation Policy, Faculty of Forest Science and Forest Ecology, Georg-August-University Goettingen, Busgenweg 3, D-37077 Goettingen, Germany b Department of Ecology and Hydrology, Faculty of Biology, University of Murcia, Campus de Espinardo, 30100 Murcia, Spain c School of Environment Resource and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, P.O. Box 4, Klong Luang Pathumthani 12120, Thailand d Institute of Global Forest Environmental Studies, Department of Global Agricultural Sciences, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 3 March 2012 Received in revised form 22 June 2012 Accepted 26 June 2012 Keywords: Livelihood assets Forest resources Biodiversity conservation Community participation Capital Governance Powerful stakeholders a b s t r a c t This paper uses case studies to measure and evaluate livelihood assets in the process of sustainable forest commons governance. The aims of the study are based on two key hypotheses: Community Based Co-Management (CBCM) has changed the livelihood assets of local community residents in the study area; and the changes in livelihood assets are different between participators in CBCM and non- participators. The findings of the study show that the total value of livelihood assets was 0.56 in 2006 and increased to 0.71 in 2010, which supported hypothesis A and illustrated that livelihood assets indeed changed significantly from 2006 to 2010. Livelihood asset conditions are significantly differ- ent between participators and non-participators in CBCM projects (0.77 for participators and 0.51 for non-participators), and the findings, taken together, also supported hypothesis B. Physical capital does not show a remarkable increase, but application of energy-saving stoves, mash gas pools, and the use of alternative energy sources optimize the household energy structure and decrease the amount of fire- wood used. The change in natural capital demonstrates that the majority of local community residents, in their subjective consciousness, are willing to protect forest resources and biodiversity. In terms of human capital, the capacity building of local people shows significant improvement, but their health status and medical situation are associated with a series of problems that need to be resolved. In terms of financial capital, household income and expenditures both show significant improvement, and alter- native and diverse livelihood approaches have appeared and been well developed. Social capital shows significant improvements in some aspects regarding the status of women and the relationship between the government and communities. Finally, we advocate incurring the lowest natural resource costs to obtain the greatest benefits in the process of sustainable livelihood development and forest common governance. Crown Copyright © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction A livelihood involves various assets, strategies, activities and other factors commonly required for living (Chambers and Conway, 1992). The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the Inter- national Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) developed the Sustainable Livelihoods Analysis (SLA) approach from the mid- 1980s (DFID, 1999). SLA is defined based on the ability of a social unit to improve its assets under outside impacts (Castaneda, 2000; * Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 0551 393413; fax: +49 0551 393411. E-mail addresses: haiyun.chen@forst.uni-goettingen.de (H. Chen), ting.zhu@forst.uni-goettingen.de (T. Zhu), mkrott@gwdg.de (M. Krott), jfcalvo@um.es (J.F. Calvo), ganesh@ait.ac.th (S.P. Ganesh), mkinoue@fr.a.u-tokyo.ac.jp (I. Makoto). Stephen et al., 2009). SLA first seeks to identify the important assets (physical, natural, human, financial, and social capital) related to livelihood. Based on SLA, many scholars have studied different top- ics, such as livelihood diversity in rural development (Ellis, 2000), poverty alleviation (Barrett and Swallow, 2004; Erenstein, 2009), and natural resource management (William, 2003). The majority of the literature on this topic has mainly focused on qualitative anal- yses of livelihood development addressing specific topics, and few studies have attempted to measure livelihood assets under various study backgrounds at the micro-scale level, as one big challenge is how to measure and quantitatively analyze livelihood assets in particular areas. Community Based Co-Management (CBCM) is a new pattern in forest commons governance that has been applied and devel- oped in certain nature reserves and hotspots in China. CBCM is a people-centered, community-oriented, resource-focused and 0264-8377/$ – see front matter. Crown Copyright © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2012.06.009