A spatial–temporal analysis of the impact of access restrictions on forest landscapes and household welfare in Tanzania Elizabeth J.Z. Robinson a,c, ⁎, Razack B. Lokina b,1 a University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law and Environment for Development Tanzania, Tanzania b Environment for Development Tanzania, Department of Economics, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania c International Food Policy Research Institute Ghana, CSIR Campus, Airport Residential Area, Accra PMB CT 112 Cantonments, Accra, Ghana abstract article info Article history: Received 4 February 2009 Received in revised form 27 May 2010 Accepted 20 August 2010 JEL Classification: C15 Q23 Keywords: Participatory forest management Non-timber forest products Spatial–temporal modelling Tanzania This paper explores the impact of the re-introduction of access restrictions to forests in Tanzania, through participatory forest management (PFM), that have excluded villagers from forests to which they have traditionally, albeit illegally, had access to collect non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Motivated by our fieldwork, and using a spatial–temporal model, we focus on the paths of forest degradation and regeneration and villagers' utility before and after an access restriction is introduced. Our paper illustrates a number of key points for policy makers. First, the benefits of forest conservation tend to be greatest in the first few periods after an access restriction is introduced, after which the overall forest quality often declines. Second, villagers may displace their NTFP collection into more distant forests that may have been completely protected by distance alone before access to a closer forest was restricted. Third, permitting villagers to collect limited amounts of NTFPs for a fee, or alternatively fining villagers caught collecting illegally from the protected forest, and returning the fee or fine revenue to the villagers, can improve both forest quality and villagers' livelihoods. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Rural villagers in Tanzania, as in many other economically-poor countries, are often highly dependent on nearby forests. Non-timber forest products (NTFPs), including fuelwood, forest fruits and vegeta- bles, and forest medicinal plants, play a considerable role in livelihoods, consumption, and income generation, particularly for the rural poor (examples of the literature addressing these issues include Poulsen, 1990; Reddy and Chakravarty, 1999; Cavendish, 2000; Mahapatra et al., 2005; Narain et al., 2005). This contribution of NTFPs is increasingly being recognised by researchers, NGOs, and policy makers. Following the 1998 National Forest Policy and the Forest Act of 2002, participatory forest management, either community-based forest man- agement (CBFM) or joint forest management (JFM) has been proposed as a way of both protecting Tanzania's forests and reducing rural poverty (MNRT, 1998, 2002a,b; Blomley and Ramadhani, 2005). Depending on the particular designation of a forest, villagers' access to the PFM forest may be curtailed in the short run to let the forest regenerate before villagers resume managed and restricted resource collection, as is typically occurring in CBFM, or permanently in the case of protected preservation government forests under JFM which are considered critical for biodiversity and other ecosystem services. In the long run, if villagers do not lose permanent access to the forests, they may be better off, benefiting from a switch from highly degraded de facto open access NTFP collection to managed collection from less degraded forests. As part of the PFM initiative, there have also been efforts to compensate villagers for their loss of forest access, sometimes with the introduction of forest- based activities such as bee keeping or butterfly rearing. However, at least in the short run, and for JFM in government reserve forests in the long run, villagers are losing access to forest resources that they have traditionally, albeit often illegally, had access to. In this paper we look in more detail at the impact of introducing an access restriction into forests on other forested areas and on villagers' access to forest resources and therefore on their livelihoods. The paper is motivated by our research in Tanzania in Tanga and Morogoro regions in 2007, where we discovered that in the early stages of PFM resource collection moratoria are almost always imposed. But our paper's findings are particularly relevant to the reserve site selection literature (see for example, Margules et al., 1988; Pressey et al., 1993; Costello and Polasky, 2004), and newer landscape approaches to protected area management that also consider forest areas outside the protected area (White and Martin, 2002; World Wildlife Fund, 2002). Examples of the literature that addresses the impact of forest reserves and initiatives such as PFM on forest resources and livelihoods include Kajembe et al. (2005) who, using secondary data gathered from various studies found that Kwizu Forest Reserve in Same District Forest Policy and Economics 13 (2011) 79–85 ⁎ Corresponding author. Environment for Development Tanzania, Department of Economics, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Box 35045. Tel.: + 255 22 2410252. E-mail addresses: ejzrobinson@hotmail.com (E.J.Z. Robinson), rlokina@udsm.ac.tz (R.B. Lokina). 1 Tel.: +255 22 2410252, +255 784574369. 1389-9341/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.forpol.2010.08.003 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forest Policy and Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/forpol