Policy and Distributional Equity in Natural Resource Commodity Markets:
Commodity-Chain Analysis as a Policy Tool
A Research Concept Paper
Jesse C. Ribot
Institutions and Governance Program
World Resources Institute
10 G Street, NE, Suite 800
Washington, D.C. 20009 USA
Ribot@wri.org
1 (202) 729-7753
12 October 2005
Note: Note is based on the call for proposals sent out in October 2005. It has not been revised, only the call for
proposals portion has been removed. It follows from WRI’s ‘Decentralization and Environment’ research efforts over
the past four years (see Ribot 2004). The synthesis report (Ribot 2004) and an earlier article on commodity chain analysis
(Ribot 1998) should be referred to as guiding documents for this current “Commodity-Chain Analysis as a Policy Tool”
study. The synthesis document and case studies from the ‘Decentralization and Environment’ project are available on
line at http://governance.wri.org/decentralizationmarketaccess-project-44.html. These documents and a list of all
publications from this program can be obtained by writing to BKinder@WRI.org. These documents give essential
background and provide useful definitions for the current project.
Table of Contents
Abstract
Acknowledgements
I. The Problem: Rural Access to Natural Resource Wealth
II.
Objectives
III.
Commodity Chain Analysis and Methods
A. Commodity Chains
B. Mapping Access along the Commodity Chains
1. Identify the actors
2. Evaluate vertical income and profit
3. Evaluate the horizontal distribution of income and profit
4. Map how access is maintained and controlled
C. Policy Analysis
D. Case Studies and Comparative Analysis
IV.
Research Program
A. Work Plan
B. Article format
Annex A: Definition and Theory of Access
Annex B: Vertical Distribution of Prices
Bibliography
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Abstract
This project evaluates distributional equity effects of natural resource policies and broader economic
governance policies—including decentralization and liberalization. It uses commodity-chain analysis
to measure and explain the current distribution of benefits in a sample of domestic natural resource
markets in a selection of eight to ten countries. The study includes 1) an economic analysis of profit
margins and market shares along the path of commercially exploited natural resource commodities,
2) a policy analysis that evaluates how policy shapes margins and shares, and 3) an ethnographic
study to explain market access and its relation to policy—that is of entry and exit barriers and
exclusionary or predatory behavior. This study has three principle objectives: increased benefit
retention and poverty reduction from natural resource wealth, development of commodity-chain
analysis for natural resource distributional-equity policy analysis, and research and policy analysis
capacity building and training. Ultimately, the project aims to produce recommendations for the
improvement of distributional equity around commercially exploited natural resources. Through ten
to twelve case studies, primarily in the forestry sector, the project analyzes links between natural
resource policy, equity and poverty.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Dorian Fougeres, Paul Gellert, Nathaniel Gerhart, Amanda Hammar, Brad Kinder,
Xuan Phuc, Malini Raganathan, Thomas Sikor, and Yongjun Zhao for their incisive comments on
the first draft of this proposal. Support for this project has been generously furnished USAID’s
Economic Growth, Agriculture and Technology division.
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I.
The Problem: Rural Access to Natural Resource Wealth
As a source of local subsistence and income and as a source of national wealth, natural resources
play important political and economic roles. Their balanced use by local and national actors can
shape national and local development patterns. But, over-concentration of resources in the hands of
government and elites undermines development in the regions of extraction. The rural poor rarely
benefit from commercial exploitation of natural resources, yet they are deeply affected by the
exploitation processes. They are mobilized as cheap labor, their resource use and income are
interrupted, and their health and well being is affected by effluents from or damages to the resource.
Profits from natural resources—whether from oil, timber, firewood, charcoal, fruits, herbs, gums, or
game—are usually concentrated in the hands of a few intermediaries, truckers, wholesalers or state
agents. The spoils are divided among private commercial actors and government—as profit, taxes,
fees and unofficial patronage or gifts—along the path from extraction to end use or export.1
Over the past two decades, multiple reforms—including decentralization, liberalization, and
community-based natural resources management—have aimed to increase local participation and
benefits in natural resource control, management and use. These reforms should all have measurable
effects on distributional equity. Comparative research on the effects of natural resource
decentralizations conducted by WRI, however, shows little increase in income and profit for rural
communities (Ribot 2004; Ribot and Larson 2005).2 Increased revenues have been noted via fiscal
aspects of these reforms. Cameroon’s community-based forestry laws and the new Chad-Cameroon
pipeline community-compensation funds have provided rural communities with stumpage fees and
royalties (Oyono 2005). Revenues from fines and damages have accrued to local governments in
Senegal (Ba 2006; Ribot 2004). Wildlife user fees have accrued to community groups in Zimbabwe
(Conyers 2002). While fiscal benefits—from fees, taxes and funds—have increased, the bulk of
commercial profits continue to accrue to elite actors outside of the local arena.3
Establishing management, use, and property rights over resources have all been used in
decentralization reforms as means of increasing local income streams. But, these rights—to manage
the resource or even to have complete physical control over the resource itself—do not necessarily
enable people to reap the profits that flow from the natural resource base. In Senegal, forest villagers
control forests. Before decentralization they were able to maintain control via threats of violence or
by mere exclusion of non-villagers from the infrastructure of village life—access to the well, shelter
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This study will focus on domestic markets in its first iteration. At the completion of this project, a second
generation of research is planned that will explore the international dimension exchange using a global commodity
chain analysis approach.
2 Research on decentralization was conducted in Mali, Cameroon, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua,
Bolivia, Mongolia, China, India, Nepal, and Indonesia. Further research on decentralization and natural resource
commodity chains is ongoing in Senegal, Cameroon, Nicaragua and Guatemala.
3 While political and administrative decentralization usually transfer some fiscal resources to local authorities, these
resources often do not even pay for increased management expenses that accompany decentralization. In most instances
fiscal revenues are insufficient to serve as a motor for local economic growth. But these revenues are only a small
portion of the economic wealth that natural resource extraction and sale are generating (see Ribot 1998). Fiscal resources
are not enough. A greater share of profits or economic benefits will also be important if natural resource decentralization
reforms are to have a significant effect on rural development. ‘Fiscal decentralization’ is the transfer to local authorities
of funds or rights to raise funds through fees and taxes. ‘Economic decentralization’, a term that I am coining here, is
the transfer of the right and ability to enter into production and exchange of commercially valuable resources. Economic
decentralization, which has the potential to significantly raise incomes and wealth of rural communities, is the topic of
this research proposal.
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and food. Since the forestry decentralization reforms in 1998, rural councils have rights to forests.
But in both periods, before and after decentralization, access to markets has been controlled by the
forest service, so villagers continue to reap very little profit from the forests (Ribot 2000; 2004). In
Senegal, Mali and Uganda, forest ownership has been transferred to the most-local level of local
government, but this ownership has not enabled local people to exclude commercial users or to
engage in commercial production. In many other cases, the poor hold management rights, but other,
better-placed actors—large farmers, corporations, or industries can override their rights (Ambler
nd:12). Clearly, rights and even direct control over the resource itself are not sufficient for rural
people to derive benefits from natural resources.
Some policy makers and development professionals call for the enforcement of existing rights or
creation of new more-secure ones (Ambler nd:12). This approach, however, is incomplete since
most profits are not located at the farm gate or at the edge of the forests where local producers sell
their goods to merchants and truckers. They are spread through the market hierarchy in the
purchase and resale of these products all along the commodity chain from the forest to the centers
of consumption and end use—domestic or international. The path to complementary resources,
such as transport, capital, labor, processing and end markets where these products are resold, is
littered with obstacles—some created by policy and others which are the sediment of social and
political history. While there has been a long-standing call for reforms to open access to markets
(liberalization to lift the policy-based obstacles), market access remains highly problematic for small
producers and rural communities. They remain on the sidelines. They remain destitute.
Economic benefits are a key part of rural well being, poverty reduction and the meeting of basic
entitlements (Blaikie 1985; Deere and deJanvry 1984; Dasgupta 1993; Drèze and Sen 1989).4 Despite
many efforts to improve the livelihoods of the rural poor, benefit retention remains low among
most resource-dependent populations (Blaikie 1985; Dasgupta 1993)—even among rural people
living in resource-rich areas—near forests, gold and diamond mining, or oil (Oyono 2005; Ibeanu
2003). Despite proximity to the resource and access to subsistence uses, local people lack access to
equipment, capital, and end-use markets needed to reap the economic benefits from natural resource
commodities. Or, how can local people be empowered to say ‘no’ to commercial production (see
Ribot 1995a)? How can market access be opened? How can greater profit be reaped and retained
locally? How can the wealth from nature be channeled back into resource-dependent rural
communities? The answers to these questions depend partly on where that wealth is located and
how that wealth is accrued—that is, the means that enable people along the chain of production,
transport, transformation exchange, retail and end use to enjoy the fruits of entering into commerce.
In large part, increasing the rural share of wealth from natural resources is a policy matter. The
marginal position of rural people with respect to natural resource wealth is not a natural condition of
poverty or even of the ways in which markets work. Much of the observed concentration of natural
resource wealth occurs with the assistance of natural resource policies. Production and transport
permits, licenses, quotas, up-front fees, requirement of management plans, differential (double)
standards for commercial and subsistence users or for urban versus local users enable some actors to
All of these authors focus on the rural household. Blaikie (1985) and Deere and deJanvry (1984) base their approach on
farm systems theory—the origins of integrated rural development—with Blaikie focusing on improvement or
deterioration of the resource base and Deere and deJanvry focusing on investment in the development of the farm more
broadly. Dasgupta (1993) and Drèze and Sen (1989) focus on poverty and on food production.
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benefit while excluding others (Ribot 2004).5 ‘Environmental’ policies along with other regulatory
and structural policies create barriers or selective forms of access to resources and markets that
enable exclusionary and predatory behaviors, leading to resource and market capture (Ribot 1998).
This project will focus on the role of natural resource policies in shaping distribution of profit in
natural resource markets. It will do so with an eye to how natural resource policy can leverage
greater benefits for resource-dependent rural populations. But, to do so, will require attention to the
effects of all other forms of policy, such as international conventions, trade laws, liberalization, and
other forces, such as social identity, wealth, and so on. The objective is to understand the relative
role of policy, and particularly of environmental policy, in shaping distribution.
In examining rural benefit retention, this project complements the growing body of inquiry into
ways that rights and representation strengthen the ability of the poor to improve their conditions
(Manor 1999; Crook and Sverrisson 2001; Ambler nd; Ribot 2004). By focusing on the mechanisms
of access that enable and disable benefit retention and profit from particular commercially exploited
resources, the research will take an empirical approach to the ensemble of factors shaping well
being. The objective is to identify the range of factors involved in benefit accrual and the relative
importance of different factors in different contexts. The project will focus on the role and relative
importance, among other factors, of natural resource policy. Distribution of benefits from natural
resources can be attributed to rights or their absence, implementation or its absence, enforcement or
corruption. To understand the causes of current distributional patterns and the role of policy in
shaping them, this project will study the contextual and place-based historical and social factors that
affect benefit retention at every stage of the lifecycle of natural resource commodities.
In short, this study examines the role of policies applied to natural resource markets in shaping
market access. Its primary object is to evaluate the effects of these policies on destitution and well
being. This is the first phase in a two phase project. The first phase will focus primarily (but not
exclusively) on domestic markets, while the second phase will use the findings of the first phase to
design and execute a comparative study of the distributional effects of policy on global forestry
commodity chains.
II.
Objectives
This project has three principle objectives: increased benefit retention and poverty reduction from
natural resource wealth, development of a framework for natural resource distributional-equity
policy analysis, and research and policy analysis capacity building and training.
The first objective is to identify policy means for reducing poverty by increasing access for the rural
poor to the commercial benefits associated with natural resources production and exchange. The
project seeks to understand the role of natural resource policy in shaping income distribution—in
leveraging greater benefit retention in the local arena and in helping to concentrate income among
elites. Conversely, the project aims to better understand the role of income
distribution/concentration in enabling elite to shape and reshape policies to their own benefit. It
also aims to understand the importance of other factors at play in shaping benefit distribution—law,
Another example is in the Ranthambore reserve of western India, where timber companies and swathes of tourists are
allowed access to forests, while villagers are constantly policed by forest guards (personal communication, Malini
Raganathan, May 2005).
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technology, capital, markets, labor, knowledge, authority, identities, politics, and social relations (see
Ribot and Peluso 2003). Once these roles are understood, recommendations for natural resource
policy improvement can be designed.
Secondly the project aims to develop commodity chain analysis as a policy tool to facilitate the
evaluation of the distributional effects of natural resource policies and other policies applied to
natural resource markets. The project will hone this method of analysis for different kinds of
markets (different resources, different kinds and qualities of products from a single resource, multistranded versus single-stranded markets, point-source versus multi-source markets). Can commodity
chain analysis be generalized into a set of methods or guidelines for identifying entry barriers and
anti-poor access patterns? Can it be used to develop recommendations for opening access and
producing pro-poor market relations? Further, the project hopes to contribute to social theory of
markets. Market mechanisms, construed in the narrow economics sense of price, quantity, supply
and demand, are often viewed as the sole means for efficient resource (writ benefit) allocation (See
Dasgupta 1993). The many other factors that shape allocation are considered in this body of theory
to be exogenous to the market model.6 For this reason, they have often been excluded from policy
analysis. This research will contribute to a more systematic model in which these factors remain
central to market analysis and the design of regulation.
The third objective is to support a new generation of young scholars to focus on natural resourcerelated distributional-equity and poverty-reduction problems using commodity-chain analysis. The
project builds scholarly policy analytic capacity and helps form a community of practice around this
new approach to policy analysis.
III.
Commodity Chain Analysis and Methods
To accomplish the above objectives, this project analyzes how environmental policy enables and
disables rural populations to profit from the commercially exploited natural resources around them.
To do so the project examines access to profit along natural resource commodity chains—including
policy-supported obstacles to entry and the complete array of socially based forms of inclusion and
exclusion. The analysis will explore the effects of policy within this mix of factors. Using commodity
chain analysis, this project examines how regulatory policies affect distributional equity in natural
resource sectors by examining and explaining distribution of profit within natural resource markets
before and after the implementation of policies such as community based natural resource
management, decentralization, devaluation, and liberalization.
The project will apply commodity chain analysis to a set of ten to twelve cases. The cases will be
developed as detailed economic ethnographies organized around a commodity chain study as
outlined below. For each case, the project will: measure the distribution of profits through an
analysis of margins and market shares; at each point of income concentration, identify and explain
the mechanisms that actors use to gain and maintain their benefit; characterize the role of
environmental policy, other regulatory policies and other social and political-economic factors in
shaping distributional outcomes; and recommend reforms and measures to redress policy-generated
inequities. The author conducted commodity chain research in the 1980s and 1990s, developing
“...if the market model treats the most important problems as exogenous factors to be invoked to explain why things
do not work out correctly, perhaps the model and exogenous factors should change places.” (Fredrick Cooper, 1993:89.)
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methods and analysis techniques for natural resource commodity chain studies (Ribot 1990; 1993;
1998; cf Gereffi, Korzeniewicz and Korzeniewicz 1994). These commodity-chain studies along with
a theoretical framework for the empirical analysis of access will serve as a starting point for the
current research (Ribot and Peluso 2003).
A. Commodity Chains
A commodity chain7 is a series of interlinked exchanges through which a commodity and its
constituents pass: extraction or harvesting, production, transformation, transport, distribution,
wholesale, retail and end use.8 As such, commodity chains serve as conduits through which
commercialized natural resources—such as forest products—are ushered from the land to their final
users, whether rural, urban or ‘international’. Commodity-chain analysis is a method for analyzing
how and for whom such market conduits operate. It is a tool for understanding who benefits from
natural resources, how they benefit, and how those patterns of benefit distribution might be
changed. By tracing the interactions along natural resource commodity chains, this research project
examines the dynamics of control and maintenance of access to the economic benefits from natural
resources.
Bernstein and Amin (1995:2-3) outline the distinctive features of commodity-chain analyses. First is
an empirical, as well as theoretical focus on markets, in lieu of formal abstract neoclassical economic
modeling (also see Bohannan and Dalton, 1965; Harriss, 1984; Plattner, 1985; J. Alexander, 1987; P.
Alexander 1993; Mackintosh, 1990; Ribot, 1990; Ensminger, 1992; Hewitt de Alcantara, 1993; Dilley,
1993; Bernstein 1996:121-3).9 Second is attention to power: its sources, uses and effects in a socially
differentiated environment. Third is an approach to politics and political institutions as endogenous
to the existence and functioning of markets, with attention to differentiated market agents engaging
in competitive as well as collective or collusive action. Fourth, and last, is the view that regulation
(by which they mean both state and non-state forms of control) too is an endogenous feature of
markets, hence shifting debates from their current focus on ‘more vs. less’ regulation to the study of
‘better vs. worse’ forms of regulation. This method of analysis also broadens predominant focus on
individual mechanisms of control and accumulation—such as prices or property—to include in the
analysis of markets the whole repertoire of interacting mechanisms shaping their operation (Ribot
1998). Further, it locates production and exchange as embedded within social relations and
hierarchies (Gereffi, Korzeniewicz and Korzeniewicz, 1994:2; cf Granovetter, 1985, and Platteau,
Commodity chains have long been called filières (strands or lines) in the French literature. The term filiére was used as early
as 1829 to mean “the succession of states to go through, levels to achieve, formalities to complete, before arriving at a
result” (Robert, 1967:783).
7.
For discussions of filière or commodity-chain analysis see: Ribot, 1990; Bergeret and Ribot, 1990; Thrupp, 1991; Bernstein
and Amin, 1995. The definition used here, implicit or explicit in the above works, differs from Hopkins and Wallerstein’s
(1994:17) (used by Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, 1994:2), who characterize a commodity chain as “a network of labor and
production processes whose end result is a finished commodity.” The concept used in this article is closer to the French
concept and the Spanish and Portuguese concepts of commercial circuits (circuito comercial), since it follows the commodity
through production, exchange and final use.
8.
In contrast to these authors, the ‘conduct, structure, performance’ school of empirical market analysis rarely ventures
beyond prices and quantities. See Farruk (1970), Lele (1971) and Timmer (1974). See Harriss (1984) for a critique of this
literature.
9.
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1996 writing on the ‘market-order’ problem). It does so in a multi-local manner, spanning the
geographic extent of production, distribution, exchange and use.
B. Mapping Access along the Commodity Chains
This research project focuses on income from commerce and how those who are able to obtain
such income gain, maintain and control their access to such income. We choose to focus on
income—that is money—because it is an important and measurable value that is derived from forest
commerce and that can potentially be reinvested in the local arena. Money is not the only value this
project could focus on, nor should this focus be exclusive of exploring other values—such as use
value or symbolic or patronage-related political, religious, cultural and aesthetic values. Access is the
ability to benefit from things (see Ribot and Peluso 2003). Market access is the ability to benefit
from markets. The access-mapping methods described in this section are designed for assessing how
and why different actors are or are not able to benefit from markets. See Annex A for an in-depth
discussion of Access.
Access mapping along a commodity chain10 consists of: 1) identifying the actors involved in the
extraction, production, processing, exchange, transport, distribution, final sale and end use of the
commodity in question, that is, identifying the actors along the commodity chain; 2) evaluating
income and profit at each level of (or among groups of actors within) the commodity chain through
the analysis of prices and quantities of the goods handled by the different actors; 3) evaluating the
distribution of income and profit within each group along the chain; and 4) using the distribution of
these benefits among and within groups to trace out, or map, the mechanisms by which access to
benefits is maintained and controlled. This method provides two maps: one of profit distribution
and one of mechanisms, structures and processes at work in the control and maintenance of that
distribution.11
In access analysis the object of inquiry—the value of concern—must be specified by the researcher.
So must the measures or indicators of this value. The access approach takes value to be implicit in
any act of appropriation or use (access control and maintenance described in Annex A)—since
without value, or some benefit, the object would not be of concern. Value can be embodied in
things, currencies, other persons, concepts, symbols, utterances and so forth--any object of
appropriation or use.12 In this research project, we will use cash income and profits as an indicator of
I use the term commodity chain with an awareness that commodities often move through webs or networks between
extraction and end use. The term chain is a simplification. The paths of objects are multi-stranded. There are many parallel
and crossing paths. However, when one object is followed from end to end, the path it moves along can be described as a
chain. Hence, for analytic purposes I retain the term ‘chain’ rather than speaking of ‘webs’ or ‘networks’.
11. To understand peasant political economy, Deere and deJanvry (1984) provided a model of the ways the larger economy
extracts surplus from peasant households. The household is at the center of their model, which examines how household
income is extracted through taxation, usury, terms of trade, sharecropping, corvée, and ordinary labor exploitation.
Commodity chain analysis can be natural resource centric (although it can be applied to any commodity). This concept
paper uses it to empirically identify the whole range of mechanisms (such as those cited by Deere and de Janvry 1984) that
different actors use to extract, maintain and concentrate benefits from the production and exchange of a specific
commercial forest resource.
10
I use the term benefit and value interchangeably. For a more nuanced inquiry into the origin-of-value problem see
Appadurai, 1986.
12.
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benefit, since this is an inquiry into economic accumulation and marginalization in natural resource
extraction, conversion and exchange. Each analysis must examine the distribution of naturalresource-derived profit, and how the actors along the commodity chain leverage these gains.
In an analysis of access to income and profit, the primary factors are prices, quantities, and expenses.
Profits accrue in the form of rents, for example, to those actors with control over access to markets,
funds, tools, and forests.13 For example, actors with licenses may be able to buy and sell, while those
without are excluded from commerce. Access to licenses in turn may depend on education to gain
the knowledge of how to take a test for obtaining a license, or it may depend on social identity
where licenses are allocated as patronage along social or political lines. Control over licenses, tools
and capital in turn shape prices and market shares, hence income and profit. Rents and profits are
the benefits leveraged by various forms of control. Understanding rents and profits requires an
analysis of the social underpinnings of that control and the aggregate and specific, direct and indirect
demand for that which is controlled.14 The exchanges and transfers through which commodities
flow are multi-stranded events, as are the bundles of powers that shape their terms. Access mapping
is a method for exploring the bundles of powers behind control and maintenance of those terms. It
is about the careful tracing out of the social and political-economic relations in which a chain of
inter-related instances of benefit or profit are located.
Each of the steps in access mapping is discussed briefly below.
1. Identify the actors
The commodity chain analysis begins with an evaluation of the actors along the particular
commodity chain in question. Your particular market may be more or less complex than Senegal’s
charcoal market, depicted in figure 1. It may have parallel channels where high quality products take
a different path to end users than do low quality products. The idea is to pick and focus on a single
commodity market and a single chain within it. Researchers who have data on multiple commodity
chains or multiple strands of a single chain should certainly use that data for comparative purposes.
The objective is to use that comparative analysis to a particular policy or theoretical advantage.
I use ‘rents’ to mean charges on control over access to things, as well as on access to labor opportunities, authorities,
markets (Tawney 1978[1920]; Bates 1981), etc. In this sense, control over things, markets or authorities differs little--all can
be controlled and rents can be charged on that control. Things may be controlled through legal ownership or threats of
violence, markets may be controlled through oligopoly, legal permits, etc. Rents can be leveraged on all of these forms of
control.
13.
As Appadurai (1986:17) argues, “...the flow of commodities in any given situation is a shifting compromise between
socially regulated paths and competitively inspired diversions.” Rents emerge somewhere between the ability to control and
demand. Both must be taken into account.
14.
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Figure 1: Identify Market Actors
Identify Market Actors
Urban population
Retailers
Urban wholesalers
Transporters
Coxeur de Brousse
Co-operatives
Merchants/
Patrons
Migrant
Wood-cutters
Forest Villages
SOURCE: Ribot 1998. This diagram is taken directly from a study of Senegal’s charcoal commodity
chain. A coxeur de brousse is a local foreman who works as intermediary between woodcutters,
merchants and transporters.
2. Evaluate vertical income and profit
To measure profit distribution requires the systematic collecting of purchase and sale price and
expense data over time at each level of the market. The profit margin is derived by calculating the
per unit prices minus the per unit expenses at each level of the market. This gives us the per unit
profit at each level (see Table I in Annex B). To get a sense of the average income at each level, the
quantity produced is multiplied by the price at each level and divided by the number of actors (see
Table II in Annex B).
Inter-temporal data are especially necessary for commodities whose prices change over time and
because prices change from buyer to buyer, seller to seller, place to place. It is important to collect a
sufficiently large data set to see the patterns and the averages as well as the variability over time and
in the same time period. Solid averages are important. Further, margins graphed over time can be
used as a measure of competitiveness. At least the conduct structure performance school of
economic analysis believes that constant margins reflect competitive conditions (See Farruk 1970,
Lele 1971 and Timmer 1974—see Harriss 1984 for a critique of this literature).
Obtaining such data is not easy. Prices may vary in a short time, prices may not be visible when
there is vertical integration (e.g. wood cutters are also the buyers or transporters are traders). Where
prices vary over time, surveys of prices may have to be done all in the same day, week or month at
all levels to capture actual margins. This may then have to be repeated each week or month to
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observe general shifts over time. Data sets may have to be richer when variation in prices is greater
in order to be able to observe and explain the variations themselves. Where there is vertical
integration, other actors in the market who continue to operate in a segmented manner will have to
be surveyed to estimate the profits reaped by those who span several levels of the market or those
who span these levels will have to be interviewed in depth in order to sort out their income and
expenses in order to determine their profits. In all of these cases, multiple actors of each category of
actor or at each level of exchange will have to be surveyed. Researchers will run into all kinds of
unimaginable variations in market configurations. Methods will have to be adjusted for these
contingencies.
3. Evaluate the horizontal distribution of income and profit
To estimate the distribution of profits at each level is much more difficult than estimating the
average profit. It requires assessing the distribution of market shares—that is, at each level, how
much of the product does each actor control? The total profit per actor is then derived by
multiplying the quantity controlled by the profit margin at their level of the market.
In Senegal’s charcoal market, for example, distribution is relatively even among producers. Most
produce one or two kiln loads a year. It is very difficult to produce more than this and a single kiln is
the minimum amount one can produce. It is rare to find woodcutters who work together on a single
kiln. So, the profits in this arena are not highly variable. But, among the 5000 merchants who fund
production, there is great variation. All are members of cooperatives. All cooperatives receive
production quotas. But, most of the members of these cooperatives are just members to help the
president of the cooperative and the treasurer to justify a greater production quota from the forest
service. The bulk of the quotas are divided between the president and treasurer. The remaining ten
to thirty merchants may get no quota at all. Some members may get a small quota of half or one
truckload and resell it at a low price to another merchant without ever engaging in production. They
may do so because they do not have the capital to give a woodcutter a production advance or to pay
for permitting fees. Other members may receive a small quota and use it to hire woodcutters. Yet
the president may have an enormous quota—ten, twenty or thirty truck loads. These same larger
merchants may also purchase quotas from other cooperatives on the secondary market. In the end,
there are merchants who make less than a subsistence wage and others who make as much as half a
million US dollars a year. At the level of merchants, the distribution is highly skewed. (See Ribot
1998.)
One approach to identifying variation is to identify the highest-income actors via interviews and
observations or via records at the environmental service or elsewhere. It is possible, through
interviews, get some sense of how many ‘big’ actors there are. Then focus in on the size of their
market shares by estimating their daily trade, their annually quotas, the number of people working
for them, the kind of the car they drive, etc. The wealthiest actors can be compared to the average to
get a sense of how skewed the income is. The average within each level is easy to derive from the
total quantity of the product produced in the market, the profit per unit, and the total number of
people operating at the level of the market in question. In any event, it is at least possible to get a
qualitative sense of how skewed the distribution is.
9
4. Map how access is maintained and controlled
Access, or the ability to benefit, is obtained, maintained and controlled at different levels of a market
and by different actors at a given level of the market via a variety of mechanisms. By mechanisms,
we mean threats of violence, social ties, social identity, knowledge, skills, credit, permits, licenses,
quotas, collusion, and so forth. The analysis of margins and market shares identifies where the nodes
of profit are along the commodity chain and where actors work for even less than subsistence. The
object of access mapping is to explain how, that is through what mechanisms, those nodes of
concentration and exclusion are produced and reproduced. In this project we are particularly
interested in the role of policy in shaping these distributions within the market.
Nodes of concentration, or what Gellert (2003) has called links—for consistency with the chain
analogy—must be explained in their social and historical context. They are a function of the
mechanisms and politics of market channel control (see Harriss 1984; Ribot 1998; Gellert 2003:57).
How did the actors come together, how did one actor gain entry to the market while others could
not. Actors may gain access because they have capital, because they are born into a certain family,
because they know the right people, because they are of the right ethnic group, religion or language
group. Each node or link in each market has a social history. The identities that facilitate entry have
a social history. The ways policies like quotas and licenses are allocated and who can use them once
allocated all have a history. The object is to explain the ensemble of mechanisms that contribute to
the moment of profit.
Figure 2 shows a map of how policies and other factors impinge on different actors in Senegal’s
charcoal market. Figure 3 is a list of some of the mechanisms at work on Senegal’s charcoal market
in shaping access to cash income from charcoal production and exchange. These ‘maps’ are derived
from a year of extensive interviews and participant observation.
10
Figure 2: Map of Social Relations of Access in Senegal’s Charcoal Market
Urban population
Other
Institutions
Ministries
Wood & Charcoal
- Unions
Retailers
Loans
- Religious
Brotherhoods
Wholesalers
National Forest
Department
Market regulations
Regional Forest
Service
Elected
Regional Council
Unofficial relations
Transporters
Coxeur de Brousse
Co-operatives
Merchants/
Patrons
Migrant
Woodcutters
Forest Villages
Local Forest
Service
Local
Rural Council/PCR
Figure 3: Mechanisms of Benefit Concentration in Senegal’s Charcoal Market
Mechanisms of Benefit Concentration
•
Villagers
 Forest access control
 Treats of violence
 Village access (wells & housing)
•
Woodcutters  Access to merchants
 Social ties  Social identity
 Technical skills
•
Merchants
 Control of labor opportunities
 Permits
 Credit
 Control of market access
 Control of access to markets
 Quotas, licenses
 Cooperative membership
 Social ties with government
 Leverage over prices
 Collusive price fixing
 Inter-locking credit-labor arrangements
 Misinformation
•
Wholesalers  Control of distribution
 Credit Arrangements/Capital
 Knowledge of demand
 Social ties with vendors & merchants
•
Retailers
 Maintenance of access to wholesalers
 Relations with wholesalers & clients
 Leverage over prices
 Manipulation of Symbols
 Manipulation of Weight
SOURCE: Ribot 1998.
11



Management plans
RC right to say no
RC labor allocation

Access to RC
C. Policy Analysis
Having evaluated the factors that shape profit and exclusion, the key policy questions are: 1) how do
environmental and other policies shape income distribution, and 2) what other social and ecological
effects and functions do these policies have? Three dimensions of analysis are important. Intertemporal comparisons (before and after particular policy changes) can be used to quantify effects of
given policies. Historical reconstruction of processes of change can also be used to evaluate the
effects of given reforms. Process tracing can also be used to identify the factors that influence a
given observed outcome. This is what Ribot and Peluso (2003) are referring to when they map the
causal chains of a given observed instance of benefit or concentration.
For policy analysis purposes, it is important to be able to explore the commodity chain in its
historical context. The best cases are those in which data are available from before and then after a
particular reform. This is rarely possible, but where it is, it gives an opportunity to examine how
variables change with a particular reform. Where data are not available, the changes with time must
be derived through historical interviews concerning changes in prices, quantities, costs, and market
shares, and about the effects of policies over time. Who was affected by a particular reform and who
was not, how the reform brought about change for different actors, etc.
The role of policies in income distribution and how they influence income distribution is to be
evaluated in the context of other factors shaping income distribution. When, for example, an
instance of benefit concentration is observed, it is then analyzed for all of the factors that contribute
to the ability of that actor at that level of the market to derive benefits. A thorough analysis of
causality will reveal a number of causal mechanisms. Are policies the key factors or are other factors
more important. Via what causal mechanisms do policies and other factors shape outcomes? Which
policies might be reformed? What are the functions of these policies that must be taken into account
when considering reform? Which causal mechanisms are amenable to policy intervention?
By evaluating the other effects and functions of these policies, such as their environmental
outcomes, we can then begin to compare their official functions to their actual functions. In this
manner, the policies can be evaluated for their actual functions and for their effectiveness in their
official functions—their actual functions and official functions may differ greatly. For example,
environmental policies may serve to create allocation opportunities used as patronage resources.
They may be ‘environmental’ policies applied by a forest service, but under scrutiny, they may or
may not have an ecological function. Some key questions are: do the policies have any ecological
function? Are they a means of rent capture? Whose interests do they serve? Are they used as
patronage tools to allocate lucrative opportunities? How does the discourse or justifications of these
policies match the observed functions in practice? How do we explain the difference between
discourse and practice?
Understanding causal links between policies and outcomes helps us evaluate how these policies may
be modified to improve distributional and environmental effects. Knowing what policies do and for
whom enables us to evaluate their social and ecological functions and to develop strategies for
change and improvement.
12
D. Case Studies and Comparative Analysis
This is a comparative research project. Two aspects of comparison will be the focus of the first
phase: 1) the effectiveness of the method for orienting data collection and treating data; 2) common
findings in the analyses across case studies. By applying commodity chain analysis to cases in
different markets and different countries, we can identify the limits to the approach we are using, the
methods that work and do not work, and we can collectively re-think how to approach difficult
methodological and analytical problems. Through the comparison of findings, we hope to identify
patterns in 1) the kinds of functions that policies applied to natural resource markets are playing, 2)
their distributional effects, 3) their relevance to natural resource management.
There is good evidence that forestry and other natural resource policies are structured as taxation
mechanisms or patronage mechanisms (Ribot 1993; Gibson 1999). When these observations are
made in individual case studies, they are ignored as particular cases or anecdote. This study will be
able to determine the degree to which these functions are a general phenomenon or are isolated
instances. The study will also enable us to explore how regulations differ across sectors such as
forestry and wildlife; between lucrative and non-lucrative natural resources; between domestic and
international markets (while most studies will be of domestic markets, one or two may involve
global commodity chains). Explaining differences in the cases can also give us insights into how the
larger enabling or political economic context shapes distribution and market functioning. The
project can therefore leverage a larger-scale reflection on policy, its effects and how to use it for
positive change.
Equally important, by studying a variety of natural resource markets, a comparative analysis can help
us to see effects of larger-scale policy changes. Has liberalization really taken place in a concrete
form in these markets? Does it have similar effects across these markets? Has community based
natural resource management or decentralization reshaped market access or benefit retention?
Under what conditions has it increased local benefit retention and how? The comparative aspect can
render the results of individual studies more robust, and it can also give us insights that cannot be
drawn from individual cases.
It is important that there be some consistency and diversity among the selected cases. Our primary
sector of focus will be forestry. This includes everything from minor forest products (mushrooms
and firewood) to timber. It also includes domestic and international markets. We hope to have at
least three international market studies and at least three domestic (in particular rural-urban) markets
in the study. An attempt will be made in this first phase to choose pairs of cases. Every case should
be matched with at least one other case with respect to the resource type and whether it is domestic
or international. In addition, we hope to choose all cases in areas where some natural resource sector
decentralization has taken place.
Achieving a balanced case selection is difficult in this first stage of the project. Consistent
comparative cases would require at least a year of field research for each case following an in-depth
methods meeting. The project does not have the means to do this in the first phase. Our objective is
to develop the methods themselves and to draw whatever comparative observations we can from
the available experience and data. From our observations and discussions, we hope to be able to
then design a more-in-depth second-phase comparative study that we can carry out as a team.
13
While cases will be partly chosen based on resource type or based on specific characteristics of the
markets in question, the primary criteria will be how advanced researchers proposing cases are in
their own work on this topic. Most of cases for this first phase of the commodity-chain study are
not to be based on new field research. The project will choose cases based on researchers having
already conducted significant research on a case relevant to this topic. The amount of data to collect
for a thorough commodity chain analysis is enormous. We do not expect everyone will have or be
able to obtain the full set of economic or ethnographic data for a complete study. Rather, we expect
that the case material will be rich enough to problematize the approach and to derive preliminary
observations from the empirical material and on the basic theoretical tenets behind this approach.
Proposals will be solicited from a select group of researchers around the world. There will not be a
general call for proposals. The proposals will then be reviewed by three external reviewers and from
the highest-ranked proposals we will choose and fund ten to twelve cases to develop.
14
IV.
Research Program
A. Work Plan
Activity
Case Proposals Due to WRI
Acceptance or Rejection of Case Proposals
Contracts established for case studies with
policy researchers
First draft articles due to WRI
Comments from colleagues—each author will
be asked to comment on the papers of three
other authors. Each author will receive
comments from three colleagues.
Second draft articles
Research Results Meeting—comparative
analysis, methods and lessons
This meeting will be held along with
the IASCP (International Association for the
Study of Common Property) to be held in Bali.
Each researcher will be expected to present at
both IASCP and the research results meeting.
Revised articles due for submission to peer
review
Peer review comments to authors
First draft policy brief by program coordinator
Second meeting if the group deems it useful
Final polished publishable articles due
Date
30 October 2005 [earlier submissions
appreciated]
10 November 2005
By 30 November 2005
30 April 2006
20 May 2006
5 June 2006
IASCP 19-23 June 2006 meeting in Bali followed
by two-day research results meeting. This meeting
will probably take place 28-29 June [sorry you
may have to hang out in Bali a few extra days due
to another meeting on institutional choice
scheduled for 25-26 June].
30 July 2006
30 August 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
B. Article format
Each scholar will be asked to write up their case study reflecting the questions and issue outlined in
the above concept discussion. A suggestive format is presented below. Outlines can constrain
thinking, so each scholar is encouraged to consider the format below, but to use the format that best
relays their own cases concerning this topic. Articles should not exceed 7000 words. A style sheet is
available upon request.
A. Introduction
B. Case description and history
C. Presentation of actors (including market diagram)
D. Evaluation of the horizontal distribution of income and profit (price structure analysis or
margins and expenses)
E. Analysis of horizontal distribution—income at each level of market
F. Explanation of observed distribution—role of policy and other factors (including map of
how access is maintained and controlled)
G. Discussion and policy analysis
H. Conclusions and recommendations
15
Annex A: Definition and Theory of Access
Access, according to Merriam-Webster (1993:6), is the “freedom or ability to obtain or make use of.”
The term access is closely related to the term property, which MacPherson (1978:3) characterizes as “...a
right in the sense of an enforceable claim to some use or benefit of something.” One crucial
difference resides in the terms ability and right. The term right implies an acknowledged claim that
society supports (whether through law, custom or convention). The term ability, however, is broader
than right, resting solely on the fact of demonstration without the need for any socially articulated
approval. Right is a prescriptive concept. Ability is a descriptive term. Property is de jure. Access
includes the de jure and the de facto or extra-legal15 (compare with the use of term ‘legal’ in Ribot
and Peluso 2003).
Extra-legal mechanisms, structures and relations governing resource use include: social identity (or
status, based on gender, age or nobility, see Berry, 1993:16-7); social relations (as in friendship,
family, lineage, historical ties among individuals and groups--often based on social identity—see
Granovetter, 1985; Coleman, 1988; Platteau, 1996); coercion and trickery (i.e. misinformation,
threats of violence or even theft); material wealth (financial and material capital, etc.); or physical
circumstance (location or stature). Individuals, for example, who have capital or a particular status
can enter and use a given resource: even against the rules produced by society (state or otherwise).
Theft and other rule breaking may go un-punished since culprits are not caught or because those in
society who observe the rule-breaking differ with the authorities who make and enforce the rules.
The rules themselves may be contested among co-existing legal systems (cf Peluso 1992:13-19; also
see the literature on legal pluralism: Griffiths 1986; Moore 1986; von Benda Beckmann 1995,1995a;
Meinzen-Dick and Pradhan 2000; Graziani and Burnham 2002). The range of factors (de jure and de
facto) governing resource use must include rules made by state and non-state groups, as well as the
whole range of non-rule-based structural and relational factors.
Access is not just gained via singular legal or extra-legal mechanisms. Powerful actors also harness
multiple mechanisms to produce structural complementarities that are also part of the ability to
benefit. Forest villages that control direct access to forests (whether through threats of violence or
formal property title), for example, may reap only a small portion of forest benefits if they do not
also have access to markets and capital. While powerful merchants may have to maintain access to
forests through the chiefs who control them, the merchants’ profits are derived from direct forest
access, plus access to capital, plus access to the state for licenses, permits and quotas. Indeed, most of
the benefits flowing from the forests derive from the resulting market control, not control of forests
Like MacPherson in his definition of property, Schlager and Ostrom (1992) focus on rights and rules (based on law,
custom or convention) when analyzing the use and management of natural resources. Schlager and Ostrom (1992:254)
define de jure property rights as the formal legal rights enforced by formal legal authorities, and de facto rights as those based
on rules made among resource users. “Such rights are de facto as long as they are not recognized by government
authorities” (254). Schlager and Ostrom’s de jure and de facto rights combine to present the universe of social factors
guiding resource use. Rights (whether government or other enforced) are always based on rules (Schlager and Ostrom,
1992:250) condoned and enforced at and by some level of government or society. But, socially condoned and rule-driven
actions are only part of what shapes resource allocation and use, or for that matter collective behavior. By focusing only on
rights (since rights are based on rules and rules are agreed upon by society) these authors preclude or side step the analysis
of the structural and relational forces shaping resource use. MacPherson’s and Schlager and Ostrom’s definitions define the
world of action as emanating from human will--from within only those parts of the world prescribed by collective choice.
But, the world is also constituted of structures that shape use patterns prior and parallel to the rules supporting and
justifying those patterns.
15.
16
or trees. Direct control, and therefore even enforced ownership or property does not automatically
confer benefits. Access, or the ability to benefit, is based on a broader set of factors.
Ribot and Peluso (2003) provide a working set of heuristic categories and examples to guide efforts
to map the mechanisms that shape access processes and relations. The first of these categories is
rights-based access (that which is sanctioned by law, custom or convention), including illegal access
(or theft—when benefits are obtained through illegal mechanisms).16 A number of additional factors
fall under the heading structural and relational access mechanisms. These mediate or operate parallel
to rights-based and illegal access mechanisms, thus shaping how benefits are gained, controlled, and
maintained. They include technology, capital, markets, labor, knowledge, authority, identities,
politics, and social relations.
Mechanisms, structures and processes supporting access serve both its maintenance and control.
Maintenance is about expending resources or powers keeping access open for one’s self or others (cf
Berry 1989; 1993). Control is the ability to mediate others’ access (see Rangan 1997). Control is
about power over others. These terms can loosely describe people and groups with different
relations to the means of production, exchange and consumption. In this sense access can occur
with or without control, or through some mix of control and maintenance, depending on the
individual’s place and powers within society. And, in this sense, access is akin to Ghani’s (1995:2)
broad notion of property as ‘bundles of powers’--a step away from the widely used legalistic notion
of ‘bundles of rights’ (Maine 1963[1861]).17 The access approach outlined here disaggregates these
bundles of powers and the mechanisms supporting them into their constituent strands (see Agrawal,
1996:3-5) as they shape not only ownership of things, but the overall flow and distribution of
benefits associated with the whole trajectory of those things. Maintenance and control, are of course
complementary aspects of related acts—they are about relations among actors vis-à-vis instances of
appropriation or use.
An access analysis is empirical. It is concerned with who has the “ability to obtain or make use of”
benefits and how. It does not presume any set of rights, structures, processes, etc. that confer this
ability. Rather, it derives them from observed practice.
It is important to recognize that both these sorts of sanctioned and unsanctioned mechanisms are rights-based—in so
far as rights define the bounds of illegal activities.
17. The problem arises in determining how those relations and bundles are to be observed--how power is to be measured
(see Ribot 1990:361). Cf von Benda-Beckmann’s (1995:3) who defines ‘property regimes’ as structures of economic power
relations.
16
17
Annex B: Vertical Distribution of Prices
Table I: Price Structure of Charcoal Delivered to Dakar CFA/42 kg Sack
Prices/Expenses/ Margins
Derived from Surveys 1987
PRICES:
Woodcutter Price to Merchant
Prices/ Expenses/ Margins Derived
from Spot Checks June 1994
537
615
Merchant Price to Urban Wholesaler
1796
3250
Urban Wholesaler Price to Vendor
1940
3400
Retail Outlet (or Final) Price
2329
3990
75
250
663
900
35
50
67
103
0
57
227
(1987 Extra-polations)
91
140
0
77
308
Migrant Woodcutters
470
524
Merchants
383
1295
Urban Wholesalers
144
150
Retail Outlet
332
513
EXPENSES:
Forest Tax (Paid by Merchant)
Cost of Transport (Paid by Merchant)
Truck Unloading Labor (Paid by Merchant):a
Diverse Costs:
-Paid by Migrant Woodcutters
-Paid by Merchants
-Paid by Urban Wholesalers
-Paid by Retail Outlet
Total:
MARGINS:
Table II: Vertical and Horizontal Distribution of Income from Charcoal Production in Senegal 1987
Groups Directly Involved
in Charcoal Market
Group
Size
(A) Avg. Net Income
(1000 CFA/person)a
(B) Avg. Net Profit
(1000 CFA/ person)
Horizontal Distribution
Within Group
Retail Vendors
1,850b
270
56
Even
Retail Outlet Owners
1,850b
375
161
Skewed
300
1,700
1,486
Skewed
2,870
48
266
Skewed
11,650
145
57
Even
Urban Wholesalers
Merchants
Migrant Woodcutters
Totals
16,670
Comparisons:
Annual GDP/capita
145
Legal Minimum Wage
595
Min. Cost of Living
-Urban
214
-Rural
88
aNet incomes are based on the volume of charcoal handled, the numbers of actors and margins from Table I.
bThis is the number of retail outlets in Dakar plus other cities, it is not the number of vendors nor outlet owners. Some outlets
have several vendors and some owners have several out lets. In dividing the income between vendors and owners, the income of
vendors is derived directly from surveys while that of outlet owners (per outlet) is a residual. The number of outlet owners is not
known. SOURCE OF TABLES: (Ribot 1998).
18
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