Communal Property Rights and Depletion of Forests in Northern Pakistan ([Dagger]) (Report‪)‬

I. INTRODUCTION This paper argues that the causes of rapid depletion of forests in Northern Pakistan are to be found not only in an extensive admission of open-ended communal property rights, but also an inadequate specification of those rights. Central to the problem are guzara forests. It is these forests for which property rights have, at best, been inadequately defined. It is true that at the time the rights in these forests were admitted in the last half of the past century, the prevailing conditions were vastly different, and the admission of rights did not seem to pose a serious conservation threat. As the rights became well-entrenched with the passage of time, the state has found it increasingly difficult to affect any changes in their structure for the sake of conservation. The equally important problem of inadequate specification of those rights has remained unnoticed.