Remittance income weakens participation in community-based natural resource management

While many Global South contexts rely on community-based natural resource management, out-migration has the potential to change rural peoples’ incentives to participate in such management. We argue that remittance income from out-migration reduces dependence on natural resource commons, which may in turn weaken the voluntary participation upon which community-based natural resource management initiatives depend. We studied this relationship empirically in Nepal, a country with a largely community-based model for the governance of its forests. In analyzing nationwide survey data that spanned nearly one decade, we fit a household-level fixed-effects regression model, which showed that households that received more remittance income were less likely to rely on commonly held forests compared to households in the same village that received less remittance income. Using a similar estimation approach and more detailed survey data from the districts of Mustang and Gorkha, we also showed that larger remittance incomes predicted less participation in forest governance and management activities. These results suggest that the remittances associated with out-migration from rural areas can weaken incentives for local participation in natural resource management among the people left behind. If remittance income has these effects, policymakers may need to reconsider how to sustain community-based resource management in countries or regions that are experiencing widespread rural out-migration. Future research is needed to establish causality, validate the results cross-nationally, and explore new policy innovations that could support resource governance in contexts where many resource users receive remittances.