It would be no exaggeration to say that the study of forests as commons has been central to the d... more It would be no exaggeration to say that the study of forests as commons has been central to the development of scholarship on common property. Equally certainly, the interest in forests has generated a vast corpus of research outside the field of common property. The magnitude, variety, and depth of this body of research is an accurate reflection of the many different ways in which forests have been and continue to be central to human survival, livelihoods, and prosperity.
This paper describes and then analyzes the decision-making arrangements that prevail among the Ra... more This paper describes and then analyzes the decision-making arrangements that prevail among the Raikas—nomadic shepherds from Western India. The paper suggests, using a simple analytical framework, that the existing distribution of decision-making during migration helps the Raikasto utilize available economies of scale, represent the different interest groups in their collectives, and control their decision-makers. At the same time, the ordinary shepherds in the camp are able to extract a comfortable subsistence from a complex and harsh environment by delegating much of their decision-making responsibilities to the leaders in the camp. To the extent shepherds in other parts of the world migrate over long distances and must confront similar issues of delegation of responsibilities and control over decision-makers, the analysis holds general relevance.
Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, 2008
This article examines the relationship between local enforcement and forests used as commons. It ... more This article examines the relationship between local enforcement and forests used as commons. It uses a unique multicountry dataset, created over the past 15 years by the International Forestry Resources and Institutions Research Program. Drawing on original enforcement and forest commons data from 9 countries, we find that higher levels of local enforcement have a strong and positive but complex relationship to the probability of forest regeneration. This relationship holds even when the influence of a number of other factors such as user group size, subsistence, and commercial importance of forests, size of forest, and collective action for forest improvement activities is taken into account. Although several of the above factors have a statistically significant relationship to changes in the condition of forest commons, differences in levels of local enforcement strongly moderate their link with forest commons outcomes. The research, using data from diverse political, social, and ecological contexts, shows both the importance of enforcement to forest commons and some of the limits of forest governance through commons arrangements.
... significant proportion of the total endowment of natural resources, comprising land, water, f... more ... significant proportion of the total endowment of natural resources, comprising land, water, forests and ... appropriation of these resources, forcing an opportunistic and exploitative mode of resource use ... the causes of CPR problems and to explore viable CPR management strategies ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013
Protected areas in tropical countries are managed under different governance regimes, the relativ... more Protected areas in tropical countries are managed under different governance regimes, the relative effectiveness of which in avoiding deforestation has been the subject of recent debates. Participants in these debates answer appeals for more strict protection with the argument that sustainable use areas and indigenous lands can balance deforestation pressures by leveraging local support to create and enforce protective regulations. Which protection strategy is more effective can also depend on (i) the level of deforestation pressures to which an area is exposed and (ii) the intensity of government enforcement. We examine this relationship empirically, using data from 292 protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon. We show that, for any given level of deforestation pressure, strictly protected areas consistently avoided more deforestation than sustainable use areas. Indigenous lands were particularly effective at avoiding deforestation in locations with high deforestation pressure. Findings were stable across two time periods featuring major shifts in the intensity of government enforcement. We also observed shifting trends in the location of protected areas, documenting that between 2000 and 2005 strictly protected areas were more likely to be established in high-pressure locations than in sustainable use areas and indigenous lands. Our findings confirm that all protection regimes helped reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 2013
Management-effectiveness scores are used widely by donors and implementers of conservation projec... more Management-effectiveness scores are used widely by donors and implementers of conservation projects to prioritize, track, and evaluate investments in protected areas. However, there is little evidence that these scores actually reflect the capacity of protected areas to deliver conservation outcomes. We examined the relation between indicators of management effectiveness in protected areas and the effectiveness of protected areas in reducing fire occurrence in the Amazon rainforest. We used data collected with the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) scorecard, adopted by some of the world's largest conservation organizations to track management characteristics believed to be crucial for protected-area effectiveness. We used the occurrence of forest fires from 2000 through 2010 as a measure of the effect of protected areas on undesired land-cover change in the Amazon basin. We used matching to compare the estimated effect of protected areas with low versus high METT scores on fire occurrence. We also estimated effects of individual protected areas on fire occurrence and explored the relation between these effects and METT scores. The relations between METT scores and effects of protected areas on fire occurrence were weak. Protected areas with higher METT scores in 2005 did not seem to have performed better than protected areas with lower METT scores at reducing fire occurrence over the last 10 years. Further research into the relations between management-effectiveness indicators and conservation outcomes in protected areas seems necessary, and our results show that the careful application of matching methods can be a suitable method for that purpose.Vinculación de Indicadores de Efectividad de Manejo con los Efectos Observados de la Ocurrencia de Fuego en Áreas Protegidas en la AmazoniaLos valores de efectividad del manejo son utilizados ampliamente por donantes e implementadores de proyectos de conservación para priorizar, seguir, y evaluar inversiones en áreas protegidas. Sin embargo, hay poca evidencia de que estos valores reflejan la capacidad de las áreas protegidas para generar resultados de conservación. Examinamos la relación entre indicadores de efectividad del manejo en áreas protegidas y la efectividad de áreas protegidas para reducir la ocurrencia de fuego en bosques de la Amazonia. Utilizamos datos recolectados con el sistema de puntuación Herramienta para el Seguimiento de la Efectividad del Manejo (HSEM), adoptado por algunas de las organizaciones de conservación más grandes del mundo para monitorear atributos del manejo considerados cruciales para la efectividad de las áreas protegidas. Utilizamos la ocurrencia de los incendios forestales de 2000 a 2010 como una medida del efecto de las áreas protegidas sobre cambios no deseados en la cobertura de suelo en la Cuenca del Amazonas. Usamos combinaciones para comparar el efecto estimado de las áreas protegidas con valores HSEM de ocurrencia de fuego bajos versus altos. También estimamos los efectos de áreas protegidas individuales sobre la ocurrencia de fuego y exploramos la relación entre estos efectos y los valores HSEM. Las relaciones entre los valores HSEM y los efectos de las áreas protegidas sobre la ocurrencia de fuego fueron débiles. Las áreas protegidas con valores HSEM más altos en 2005 no parecen haber reducido la ocurrencia de fuego en los últimos 10 años. Es necesario investigar más sobre las relaciones entre indicadores de efectividad del manejo y los resultados de conservación en áreas protegidas, y nuestros resultados muestran que la aplicación cuidadosa de métodos combinatorios es un método adecuado para ese propósito.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
Forests provide multiple benefits at local to global scales. These include the global public good... more Forests provide multiple benefits at local to global scales. These include the global public good of carbon sequestration and local and national level contributions to livelihoods for more than half a billion users. Forest commons are a particularly important class of forests generating these multiple benefits. Institutional arrangements to govern forest commons are believed to substantially influence carbon storage and livelihood contributions, especially when they incorporate local knowledge and decentralized decision making. However, hypothesized relationships between institutional factors and multiple benefits have never been tested on data from multiple countries. By using original data on 80 forest commons in 10 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, we show that larger forest size and greater rule-making autonomy at the local level are associated with high carbon storage and livelihood benefits; differences in ownership of forest commons are associated with trade-offs between livelihood benefits and carbon storage. We argue that local communities restrict their consumption of forest products when they own forest commons, thereby increasing carbon storage. In showing rule-making autonomy and ownership as distinct and important institutional influences on forest outcomes, our results are directly relevant to international climate change mitigation initiatives such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and avoided deforestation. Transfer of ownership over larger forest commons patches to local communities, coupled with payments for improved carbon storage can contribute to climate change mitigation without adversely affecting local livelihoods.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011
proposed an "interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of relationships between functional div... more proposed an "interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of relationships between functional diversity, ecosystem services, and human actions." Their framework addresses the linkages between land uses and ecosystem service (ES) provision to inform decisions by relevant parties. We welcome the development and practical application of tools for analyzing the complexity of social-ecological systems (SESs), but there are fundamental gaps in the oversimplified framework of Díaz et al. (1). These flaws obscure critical aspects of the functioning of SESs, preclude their improved understanding, and thereby undermine the goal of fruitful scientific analysis. In particular, the proposed local-level framework does not consider key determinants of local decisions about resource uses including legacies, institutional and political memories, social/ economic/political constraints and opportunities, linkages between governance and social and environmental contexts, and disturbances. Their model ignores the mediating and structuring role of institutions in all human decisions as well as the relationships of formal and informal institutional processes to local and larger scale dynamics. Furthermore, the model's lack of consideration of flows of influence from local to higher levels (figure 1, lack of arrows from local to higher levels) and inattention to the knowledge of different actors mean that the framework misses basic aspects of human and ecosystem interactions. Indeed, because the approach relies on responses of interviewed actors to identify socially valued ESs without much attention to how key actors will be identified or to essential features of social systems, it is also likely to undervalue critical ESs that other social actors would have emphasized. Other causal processes and factors that receive limited or no attention in the model of Díaz et al. (1) include structural relationships (e.g., markets and access, nonmarket relations, factors determining social preferences, tradeoffs and synergies between outcomes and their drivers) and political-economic and political-ecological dimensions at local scales (e.g., determinants of access to resources, factors influencing rules and choices for distribution of costs and benefits, rationales and dynamics behind alliances and conflicts associated with the use of resources and ESs). The proposed framework also pays scant attention to demographic shifts, technological impacts on prices and politics, and market dynamics, which are often invisible and misunderstood (2). Perhaps in their well-meaning effort at simplification, the authors decided to aggregate into the social realm everything from institutional and economic factors to demographic and policy influences. This condensation of the complexity associated with the social precludes analysis of dynamics, adaptive values, and overall influences of processes that act at multiple scales. Díaz et al. (1) observed that an interdisciplinary framework must be generalizable, practically applicable, and compatible across disciplines. Although their approach captures several aspects of the contributions of functional diversity to ESs of interest to social actors, it requires substantial elaboration to reflect many of the past two decades of insights from the social sciences (3-5). Incorporating local institutions, cross-scale linkages, and technological, market, and demographic forces into frameworks that reflect the relationships between functional diversity and ESs at the local level would constitute a necessary step forward.
Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability Amu Agrawal This chapter focuses on the large b... more Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability Amu Agrawal This chapter focuses on the large body of empirical work on common prop-erty. Its objective is delineate some of the most significant accomplish-ments of this literature, discuss some of its continuing deficiencies, ...
This paper aims to accomplish two tasks: One, it presents a framework to help analyze the devolut... more This paper aims to accomplish two tasks: One, it presents a framework to help analyze the devolution of the use, management, and governance of resources. It does so by bringing together several strands of work on institutional analysis and property rights, and building on theories of collective action. These writings are highly relevant to our understanding of governance and devolution, but their relationship to devolution and governance requires closer examination than it has previously received. Two, the paper provides empirical evidence from two cases on devolution of forest use from India and Nepal to illustrate and examine the offered framework. The devolution of forest use in Kumaon in India and efforts to involve local population in the management of protected areas in the Terai of Nepal form the two contrasting studies of the origins and implementation of devolution. Studying these contrasting cases enables us to examine the propositions we advance about the relationships between characteristics of devolutionary initiatives, the likelihood of an initiative being implemented successfully, and resource-related outcomes.
Based on this analysis, Duncan argues that education is a primary arena for intervention. She arg... more Based on this analysis, Duncan argues that education is a primary arena for intervention. She argues that local control, in regions like Dahlia and Blackwell, limits poor children's ability to learn the cultural tool kit that could enable them to become fuller participants in a civic ...
It would be no exaggeration to say that the study of forests as commons has been central to the d... more It would be no exaggeration to say that the study of forests as commons has been central to the development of scholarship on common property. Equally certainly, the interest in forests has generated a vast corpus of research outside the field of common property. The magnitude, variety, and depth of this body of research is an accurate reflection of the many different ways in which forests have been and continue to be central to human survival, livelihoods, and prosperity.
This paper describes and then analyzes the decision-making arrangements that prevail among the Ra... more This paper describes and then analyzes the decision-making arrangements that prevail among the Raikas—nomadic shepherds from Western India. The paper suggests, using a simple analytical framework, that the existing distribution of decision-making during migration helps the Raikasto utilize available economies of scale, represent the different interest groups in their collectives, and control their decision-makers. At the same time, the ordinary shepherds in the camp are able to extract a comfortable subsistence from a complex and harsh environment by delegating much of their decision-making responsibilities to the leaders in the camp. To the extent shepherds in other parts of the world migrate over long distances and must confront similar issues of delegation of responsibilities and control over decision-makers, the analysis holds general relevance.
Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, 2008
This article examines the relationship between local enforcement and forests used as commons. It ... more This article examines the relationship between local enforcement and forests used as commons. It uses a unique multicountry dataset, created over the past 15 years by the International Forestry Resources and Institutions Research Program. Drawing on original enforcement and forest commons data from 9 countries, we find that higher levels of local enforcement have a strong and positive but complex relationship to the probability of forest regeneration. This relationship holds even when the influence of a number of other factors such as user group size, subsistence, and commercial importance of forests, size of forest, and collective action for forest improvement activities is taken into account. Although several of the above factors have a statistically significant relationship to changes in the condition of forest commons, differences in levels of local enforcement strongly moderate their link with forest commons outcomes. The research, using data from diverse political, social, and ecological contexts, shows both the importance of enforcement to forest commons and some of the limits of forest governance through commons arrangements.
... significant proportion of the total endowment of natural resources, comprising land, water, f... more ... significant proportion of the total endowment of natural resources, comprising land, water, forests and ... appropriation of these resources, forcing an opportunistic and exploitative mode of resource use ... the causes of CPR problems and to explore viable CPR management strategies ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013
Protected areas in tropical countries are managed under different governance regimes, the relativ... more Protected areas in tropical countries are managed under different governance regimes, the relative effectiveness of which in avoiding deforestation has been the subject of recent debates. Participants in these debates answer appeals for more strict protection with the argument that sustainable use areas and indigenous lands can balance deforestation pressures by leveraging local support to create and enforce protective regulations. Which protection strategy is more effective can also depend on (i) the level of deforestation pressures to which an area is exposed and (ii) the intensity of government enforcement. We examine this relationship empirically, using data from 292 protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon. We show that, for any given level of deforestation pressure, strictly protected areas consistently avoided more deforestation than sustainable use areas. Indigenous lands were particularly effective at avoiding deforestation in locations with high deforestation pressure. Findings were stable across two time periods featuring major shifts in the intensity of government enforcement. We also observed shifting trends in the location of protected areas, documenting that between 2000 and 2005 strictly protected areas were more likely to be established in high-pressure locations than in sustainable use areas and indigenous lands. Our findings confirm that all protection regimes helped reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 2013
Management-effectiveness scores are used widely by donors and implementers of conservation projec... more Management-effectiveness scores are used widely by donors and implementers of conservation projects to prioritize, track, and evaluate investments in protected areas. However, there is little evidence that these scores actually reflect the capacity of protected areas to deliver conservation outcomes. We examined the relation between indicators of management effectiveness in protected areas and the effectiveness of protected areas in reducing fire occurrence in the Amazon rainforest. We used data collected with the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) scorecard, adopted by some of the world's largest conservation organizations to track management characteristics believed to be crucial for protected-area effectiveness. We used the occurrence of forest fires from 2000 through 2010 as a measure of the effect of protected areas on undesired land-cover change in the Amazon basin. We used matching to compare the estimated effect of protected areas with low versus high METT scores on fire occurrence. We also estimated effects of individual protected areas on fire occurrence and explored the relation between these effects and METT scores. The relations between METT scores and effects of protected areas on fire occurrence were weak. Protected areas with higher METT scores in 2005 did not seem to have performed better than protected areas with lower METT scores at reducing fire occurrence over the last 10 years. Further research into the relations between management-effectiveness indicators and conservation outcomes in protected areas seems necessary, and our results show that the careful application of matching methods can be a suitable method for that purpose.Vinculación de Indicadores de Efectividad de Manejo con los Efectos Observados de la Ocurrencia de Fuego en Áreas Protegidas en la AmazoniaLos valores de efectividad del manejo son utilizados ampliamente por donantes e implementadores de proyectos de conservación para priorizar, seguir, y evaluar inversiones en áreas protegidas. Sin embargo, hay poca evidencia de que estos valores reflejan la capacidad de las áreas protegidas para generar resultados de conservación. Examinamos la relación entre indicadores de efectividad del manejo en áreas protegidas y la efectividad de áreas protegidas para reducir la ocurrencia de fuego en bosques de la Amazonia. Utilizamos datos recolectados con el sistema de puntuación Herramienta para el Seguimiento de la Efectividad del Manejo (HSEM), adoptado por algunas de las organizaciones de conservación más grandes del mundo para monitorear atributos del manejo considerados cruciales para la efectividad de las áreas protegidas. Utilizamos la ocurrencia de los incendios forestales de 2000 a 2010 como una medida del efecto de las áreas protegidas sobre cambios no deseados en la cobertura de suelo en la Cuenca del Amazonas. Usamos combinaciones para comparar el efecto estimado de las áreas protegidas con valores HSEM de ocurrencia de fuego bajos versus altos. También estimamos los efectos de áreas protegidas individuales sobre la ocurrencia de fuego y exploramos la relación entre estos efectos y los valores HSEM. Las relaciones entre los valores HSEM y los efectos de las áreas protegidas sobre la ocurrencia de fuego fueron débiles. Las áreas protegidas con valores HSEM más altos en 2005 no parecen haber reducido la ocurrencia de fuego en los últimos 10 años. Es necesario investigar más sobre las relaciones entre indicadores de efectividad del manejo y los resultados de conservación en áreas protegidas, y nuestros resultados muestran que la aplicación cuidadosa de métodos combinatorios es un método adecuado para ese propósito.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
Forests provide multiple benefits at local to global scales. These include the global public good... more Forests provide multiple benefits at local to global scales. These include the global public good of carbon sequestration and local and national level contributions to livelihoods for more than half a billion users. Forest commons are a particularly important class of forests generating these multiple benefits. Institutional arrangements to govern forest commons are believed to substantially influence carbon storage and livelihood contributions, especially when they incorporate local knowledge and decentralized decision making. However, hypothesized relationships between institutional factors and multiple benefits have never been tested on data from multiple countries. By using original data on 80 forest commons in 10 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, we show that larger forest size and greater rule-making autonomy at the local level are associated with high carbon storage and livelihood benefits; differences in ownership of forest commons are associated with trade-offs between livelihood benefits and carbon storage. We argue that local communities restrict their consumption of forest products when they own forest commons, thereby increasing carbon storage. In showing rule-making autonomy and ownership as distinct and important institutional influences on forest outcomes, our results are directly relevant to international climate change mitigation initiatives such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and avoided deforestation. Transfer of ownership over larger forest commons patches to local communities, coupled with payments for improved carbon storage can contribute to climate change mitigation without adversely affecting local livelihoods.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011
proposed an "interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of relationships between functional div... more proposed an "interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of relationships between functional diversity, ecosystem services, and human actions." Their framework addresses the linkages between land uses and ecosystem service (ES) provision to inform decisions by relevant parties. We welcome the development and practical application of tools for analyzing the complexity of social-ecological systems (SESs), but there are fundamental gaps in the oversimplified framework of Díaz et al. (1). These flaws obscure critical aspects of the functioning of SESs, preclude their improved understanding, and thereby undermine the goal of fruitful scientific analysis. In particular, the proposed local-level framework does not consider key determinants of local decisions about resource uses including legacies, institutional and political memories, social/ economic/political constraints and opportunities, linkages between governance and social and environmental contexts, and disturbances. Their model ignores the mediating and structuring role of institutions in all human decisions as well as the relationships of formal and informal institutional processes to local and larger scale dynamics. Furthermore, the model's lack of consideration of flows of influence from local to higher levels (figure 1, lack of arrows from local to higher levels) and inattention to the knowledge of different actors mean that the framework misses basic aspects of human and ecosystem interactions. Indeed, because the approach relies on responses of interviewed actors to identify socially valued ESs without much attention to how key actors will be identified or to essential features of social systems, it is also likely to undervalue critical ESs that other social actors would have emphasized. Other causal processes and factors that receive limited or no attention in the model of Díaz et al. (1) include structural relationships (e.g., markets and access, nonmarket relations, factors determining social preferences, tradeoffs and synergies between outcomes and their drivers) and political-economic and political-ecological dimensions at local scales (e.g., determinants of access to resources, factors influencing rules and choices for distribution of costs and benefits, rationales and dynamics behind alliances and conflicts associated with the use of resources and ESs). The proposed framework also pays scant attention to demographic shifts, technological impacts on prices and politics, and market dynamics, which are often invisible and misunderstood (2). Perhaps in their well-meaning effort at simplification, the authors decided to aggregate into the social realm everything from institutional and economic factors to demographic and policy influences. This condensation of the complexity associated with the social precludes analysis of dynamics, adaptive values, and overall influences of processes that act at multiple scales. Díaz et al. (1) observed that an interdisciplinary framework must be generalizable, practically applicable, and compatible across disciplines. Although their approach captures several aspects of the contributions of functional diversity to ESs of interest to social actors, it requires substantial elaboration to reflect many of the past two decades of insights from the social sciences (3-5). Incorporating local institutions, cross-scale linkages, and technological, market, and demographic forces into frameworks that reflect the relationships between functional diversity and ESs at the local level would constitute a necessary step forward.
Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability Amu Agrawal This chapter focuses on the large b... more Common Resources and Institutional Sustainability Amu Agrawal This chapter focuses on the large body of empirical work on common prop-erty. Its objective is delineate some of the most significant accomplish-ments of this literature, discuss some of its continuing deficiencies, ...
This paper aims to accomplish two tasks: One, it presents a framework to help analyze the devolut... more This paper aims to accomplish two tasks: One, it presents a framework to help analyze the devolution of the use, management, and governance of resources. It does so by bringing together several strands of work on institutional analysis and property rights, and building on theories of collective action. These writings are highly relevant to our understanding of governance and devolution, but their relationship to devolution and governance requires closer examination than it has previously received. Two, the paper provides empirical evidence from two cases on devolution of forest use from India and Nepal to illustrate and examine the offered framework. The devolution of forest use in Kumaon in India and efforts to involve local population in the management of protected areas in the Terai of Nepal form the two contrasting studies of the origins and implementation of devolution. Studying these contrasting cases enables us to examine the propositions we advance about the relationships between characteristics of devolutionary initiatives, the likelihood of an initiative being implemented successfully, and resource-related outcomes.
Based on this analysis, Duncan argues that education is a primary arena for intervention. She arg... more Based on this analysis, Duncan argues that education is a primary arena for intervention. She argues that local control, in regions like Dahlia and Blackwell, limits poor children's ability to learn the cultural tool kit that could enable them to become fuller participants in a civic ...
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