Abstract
How to best govern natural resources in order to enable a sustainable way of handling them is what both research and practice aim to achieve. Empirical findings from several studies indicate that resource users are able to successfully cooperate in the management of common pool resources and solve social dilemmas through self-governance arrangements. The authors explore the potential success of self-governance in irrigation systems, focusing primarily on the factors influencing compliance of irrigation water users under self-crafted and self-enforced rules in two Kyrgyz communities. A field experiment is employed to provide insights and some quantitative empirical data, further complemented by qualitative methods (questionnaires, group discussions and interviews) to enhance the analysis of the findings about working rules in irrigation at the community level. The results show that Kyrgyz irrigation users of the selected communities generally respond better in a self-governance setting in terms of rules compliance, distribution efficiency and equity. Compliance and cooperative behavior depend on group as well as individual variables including communication, social norms and the legitimacy of rules.
Highlights
A highly debated topic in the literature and among scholars, practitioners and politicians concerns finding a “panacea” to guarantee the sustainable management of diminishing natural resources, i.e., to protect them from overuse and safeguard their social, environmental and economic viability in the long-run
Influenced by Hardin’s [1] “Tragedy of the Commons”—a dooms-day scenario suggesting the inevitable destruction of resources used in common—as well as numerous cases of overused and depleted resources worldwide, many policy makers and public administrators advocate for centralized control over natural resources
The suggested approaches are often too simplistic to include the dynamics of resources falling into the category of common-pool resources (CPRs)
Summary
A highly debated topic in the literature and among scholars, practitioners and politicians concerns finding a “panacea” to guarantee the sustainable management of diminishing natural resources, i.e., to protect them from overuse and safeguard their social, environmental and economic viability in the long-run. Influenced by Hardin’s [1] “Tragedy of the Commons”—a dooms-day scenario suggesting the inevitable destruction of resources used in common (or better in a free access situation)—as well as numerous cases of overused and depleted resources worldwide, many policy makers and public administrators advocate for centralized control over natural resources. They argue that government intervention could solve the “tragedy” by restraining users’ extractions through regulations and enforced sanctions [2]. Such institutional arrangements often appear in cases of self-management of resources by local users, and includes the design and enforcement of rules based on collective action [3,4,5]
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