Common Pool Resource Management Research Articles

Drivers of successful common-pool resource management: A conjoint experiment on groundwater management in Brazil

Carefully designed common-pool resource (CPR) management systems can improve water security, but many NGOs and governments do not have the resources and logistical capacity to implement all important features of a system at once. In addition, users’ perception of management features is important to increase buy-in and adoption of a new system. Which aspects of a commons management system do users perceive to be most important? We conduct a conjoint survey experiment about groundwater management with rural residents in the semi-arid region of Northeast Brazil. We randomly vary five features of a water management system: 1) discussion, 2) social sanctions for overuse, 3) rules and penalties, 4) payment, 5) monitoring and dissemination of conditions to users. Each feature increases perceived likelihood of collective well management and individual water conservation. We find that features act as complements or substitutes; in particular, discussion complements monitoring, and payment substitutes for rules. Our results have implications for how to study and prioritize the features of CPR management systems to improve water security in other rural, semi-arid regions with groundwater reliance when it is infeasible to implement all recommended features.

Beyond neo-corporatism: state employers and the special-interest politics of public sector wage-setting*

ABSTRACT Cross-country variation in the outcomes of public sector wage-setting (PSWS) persists in Europe. Received wisdom from the neo-corporatist scholarship attributes it to the presence/absence of centralized or co-ordinated wage-setting regimes. This article challenges the conventional view by analysing PSWS through the lens of the common-pool problem of public finance and special-interest politics. Given the structure of political incentives and the use of fiscal money by public employers, PSWS tends to be inherently inflationary. Yet, the article posits that the extent to which wage inflation occurs in the public sector hinges on the institutional properties of PSWS governance systems. Systematic wage restraint occurs within systems where PSWS authority is delegated to a state actor – either the Finance Ministry or an independent agency – with an organizational mandate and powers to ensure PSWS be conducted in the general interest rather than in response to public sector groups’ narrow interests. The argument is demonstrated by leveraging an original combination of most-similar and most-different case studies combined with archival research and elite interviews. The findings advance our understanding of the political economy of wage restraint in Europe and highlight the key role state actors and institutional structures play within growth regimes.

Longitudinal assessment of an integrated approach to large-scale common-pool water resource management: a case study of Nebraska’s Platte River basin

The state of Nebraska, USA employs a localized, integrated approach to managing water resources to address escalating quantity challenges. Here, we assess differences between agricultural water users’ perceptions of water management in a water-stressed area of Nebraska after a first round of water management planning and perceptions of three other stakeholder groups in Nebraska immediately after a second round of water management planning. We also demonstrate the value of augmenting Ostrom’s common-pool resource management design principles with locally relevant criteria to evaluate water management at regional and statewide governance scales. Data from a survey of Platte River basin agricultural producers in 2012 were combined with survey data collected in 2019 from Platte basin agricultural producers, Platte basin non-farm residents, and non-farm residents across Nebraska. There were significant increases from 2012 to 2019 in Platte basin producers’ perceptions of four criteria and significant decreases in their perceptions of four other criteria. The current system continues to work relatively well, but notable exceptions endure, including a significant decrease in the number of agricultural producers who agree that there is equitable treatment of water users and trust in water management agencies. Non-farm respondents were significantly less likely than producers to agree that the current water management system is working well with regard to enforcing water-use rules.

Experimental evidence of common pool resource use in the presence of uncertainty

Tipping points can occur in many complex environmental systems and often produce abrupt and irreversible change. Thresholds associated with tipping points are difficult to predict in many cases, leading to considerable challenges associated with the management of natural resources. We use a common pool resource (CPR) framework to investigate the impact of different types of threshold uncertainty on CPR use and the efficacy of coordination among group members. Participants in an economic laboratory experiment made decisions on the use of a CPR under three types of threshold treatments – a known threshold (certainty), an uncertain threshold with a known probability distribution of possible thresholds (risk), and an uncertain threshold with an unknown probability distribution (ambiguity). We also tested the effect of communication on coordination among participants in each treatment. We find that while threshold uncertainty (both risk and ambiguity) tends to increase CPR use, communication reduces the use of shared resources and increases social efficiency. Communication reduces the incidence of coordination failure in the presence of both types of threshold uncertainty. A takeaway from our results is that encouraging communication is likely to improve CPR management, while improving information about the probability of specific thresholds may only be useful if thresholds can be identified with certainty.

Social Head-Enders: Access and Authority in Irrigation Governance

Inequalities in access are a major concern for the management of common pool resources. In the case of irrigation water, inequalities are often explained by spatial “head-ender/tail-ender” distinctions, determined by distance to the water source. However, inequalities in access are also produced by social relations and social institutions. Drawing from ethnographic research in Ağlasun, a rural town in the south-west of Turkey, we examine socio-spatial inequalities vis-à-vis water access in a small-scale, locally managed irrigation system. Our findings demonstrate that spatial “head-ender/tail-ender” differences in the irrigation system intersect with social relations. By introducing the concept of “social head-enders,” we emphasize how social and political relations may introduce a complementary asymmetry in access to water between farmers. Analyzing the socio-spatial dynamics in such asymmetric systems allows us to further explore the interaction between access and authority. This leads us to illustrate important conditions for more equitable and democratic local irrigation governance.

Network Structure and Collaborative Management in Natural Resource and Environmental Management

Collaborative management is one approach to the management of common pool resource at the local level. Study of collaborative management is expected to offset the weakness of the hierarchical and market approach that is also existent in natural resource management. This study describes the conceptual framework and discourse of the collaborative approach of network structure-based natural resource and environmental management at the local level. Using literature review, this paper critically summarizes the views of researchers and academicians about network structure based collaborative management. This study concludes that network structure based collaborative management can address the dilemma and challenges in sustainable natural resource and environmental management. Sustainable development in the context of natural resource and environmental management is the resilience to environmental degradation, social vulnerability of local communities and the capacity to protect and adapt, along with the conservation of natural resources through innovations and revitalizations.

Managing with logic: A Bayesian causal network assessment using the critical list of variables for sustaining the commons in the Monarch Reserve

There have been calls for systematic research approaches and innovative methods so that lessons from efficient common pool resource (CPR) management systems be scaled up and used as models for more efficient and strategic interventions. As an example, the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico has a varied history of management success and requires a new assessment approach to ensure long-term and consistent success, as threats from urban sprawl and climate change press in. The well-established critical list of variables for sustaining the commons, along with Bayesian causal networks were used as an integrative method to assess what variables were most relevant to current management conditions. The critical list is a list of qualified variables that are substantive in cases of successful common pool resource management. Bayesian causal networks show individual and conditional relationships in complex systems, easily integrating both qualitative and quantitative data. The aim of this study is to evaluate and contrast four sites that represent relatively successful sustainable forest management in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve and determine whether full compliance with the critical list is necessary for management efficiency. Forest cover change was maintained above a threshold of < 0.03% forest cover loss inside the reserve in all cases, and was the proxy measure of overall forest management success. The BCNs signaled small size and well-defined boundaries (both in the resource system category and in the social group category), as the most influential both as single influence variables and with conditional influence, in all cases. Full compliance with the theoretical qualifications of the critical variables was not necessary for management success.

R&amp;D INVESTMENTS IN PLANT BREEDING UNDER CHANGING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

In a Cournot duopoly model, we examine three policy regimes relevant to current international plant breeding: patents alone, patents with a farmer exemption to use saved seed, and patents with research collaboration. In the symmetric version of the model where firms are identical, we show that the social planner prefers patents with research collaboration over patents alone and prefers the patents alone to patents with a farmer exemption. We examine two variations of the model where firms are asymmetric i. due to cost differences and ii. due to the different endowments of germplasm. Situations develop where the research collaboration resolves the common pool problem and increases R&amp;D investment and where it creates free riding problem and decreases R&amp;D investment. We show that the lower cost (more endowed) breeder invests more in R&amp;D under the research collaboration than patents if variety differentiation is high and cost (knowledge endowment) dispersion is low. On the other hand, the higher cost (less endowed) breeder, generally, invests less in R&amp;D under a research collaboration if variety differentiation or cost (knowledge endowment) dispersion is low. These findings suggest new gains are likely from the adoption of international conventions of plant breeders' rights. Keywords: Plant breeding, farmer exemption, research collaboration, Intellectual Property Rights, product differentiation, Cournot oligopoly.JEL Classifications: D21, D43, D60, D82, L13, L24, O34, O38, Q16, Q18DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijefi.11544

Do social identity and cognitive diversity correlate in environmental stakeholders? A novel approach to measuring cognitive distance within and between groups.

Groups with higher cognitive diversity, i.e. variations in how people think and solve problems, are thought to contribute to improved performance in complex problem-solving. However, embracing or even engineering adequate cognitive diversity is not straightforward and may even jeopardize social inclusion. In response, those that want to promote cognitive diversity might make a simplified assumption that there exists a link between identity diversity, i.e. range of social characteristics, and variations in how people perceive and solve problems. If this assumption holds true, incorporating diverse identities may concurrently achieve cognitive diversity to the extent essential for complex problem-solving, while social inclusion is explicitly acknowledged. However, currently there is a lack of empirical evidence to support this hypothesis in the context of complex social-ecological systems—a system wherein human and environmental dimensions are interdependent, where common-pool resources are used or managed by multiple types of stakeholders. Using a fisheries example, we examine the relationship between resource stakeholders’ identities and their cognitive diversity. We used cognitive mapping techniques in conjunction with network analysis to measure cognitive distances within and between stakeholders of various social types (i.e., identities). Our results empirically show that groups with higher identity diversity also demonstrate more cognitive diversity, evidenced by disparate characteristics of their cognitive maps that represent their understanding of fishery dynamics. These findings have important implications for sustainable management of common-pool resources, where the inclusion of diverse stakeholders is routine, while our study shows it may also achieve higher cognitive coverage that can potentially lead to more complete, accurate, and innovative understanding of complex resource dynamics.

Democracy and Corruption

I examine the relationship between democracy and the perceived risk of corruption in a panel of 130 countries. My panel model controls for country fixed effects and enables the estimation of a within-country relationship between democracy and corruption. My main finding is that democracy significantly reduces the risk of corruption, but only in countries where ethnic fractionalization is low. In strongly fractionalized countries a transition from autocracy to democracy does not significantly reduce corruption. One explanation for these findings is that the corruption-reducing effect of greater accountability of politicians under democracy is undermined by the common pool problem; fractionalization increases the severity of the common pool problem.

Common Pool Problem: South Pars-North Dome Gas Field

The aim of this paper is to investigate possible problems of efficiency arising from the joint exploitation of the common gas pool (South Pars - North Dome, the largest natural gas reservoir in the world) by Iran and Qatar. The problem is related to the difference between private incentives and common goals. In the case of non-renewable resources, a Pareto-optimal joint extraction path could exist, but it is unlikely to occur in reality. We studied the difference in incentives for an optimal exploitation path for Iran and Qatar and found that their joint behavior was likely suboptimal from the perspective of the optimal dynamics of gas resource exploitation. In part, this is related to the difference in wealth, and in part to the sanctions against Iran, which have so far not allowed Iran to participate freely in the world market. Considering that the cost of future gas extraction in Russia's northern fields is likely to increase, a delay in the optimal presence of Iranian gas on the world market may lead to a suboptimal sequence of exploitation of various gas fields, which would mean both problems for the profitability of investments in Russia and higher world prices for natural gas in the future.

Can Nationally Prescribed Institutional Arrangements Enable Community-Based Conservation? An Analysis of Conservancies and Community Forests in the Zambezi Region of Namibia

Community-based conservation is advocated as an idea that long-term conservation success requires engaging with, providing benefits for, and establishing institutions representing local communities. However, community-based conservation’s efficacy and impact in sustainable resource management varies depending on national natural resource policies and implications for local institutional arrangements. This paper analyses the significance of natural resource management policies and institutional design on the management of common pool resources (CPRs), by comparing Namibian conservancies and community forests. To meet this aim, we reviewed key national policies pertinent to natural resource governance and conducted 28 semi-structured interviews between 2012 and 2013. Key informants included conservancy and community forest staff and committee members, village headmen, NGO coordinators, regional foresters, wildlife officials (wardens), and senior government officials in the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry. We explored the following questions: how do national natural resource management policies affect the operations of local common pool resource institutions? and how do external factors affect local institutions and community participation in CPRs decision-making? Our results show that a diversity of national policies significantly influenced local institutional arrangements. Formation of conservancies and community forests by communities is not only directly linked with state policies designed to increase wildlife numbers and promote forest growth or improve condition, but also formulated primarily for benefits from and control over natural resources. The often-assumed direct relationship between national policies and local institutional arrangements does not always hold in practice, resulting in institutional mismatch. We aim to advance theoretical and applied discourse on common pool resource governance in social-ecological systems, with implications for sustainable land management policies in Namibia and other landscapes across sub-Saharan Africa.

Federalism, but how? The impact of vertical fiscal imbalance on economic growth. Evidence from Belgium*

AbstractThis paper applies both parametric and nonparametric synthetic control methods in the case of a specific federal reform. It evaluates the impact of Belgium's constitutional federalism reform of 1993 on GDP per capita. The findings show a negative impact of the reform on economic growth. This negative impact ceases soon after 2001, when a subsequent reform reduced the vertical fiscal imbalance that characterized the 1993 federal reform. It is argued that the presence of a strong federalism with subnational spending autonomy and, conversely, a centralized tax system, enhanced pork barrel spending, a common pool problem, thus damaging economic growth.

Understanding uptake of community groundwater monitoring in rural Brazil

Resource monitoring is often cited as important for effective common pool resources management. In practice, not all monitoring interventions are successful, particularly when the resource, such as groundwater, is challenging to monitor and measure. We conducted a field experiment on groundwater monitoring in Ceará, Brazil, where communities are increasingly reliant on groundwater yet do not engage in monitoring. Despite careful implementation, uptake of monitoring within the 80 treatment communities was low. To unpack this low uptake, we conduct multimethods exploratory research. We find that uptake is less likely in communities facing high coordination costs, either within the community leadership or across the broader community. Uptake is also less likely when there are physical barriers to monitoring, when there are more substitutes for groundwater, and when there is lower variability in water availability. Our findings can inform future monitoring interventions in similar contexts worldwide.

Adoption of community monitoring improves common pool resource management across contexts

Pervasive overuse and degradation of common pool resources (CPRs) is a global concern. To sustainably manage CPRs, effective governance institutions are essential. A large literature has developed to describe the institutional design features employed by communities that successfully manage their CPRs. Yet, these designs remain far from universally adopted. We focus on one prominent institutional design feature, community monitoring, and ask whether nongovernmental organizations or governments can facilitate its adoption and whether adoption of monitoring affects CPR use. To answer these questions, we implemented randomized controlled trials in six countries. The harmonized trials randomly assigned the introduction of community monitoring to 400 communities, with data collection in an additional 347 control communities. Most of the 400 communities adopted regular monitoring practices over the course of a year. In a meta-analysis of the experimental results from the six sites, we find that the community monitoring reduced CPR use and increased user satisfaction and knowledge by modest amounts. Our findings demonstrate that community monitoring can improve CPR management in disparate contexts, even when monitoring is externally initiated rather than homegrown. These findings provide guidance for the design of future programs and policies intended to develop monitoring capabilities in communities. Furthermore, our harmonized, multisite trial provides sustainability science with a new way to study the complexity of socioecological systems and builds generalizable insights about how to improve CPR management.

FACETS OF NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT FOR RAINFED AGRICULTURE: A PARADIGM SHIFT IS IMPERATIVE

Spanning several agro-ecological regions constituting 60% of total cropped area. The rain fed areas represent the geography with the largest concentration of poverty and backwardness. The cumulative neglect of the rainfed areas over the earlier plan periods in terms of institutional development, support systems, availability of appropriate inputs, credit, market access, agricultural research and extension has caused widespread desperation amongst farming community. Rain fed agriculture supports an estimated 40% of population (484 million) and has a large share of cropped area under rice (42%), pulses (77%), oilseeds (66%) and coarse cereals (85%). Harboring about 78% of cattle, 64% of sheep and 75% of goats rain fed areas cater to most part of the meat market in the country. In the light of the above, this paper made an attempt to briefly review the performance of Rain fed agriculture and critically examine the role of Livestock, Fisheries and Horticulture as a key component of rural livelihoods in rain fed regions and finally it also strongly advocates the hidden potential of Management of Common Pool Resources (CPRs) is an essential part of natural resource management in rain fed areas.&#x0D; &#x0D; &lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt; Article visualizations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0747/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Equity in environmental governance: perceived fairness of distributional justice principles in marine co-management

Concerns with distributional justice invariably arise in environmental governance, especially in the conservation and management of common-pool resources. These initiatives generate an array of costs and benefits that are typically heterogeneously distributed. Distribution of these impacts in a way that is considered fair by local stakeholders is not only a moral imperative, but instrumental to achieving social and ecological success given perceived unfairness fosters conflict and undermines cooperation. However, understandings of local stakeholders’ conceptions of distributional fairness are rare because research often assesses distributional outcomes based on tacit assumptions about what constitutes fairness (e.g. equality). We examine what local stakeholders consider distributional fairness with respect to monetary benefits arising from a collective payment for ecosystem services scheme in a co-managed marine protected area in Fiji. In six villages associated with the co-managed marine protected area, we elicited individuals’ fairness judgements of five distributional justice principles: equality, need, and three forms of proportionality based on customary rights, fisheries opportunity-costs, and involvement in co-management. We examine how fairness judgements are associated with socio-demographic characteristics indicative of key identities, thereby building on socially-aggregated approaches typical of the nascent literature on perceived fairness. We find the rights-based principle was considered the ‘most fair’ and the opportunity-costs principle the ‘least fair’. Our findings challenge prevailing understandings of distributional justice in conservation and commons management, which favour the principles of equality or opportunity-cost. We also find that education was significantly positively related to fairness judgements of all principles, whilst wealth was significantly related to the equality and the opportunity-based principles. These results provide insights into how fairness judgements could be influenced by key elements of current social change in the Global South (e.g. increasing formal education, market engagement and wealth accumulation). Overall, our results suggest that fair environmental governance requires explicit identification of distributional fairness conceptions of those most affected by such initiatives, especially in a context of increasing globalisation of conservation knowledge and practice.

Examining fishery common-pool resource problems in the largest lagoon of Southeast Asia through a participatory systems approach

Examining fishery common-pool resource problems in the largest lagoon of Southeast Asia through a participatory systems approach

Challenges for the development of environmentally sustainable cage culture farming in Lake Maninjau, Indonesia: an institutional perspective

ABSTRACT The environmental condition of Lake Maninjau, a complex tropical system in Indonesia, has been suffering from the proliferation of tilapia cage culture practices. The area around the lake is inhabited by the Minangese ethnic group, which has strong customary laws and clan system. Applying the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and based on face-to-face semi-structured interviews, this paper aims to understand the challenges for the development of environmentally sustainable cage culture farming. Our institutional analysis reveals that the main challenges are low levels of trust between communities and officials, and conflicting formal and informal institutions which have prevented the emergence of strong rules-in-use. This is a particularly interesting theoretical contribution to the literature on the management of common pool resources (CPR), as our case study is an example of private property farming in a common pool resource (the lake), a dynamic which remains understudied in the CPR literature. We provide suggestions for local stakeholders as well as regional and national government related to the importance of seeking local legitimacy of the working rules to govern cage culture. The lessons learned from this case study might be useful for the governance of aquaculture in other lakes in Indonesia and countries of the Global South.

Environmental justice organizing as commoning practice in groundwater reform

Despite the commons being a long-standing site of conflict, the role of social movements in common-pool resource management has been underaddressed. By exploring the role of environmental justice organizing in the San Joaquin Valley during California’s landmark groundwater reform process as a commoning practice, this article seeks to fill this gap and advance our understanding of how collective action can, and is, being leveraged to advance just and sustainable transitions. I argue that through three principal strategies of challenging participation, scope, and authority, the movement has played a formative role in a landscape of intensive enclosure. Applying a commoning lens to the case highlights the important role of not only social movements in commons management but also of commons management as a venue for the rearticulation of regional socionatural relations. Such opportunities are particularly important in underinstitutionalized rural areas where opportunities to renegotiate these relations are often few and far between. Understanding the emergence and growth of commoning communities engaged in such efforts provides several important lessons. Individual commoning strategies can help identifying principal constraints and opportunities to transcend them. To be fully understood, however, they need to be considered collectively as well as in context. In doing so, the critical importance of focusing on the work commons do, rather than produce, becomes apparent. Commoning is both a tool and a goal in itself.