Sustainable management of common pool resources requires local information and participation. We develop a framework for managing commons based on threats, consequences, and solutions (TCS). The ...status of the community's interaction with their local commons is critical in developing viable solutions to avoiding the loss of natural resources, enhancing the benefits they provide, and sustaining the functions they perform. Threats to natural resources, the consequences of their depletion, and the solutions local communities perceive as most effective to prevent this loss are assessed as related to socioeconomic and landscape factors to develop strategies for the resilience of commons. Communities and representative stakeholders (224 respondents) participated in a survey in Honduras's Lake Yojoa watershed. The community's perception was also evaluated for impacts of changes in land use and climate on local commons. An ordinal logistic regression analysis was used to determine the effect of land use, geographic, and demographic factors on community perceptions. Distance to the lake, landcover percentages, slope, type of work, age, and importance of tourism were significant in influencing community interaction and perception of TCS. The involvement of communities in deriving knowledge on TCS is critical to increasing the resilience of local commons to emerging threats.
US cities and towns on the border with Mexico tend to have below-average incomes, while Mexican border cities and towns tend to be above the average of Mexico. Social scientists have not explained ...these differences from national averages in a convincing way. Nor have they described the characteristics of border cities and towns in ways that differentiate them from cities and towns in the interiors of their respective nation. The key to both puzzles is the fact that the institutional environment in the US-Mexico border region is binational in origin. Mexican institutions create externalities in the United States and vice versa. Recognition of this fact is a first step in dealing with the international public goods and common pool resources of the border region. Keywords: common pool resources, externalities, institutions, integration, intergovernmental organizations, international public goods Ciudades y pueblos a ambos lados de la frontera Mexico-EE. UU. comparten caracteristicas que las hacen diferentes de las comunidades en el interior de sus respectivas naciones. Por ejemplo, las diferencias de ingresos transfronterizos son mas pequenas que las diferencias nacionales y cada lado esta fuertemente influenciado por politicas y eventos que se originan en el otro lado. Hay tres razones principales para estos efectos: proximidad, redes y externalidades. Este ensayo utiliza la perspectiva de economia institucional para argumentar que el ambiente institucional de las ciudades y pueblos fronterizos es binacional. El reconocimiento de este hecho es un primer paso en la gestion de los bienes publicos internacionales y los recursos comunes de la region fronteriza. Palabras clave: bienes publicos internacionales, externalidades, instituciones, integracion, organizaciones intergubernamentales, recursos comunes Villes et villages des deux cotes de la frontiere americano-mexicaine partagent des caracteristiques qui les differencient des communautes a l'interieur de leurs nations respectives. Par exemple, les ecarts de revenu de part et d'autre de la frontiere sont plus reduits que les differences nationales, et chaque cote est fortement influence par les politiques et les evenements qui proviennent de l'autre cote. Trois raisons principales expliquent ces effets : la proximite, les reseaux et les externalites. Cet essai utilise la perspective de l'economie institutionnelle et soutient que l'environnement institutionnel des villes frontalieres est binational. Cette reconnaissance est une premiere etape pour la gestion des biens publics internationaux et des ressources communes de la region frontaliere. Mots-cles: externalites, ressources communes, institutions, integration, organisations intergouvernementales, biens publics internationaux.
•An overlooked factor in prosocial organizing is its property regime.•Common property is a feature of several notable prosocial organizations.•Common property helps decommodify the “fictitious ...commodities” of money, labor and land.•Decommodifying restores factors to the use value they have before being marketized.•Recovering use value devotes factors to their prosocial purpose.
Non-parametric tests of behavior in the commons Banzhaf, H. Spencer; Liu, Yaqin; Smith, Martin D. ...
Journal of economic behavior & organization,
August 2024, 2024-08-00, Volume:
224
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
•Deviation from Nash behavior manifests as behavioral responses to property rights regimes.•A non-parametric test can detect and quantify behavioral responses.•An individual fishing vessel quota ...policy shifts behavior away from the tragedy of the commons.
Commons problems present behavioral dilemmas, with tensions between individual and collective rationality. When users of a common-pool resource are not effectively excluded, the collective behavior of individuals pursuing their self-interests dissipates economic surplus. We derive a non-parametric test of whether individuals' collective behavior in resource extraction is consistent with the canonical commons model, namely Nash tragedy-of-the-commons behavior. Our approach allows for an arbitrarily concave, differentiable production function of total inputs and for heterogeneous agents with arbitrarily convex, differentiable costs of supplying inputs. We extend the test to allow for unobserved total output. We also define distance from the data to the model and develop statistical tests using the distance metric. Applying our approach to panel data of Norwegian commercial fishing vessels, we find the results of our test are consistent with the economic intuition that, in the absence of property rights, tragedy-of-the-commons behavior dissipates surplus. Significantly, we find property rights reforms move firms away from Nash tragedy-of-the-commons behavior.
Research on land use policy has been vexed by the pivotal question of which institutions achieve credibility. Scholars have been split as it has been difficult to assess credibility. To provide a ...solution, an alternative theory pushed forward a renewed understanding of the question why some property rights succeed while others fail. At its heart is the axiom that Form – be it private/public, secure/insecure or formal/informal – follows from Function. This position – aka the Credibility Thesis – has propelled a fundamental change on the study of land, housing, settlements and resources evidenced through a steady stream of publications. Building on this literature, this collection reports several findings: 1) theoretical – credibility revolves around maintaining congruence between the function of institutions; 2) methodological – credibility can be measured via conflict, perceptual divergences and shifts over time; 3) empirical – institutions tend to change when functional congruence is disregarded while enduring when it is safeguarded. The findings cover different geographies (ranging from India and Ethiopia to China and Colombia) demonstrating the theory’s applicability. The collection ends with a double treatise; one pointing out like-minded bodies of thought with reference to Elinor Ostrom and another identifying quandaries that research must consider. To appreciate the collection’s main thrust, this introduction leads it off by reviewing 10 years’ research on the Credibility Thesis in terms of the field, findings and future.
•This collection examines question why some property rights succeed and others fail.•Articles validate axiom that Form follows from Function aka Credibility Thesis.•Institutional credibility studied ranging from informal tenure to land conflicts.•Methods used include Conflict Analysis Model, FAT Framework and CSI Checklist.•This intro reviews the field, empirical findings and future research agenda.
The main subject of this paper is analysis how digitalization can contribute in resolving legal concerns which were observed in practice and which are related to the fact that a share in the company ...is the object of common property of spouses. There are shown the main provisions of family law in Republic of Serbia, in order to approach the meaning of common property of spouses, as well as material and procedural provisions related to the company law in Republic of Serbia, regulations on registration of companies, data and documents which are of importance for the companies and which are the object of registration. Goal is to show that checking of fact is natural person who is achieving the share in the company married while undertaking legal actions in order to achieve that share, as well as automatic, electronic recording and centralized exchange of these data between public notaries and other public authorities in that process, in the future, can greater legal security in Republic of Serbia and in the neighborhood states - Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Commons Agrawal, Arun; Erbaugh, James; Pradhan, Nabin
Annual review of environment and resources,
11/2023, Volume:
48, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Commons-resources used or governed by groups of heterogeneous users through agreed-upon institutional arrangements-are the subject of one of the more successful research programs in the ...social-environmental sciences. This review assesses research on the commons to accomplish three tasks. First, it surveys the theoretical, substantive, and methods-focused achievements of the field, illustrating how commons research has also influenced natural resource policy making. Second, it examines the changing trajectories of commons research, emphasizing the growing interest of commons researchers in new methods and the application of insights to new social contexts. Third, the review suggests that research on the commons can find continuing relevance by addressing contemporary and future social-environmental challenges. It highlights three directions in particular: (
a
) strengthening the focus on issues of power and equity, (
b
) applying insights about effective commons governance to collaborative attempts to craft commons in new societal spaces, and (
c
) advancing an emerging emphasis on causal analysis and taking advantage of novel streams of large-scale public datasets.
Comanagement of coral reef social-ecological systems Cinner, Joshua E; McClanahan, Tim R; MacNeil, M. Aaron ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
04/2012, Volume:
109, Issue:
14
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
In an effort to deliver better outcomes for people and the ecosystems they depend on, many governments and civil society groups are engaging natural resource users in collaborative management ...arrangements (frequently called comanagement). However, there are few empirical studies demonstrating the social and institutional conditions conducive to successful comanagement outcomes, especially in small-scale fisheries. Here, we evaluate 42 comanagement arrangements across five countries and show that: (i) comanagement is largely successful at meeting social and ecological goals; (ii) comanagement tends to benefit wealthier resource users; (iii) resource overexploitation is most strongly influenced by market access and users’ dependence on resources; and (iv) institutional characteristics strongly influence livelihood and compliance outcomes, yet have little effect on ecological conditions.
•Concession membership has a positive effect on income relative to non-members.•The income effect varies by community concession classification.•Our results suggest that the income effect depends on ...socioeconomic characteristics.
Forests in developing tropical countries are frequently overexploited because they are essentially treated as open access due to the lack of resources dedicated to protect the area. In response, some governments have shifted towards community-based, common property resource management policies. While there is emerging evidence that these policies can reduce deforestation, there has been less research assessing the effect of these concessions on rural livelihoods. This is surprising, since sustainable income generation is an important outcome that can influence the long-term success of concession policies. This study examines the effect of community-managed forest concessions on income in the context of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala. In this region, forest concessions have been established in the past 20 years to give local residents access to the forests. Residents granted access to a forest concession are required to reduce overexploitation by abiding by a sustainable forest management plan and obtaining certification from the Forest Stewardship Council. In the Maya Biosphere Reserve, the characteristics of concession communities vary and the sustainable management plan is often tailored to meet the needs of the community. The results show that the effects of participating in a forest concession on income are generally positive, although there is significant heterogeneity among communities with different socioeconomic characteristics.
•Rural communities rely on common property systems globally.•The contemporary phenomenon of land grabbing preferentially targets the commons.•Commons grabbing is an integral component of the ...contemporary land rush.•Commons acquisitions are characterized by coercion, imbalanced power relations, and are not conflict free.•Commons grabbing generally happens with government support.
Rural populations around the world rely on small-scale farming and other uses of land and natural resources, which are often governed by customary, traditional, and indigenous systems of common property. In recent years, large-scale land acquisitions have drastically expanded; it is unclear whether the commons are a preferential target of these acquisitions. Here we argue that the contemporary global “land rush” could be happening at the expense of common-property systems around the world. While there is evidence that common-property systems have developed traditional institutions of resource governance that make them robust with respect to endogenous forces (e.g., uses by community members), it is less clear how vulnerable these arrangements are to exogenous drivers of globalization and expansion of transnational land investments. In common-property systems, farmers and local users may be unable to defend their customary rights and successfully compete with external actors. We define the notion of “commons grabbing” and report on an exploratory study that applied meta-analytical methods, drawing from the recent literature on large-scale land acquisitions and land grabbing. Informed by political economy and political ecology approaches, we coded selected cases on the basis of acquisition mechanisms, claims and property rights, changes in production system, and coercive dynamics, and explored the interactions between the different variables using association tests and qualitative comparative analysis. We found that the majority of the cases included in this analysis (44 of 56) could be examples of commons grabbing.