Browsing by Author "Adhikari, Bhim"

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Household Characteristics and Common Property Resource Management: A Model for Households Dependency on Local Commons
(2002) Adhikari, Bhim
"In recent years, the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and dependency of households on forest resources has become a growing concern in issues of local level collective action. On the one hand, it has often been argued that poor people extract more resources from the commons due to their greater reliance on natural resources. On the other hand, it is claimed that compared to non-poor, the poor may depend more on the commons in relative terms, but in absolute terms their dependency is lower. In this study I advance this argument by formally modelling household production systems to explore how socio-economic characteristics influence household dependency on local commons in reference to community-based forest management in Nepal. The analysis is based on field data from 309 households from the mid-hills of the country. Econometric analyses suggest that household labour allocation decisions for forest product collection are dictated by various socio-economic and demographic variables. In general, it appears that household land and livestock holdings, gender, ethnicity and education of household head exert more influence on household labour allocation decisions for extraction and gathering activities than other factors. The results show that women are not the sole collectors of forest products as conventionally accepted. Based on this analysis, it can be concluded that poorer households are currently facing limited and restricted access to community forestry than relatively better off households. Policy measures that aim to reduce heterogeneity among user households along with non-timber forest products (NTFPs) oriented management regimes in community forestry help to increases income of the poorer households from the local commons."
Literature Review on the Economics of Common Property Resources: Review of Common Pool Resource Management in Tanzania
(2001) Adhikari, Bhim
"This review focuses on the economics of managing common pool resources in common property regimes, in particular the limitations imposed by transactions costs. The review discusses the relationship between poverty and property rights in natural resource management, and then more specifically considers the case of regimes where property rights have not been assigned (open access), and when common property rights are used. In conclusion, the influence of transactions costs on governance structure is considered and some empirical studies that have attempted to quantify transactions costs are briefly reviewed."
Property Rights and Natural Resources: Impact of Common Property Institutions on Community-Based Resource Management
(2001) Adhikari, Bhim
"A striking feature of most of these studies lies in the fact that their authors are generally convinced that, given the glaring failure of state ownership experiences in developing countries, collective, community-based regulation holds out the best prospects for an efficient management of village-level natural resources (Baland and Platteau, 2001). However, they recognise at the same time that the balance sheet of actual experience of common property option is rather mixed; the central focus on the research should be directed towards understanding the reasons that can account for these varying levels of performance of CPR institutions. It is also not clear upon what condition resource management will be optimal to ensure equity and efficiency among the resource users. Further research on determinants and impact of local management institutions and thus performance of CPR management is emphasised mainly in relation to distributional implication of the regime, decision-making arrangements and the way individuals interact when applying rules (co-operation, free riding etc.) and an analysis of the outcome (efficiency and equity). So far systematic tests of the relative importance of factors important to sustainability, equity, or efficiency of common property institutions are relatively uncommon (Agrawal, 2001). A clear understanding of the local management institutions, their determinants and their role in shaping the environmental outcome is desirable to better guide future NRM policies (Heltberg, 2001). In this study, we therefore intended to explore the determinants and impact of local management institutions and how local level heterogeneity among resource users influences the emergence of productivity enhancing institutional arrangements and thus resource management regime at the local level."
Social Inequality and Collective Efficacy in Community-Based Natural Resource Management
(2011) Adhikari, Bhim; Di Falco, Salvatore
"We explore the impact of social structure such as caste on social capital formation using data from community forest user groups from Nepal. We also provide a study of the impact of social capital on resource extraction. We found that upper caste and more educated households do participate more in social capital formation compared to their less privileged counterparts. Households from higher caste are engaging more in the collective action. Our results also suggest that increasing the level of participation of lower caste households in community level activities would facilitate the accumulation of village social capital. Further, the analysis revealed that the higher stocks of social capital are associated with lower levels of resource exploitation."
Understanding the Social and Ecological Outcomes of PES Projects: A Review and an Analysis
(2013) Adhikari, Bhim; Agrawal, Arun
"Market-based approaches to environmental management, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES), have attracted unprecedented attention during the past decade. In this article, we review 26 case studies on PES from 11 countries in Asia and Latin America to help improve the understanding of the factors affecting PES schemes at the local level. We assess outcomes of the PES interventions in relation to four outcomes: equity, participation, livelihood, and environmental sustainability. Although we consider economic efficiency of these schemes to be crucial for informing policy debates, assessing it was not under the scope of this review. Our analysis shows the importance of property rights and tenure security, transaction costs, household and community characteristics, effective communication about the intervention, and the availability of PES-related information with regard to the sustainability of ecosystem service markets. The review suggests that PES schemes could target improvements in more than one outcome dimension. Focusing on the above five areas can lead to the continued provision of ecosystem services and improvements of the well-being of local inhabitants."