Browsing by Author "Gibson, Clark C."

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Communities and Resource Management: A Critique
(1996) Agrawal, Arun; Gibson, Clark C.
From Introduction: "The basic elements of earlier policy and scholarly writings about local communities and their residents are familiar. 'People' were an obstacle to efficient and 'rational' organization of resource use. A convincing logic undergirded the belief that the goals of conservation and the interests of local communities were in opposition. Conservation required protection of threatened resources: wildlife, forests, pastures, fisheries, and irrigation or drinking water. Many of these resources, especially at the local level, could be easily exploited because they were open to all. The interests of local communities who relied on available natural resources for fodder, fuelwood, water or food, lay in exploiting these. This schematic representation, popularised in no small measure by Garrett Hardin's pernicious influence and bolstered by several theoretical metaphors that served to guide policy, provided a convincing explanation of how resource degradation and depletion took place."
The Complex Links Between Governance and Biodiversity
(2005) Barrett, C.; Gibson, Clark C.; Hoffman, Barak; McCubbins, M.
"We argue that two problems weaken the claims of those who link corruption and the exploitation of natural resources. The first is conceptual. Studies that use national level indicators of corruption fail to note that corruption comes in many forms, at multiple levels, that may affect resource use quite differently: negatively, positively or not at all. Without a clear causal model of the mechanism by which corruption affects resources, one should treat with caution any estimated relationship between corruption and the state of natural resources. The second problem is methodological. Simple, atheoretical models linking corruption measures and natural resource use typically do not account for other important control variables pivotal to the relationship between huijaans and natural resources. By way of illustration of these two general concerns, we demonstrate that the findings of a recent, well-known study that posits a link between corruption and decreases in forests and elephants are not robust to simple conceptual and methodological refinements."
Decentralization Reforms: Help or Hindrance to Forest Conservation?
(2004) Andersson, Krister P.; Gibson, Clark C.
"This study seeks to contribute to more nuanced expectations concerning the outcomes of decentralized forest governance. The paper argues that even in instances where local governments effectively carry out their decentralized mandate it is unreasonable to expect that decentralization will lead to conservation of all forests, all the time. Realistic predictions of decentralization outcomes need to base their assessments on the limitations of the local government mandate. We develop a theoretical approach that posits that the decentralization outcome is a function of the local government mandate, the effectiveness of the local governance institutions, and a series of structural factors, such as local demographics, road infrastructure, and resource endowments. We test our theory in the post-decentralization period in 30 Bolivian municipalities in the country's forest-rich lowlands. We identify the circumstances that allow municipal governance institutions to dampen the effect of the main drivers of forest loss. Our empirical analysis finds that the local governments' effectiveness in providing formal forest property rights to local forest users is associated with low levels of uncontrolled deforestation, but it detects no systematic relationship between local governance effectiveness and total deforestation."
Defying a Dictator: Wildlife Policy in Zambia's Second Republic, 1972-1982
(1994) Gibson, Clark C.
"This paper contains five sections. Section one analyzes the institutions of the one-party state and their effect on policymaking. As the head of both government and party, President Kaunda emerged as the dominant policymaker in the Second Republic. The second section describes the decline of the Zambian economy, and the simultaneous rise of the wildlife trade."
Dictators with Empty Pockets: A Political Concessions Model of Africa's Democratization
(2002) Gibson, Clark C.; Hoffman, Barak
"Dozens of African countries experienced political liberalization in the late 1980s and 1990s. One after another, undemocratic regimes on the continent began allowing the formation of opposition parties, a freer press, and multiparty elections. Despite such extraordinary, continentwide shifts in the political landscape, analysts have had little success in accounting for this general change. In fact, existing research is contradictory. Some studies argue that economic wealth leads to political liberalization while others claim poverty has driven this change; some studies assert that foreign aid forced incumbents to open their regimes while others find evidence that aid delayed democratic reform. Further, no study has explained well the timing or extent of political liberalization across Africa. We argue that the key to explaining the political changes in Africa is the pressure exerted by patronage networks on rulers. We model how domestic and international shocks of the 1980s and 1990s influenced the choices of politicians who remain in power by supporting their patronage networks. Such factors forced leaders to make a series of political concessions to their opposition. We test the concessions model using ordered probit estimation and time series data for all sub-Saharan African countries. We find that variables associated with patronage are significant factors in explaining the timing and extent of political liberalization in Africa, but variables associated with economic condition and aid are generally weak. We also show that the argument helps to account for the persistence of patronage politics in Africa in the post-transition period."
Does Tenure Matter to Resource Management? Property Rights and Forests in Guatemala
(1999) Gibson, Clark C.; Lehoucq, Fabrice E.; Williams, John T.
"Property rights are central to debates about natural resource policy. Governments traditionally have been seen as the appropriate custodians of natural resources for their citizens. More recently, many argue the privatization of rights will ensure that users have incentives to manage their resources well. Common property, to the extent it is discussed at all, is seen as leading to the tragedy of the commons. We evaluate these claims by assessing property rights and forest conditions in two private and three communal forests in Guatemala. Using measures of social and biological phenomena, we find that de jure property rights are not a powerful predictor of variations among these forests. Instead, we argue de facto institutions and their enforcement are much more important to forest management. Communities holding a forest in common can, under certain circumstances, create institutions to that manage their resources--or more--successfully than private owners."
Explaining Community-Level Forest Outcomes: Salience, Scarcity and Rules in Eastern Guatemala
(2007) Gibson, Clark C.; Dodds, David; Turner, Paul
"The residents of the settlement of Moran, located along the border of Guatemalas Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve, have lived in the area for over a century. Despite a lack of community-level rules about protecting their communal forest, limited amounts of arable land, and a high human fertility rate, Moran's forest does not appear over-exploited. This study seeks to explain this outcome given the residents pattern of forest use and the relative lack of restrictive forest-conservation rules. We first argue that individuals do not create highly restrictive management rules unless two conditions hold: individuals must depend significantly on the resource and they must perceive its scarcity. One of these necessary conditions does not hold in Moran: while community members make use of forest products in their daily lives, they do not consider the forest products on which they depend to be scarce. We also provide evidence about the lack of forest rules by looking at its structure: the pattern of use indicates an optimal foraging strategy. We test these arguments using qualitative and quantitative data from the community and its forests."
Explaining Deforestation: The Role of Local Institutions
(Indiana University, International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) Research Program, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC) and Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, 1998) Gibson, Clark C.; McKean, Margaret A.; Ostrom, Elinor
"Governments, citizens, and scientists are increasingly concerned about the role of forests in global environmental change. Evidence is mounting from multiple studies that humans at an aggregate level are exploiting forests at unsustainable rates in tropical regions. While some deforestation can be attributed to rational and sustainable transfers of land to agricultural and other valuable uses, unplanned deforestation can generate significant negative externalities: loss of biodiversity, elevated risk of erosion, floods and lowered water tables, and increased release of carbon into the atmosphere associated with global climate change. More importantly, deforestation can decrease the welfare of forest users by eliminating habitat for game species, altering local climates and watersheds, and destroying critical stocks of fuel, fodder, food, and building materials."
Forest Resources and Institutions
(1998) Gibson, Clark C.; McKean, Margaret A.; Ostrom, Elinor
"In this Working Paper the authors have drawn from their data to look at specific research hypotheses. The purposes of the original studies vary."
The Importance of Monitoring Rules in Local-Level Forest Management
(2002) Gibson, Clark C.; Williams, John T.; Ostrom, Elinor
"We argue that despite the possible differences between individuals or the characteristics of the resource they use, the regular monitoring of rules is a necessary condition for successful resource management. This is not to say that the attributes of individuals or resources do not contribute to the creation and monitoring of rules--such research, in fact, is at the core of understanding the relationships between individuals and their environment. Our research, instead, challenges those who may think that it is only by such attributes that successful outcomes can occur; that certain sets of characteristics can bypass the regular monitoring of rules. Further, we attempt to generalize this argument by testing it with a significantly larger dataset than is usually found in this literature. Theoretical debates about what variables are significant or not to local level resource management will not be easily settled with such larger N empirical testing."
The Lack of Institutional Supply: Why a Strong Local Community in Western Ecuador Fails to Protect its Forest
(Indiana University, International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) Research Program, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC), Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, 1998) Becker, C. Dustin; Gibson, Clark C.
"Given the disappointing results of natural resource conservation policy in developing countries over the last three decades, scholars and practitioners have shifted their focus away from state-centered policies towards solutions at the local level. While these authors offer different lists of the conditions believed necessary for successful resource management by local people, most analyses include three fundamental requirements. First, individuals from local communities must highly value a natural resource to have the incentive to manage it sustainably. Second, property rights must be devolved to those individuals who use the resource to allow them to benefit from its management. Third, these individuals at the local level must also have the ability to create microinstitutions to regulate the use of the resource. Although various scholars and practitioners may add other conditions they see as important, most agree that some form of these three 'locals' valuation, ownership, and institutions are central to successful natural resource management."
Multiparty Democracy and Wildlife: Rules, Animals and Patronage in Zambia, 1964-1972
(1994) Gibson, Clark C.
"In this paper, I explain why the UNIP government failed to follow its own preindependence calls for giving Zambians citizens greater access to wildlife resources. More importantly, I explain how UNIP survived this widely unpopular stance in a multiparty system with a universal franchise. I argue that the structure of Zambia's political institutions created incentives for the ruling party to ignore the electorate's desire for greater hunting. First, President Kaunda, who held considerable power over party policy, favored a strong conservation policy. Second, electoral and party rules did not reward those parliamentarians who represented their constituents' call for greater access to wild animals. Rather, the rules punished members of UNIP - the dominant party -- for opposing Kaunda and UNIP's Central Committee. Thus, MPs followed President Kaunda's preference for strong wildlife conservation and did not represent voters' desires. Third, by establishing government control over the wildlife sector through the National Parks and Wildlife Act, UNIP used wildlife to reward its followers. The UNIP government distributed jobs, game meat and trophies to supporters, and only selectively enforced the Act's provisions."
Politicians, Peasants and Poachers: The Political Economy of Wildlife Policy in Zambia, 1964-1991
(1995) Gibson, Clark C.
"This book explores these and other puzzles that surround the politics of wildlife policy in Africa. It does so by examining the content, continuity, and change of wildlife policy in Zambia in the post-colonial period. It then compares the Zambian case with selected cases from Kenya and Zimbabwe. Four empirical questions frame this study. First, why did the first independent governments of Zambia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe keep colonial wildlife laws intact, despite prior promises by nationalists to reverse such exclusionary measures? Second, why did these powerful African presidents respond in different ways to the rise of poaching? Third, why did the administrators of these countries' wildlife programs in the 1980s create bureaucratic structures that frustrated certain conservation goals? And fourth, why did these same programs, designed to offer incentives to so that they would conserve animals, fail to stop illegal hunting? "This book argues that because wildlife is an important economic and political resource in each of these three countries, individuals and groups have sought to structure policy to secure wildlife's benefits for themselves. These actors operate in an arena composed of numerous institutions that affect their strategies and choices. The outcome of their efforts is wildlife policies that do not necessarily protect animals; in fact, many policies generated poor conservation results in Zambia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. Rather, wildlife policies and their outcomes reflect attempts by individuals and groups to gain private advantage."
Politics First, Animals and Residents Second: 'Community-Based' Wildlife Policies and the Politics of Structural Choice in Zambia, 1983-1991
(1994) Gibson, Clark C.
"In this paper, I examine Zambia's wildlife policy from 1983-1991 by focusing on the construction of ADMADE and LIRDP. I argue that the institutions of both programs can be explained by exploring the strategic choices of the program's designers, who confronted a set of political constraints and opportunities generated by the one-party state. Such an approach challenges those who view bureaucracies as apolitical institutions designed to produce collective goods. Rather than regard public agencies as solutions to collective action problems, I conceptualize bureaucracies as means by which political winners can impose their favored distributive outcomes on the rest of society. The design of public agencies cannot be separated out from politics; on the contrary, structural choices are central to explanations of government policy."
The Politics of Structural Choice in a One-Party State: The Case of Wildlife Policy in Zambia
(1994) Gibson, Clark C.
"Many scholars and practitioners see the activities of public agencies as remedies to society's collective dilemmas. Work in the new institutional economics, however, has challenged this conceptualization. Rather than view bureaucracies as solutions to collective action problems, some new institutionalists conceptualize public agencies as a means by which political winners can impose their favored distributive outcomes on the rest of society. Further, some scholars assert the structural design of public agencies can be explained by reference to their political and distributive features. "This paper employs and extends this approach. I argue that the design of public agencies can be explained by examining their designers' strategic choices under two important constraints: the designers' original share of public authority, and the pattern of political uncertainty generated by a particular system of government. "I apply this theory to the case of Zambian wildlife policy in the 1980s. Following the dramatic increase in poaching rates in Zambia in the 1970s and 1980s, individuals and interest groups attempted to create new wildlife programs that could circumvent the influence of party and government officials who, using wildlife as a resource for patronage politics, routinely thwarted attempts to strengthen conservation laws. The designers of these new programs chose structural arrangements to increase their share of public authority and to insulate their programs from political uncertainty of a one-party state, at the expense of promulgated aims such as conservation, local participation, and bureaucratic 'efficiency.' "The study underscores the importance of the distributive nature of public agencies, the political interests of bureaucrats, and the place of structural choice in policy analysis."
Scaling Issues in the Social Sciences: A Report for the International Human Dimensions Program
(1998) Gibson, Clark C.; Ostrom, Elinor; Ahn, Toh-Kyeong
"Numerous human activities--from the cutting of firewood in rural Uganda to the production of hydrocarbons by oil refineries in southern California--have causes and consequences measured at small, medium, and large levels on spatial and temporal scales. The multilevel/multi-scale nature of the problems relating to the human dimensions of global change demands that researchers address key issues of scales and levels in their analyses. While natural scientists have long understood the importance of scales, and have operated within relatively well-defined hierarchical systems of analysis, social scientists have worked with scales of less precision and greater variety. With the growing realization that the insights of social science are crucial to understanding the relationships between people and the natural environment, it is necessary for social scientists to identify more clearly the effects of diverse levels on multiple scales in their own analyses, to comprehend how other social scientists employ diverse kinds of levels and scales, and to begin a dialogue with natural scientists about how different conceptions of scales and levels are related. "This report seeks to facilitate this dialogue among researchers by reviewing the concept of scale in the social sciences. After reading extensive numbers of articles and books related to the broad concept of scale, one of the key problems that we have come to recognize is that terms such as level and scale are frequently used interchangeably and that many of the key concepts related to scale are used differently across disciplines and scholars. Thus, we present in Table 1.1 definitions of key terms that we have come to use after reading the literature cited in the bibliography and struggling with the confusion created by many different uses of the same word."
Social Capital and the Governance of Forest Resources
(1999) Gibson, Clark C.; Williams, John T.; Ostrom, Elinor
"Given recent research linking forests and the global carbon budget, forest management has become a central political issue at the national and international levels. If forests are to play a central role in reducing the threat of global warming as well as other important environmental issues, government policy toward forest management becomes pivotal. To improve outcomes, contemporary forestry policies in developed and developing countries seek to shift some control over forest management to the community level. In a fundamental sense, such community level forestry policies seek to use the social capital of communities to help manage forests. But despite the centrality of social capital to community forestry plans, neither national governments nor international bodies have a very good understanding of the role played by social capital in forest management at the local level. Since communities through forest management could represent a solution to important environmental concerns, we argue that it is critical to understand the role played by social capital in the community-level management of forests. This paper seeks to evaluate the role of social capital in the local governance of forests. It does so by analyzing crossnational, panel data gathered at the community level in 47 forests representing 7 countries. We find that different measures of social capital have a measurable effects on the condition of forests. Taken together, there is evidence that social capital matters to forest conditions, regardless of national government policy."
When 'Community' Is Not Enough: Institutions and Values in Community-Based Forest Management in Southern Indiana
(1998) Gibson, Clark C.; Koontz, Tomas
"Community-based management is increasingly viewed as the most appropriate arrangement for promoting sustainable development of natural resources. A common assumption is that the values of community members, often assumed to be homogeneous, foster successful outcomes. However, analysts often treat these values and their homogeneity as exogenous factors, ignoring the community's potential role in managing members' values. This study of community-based forest management in two southern Indiana sites examines how the members of the two communities created institutions to screen, maintain, and defend their values. Analysis reveals that different institutions shaped members' preferences and led to different levels of community stability, conflict management, and natural resource condition. We argue that understanding community-based management processes and outcomes requires careful attention to how institutions facilitate or hamper the construction of community members' values."
When Is an Open-Access Forest Healthy? Dependence, Scarcity, and Collective Action in Eastern Guatemala
(1998) Gibson, Clark C.; Dodds, David; Turner, Paul
From the Authors' Paper: "The residents of the settlement Moran, located along the border of the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve, have lived and farmed in the area for over a century. Despite a lack of community level rules about protecting their communal forest, a limited amount of arable land, and a strong birthrate, their forest is in no immediate danger of being cleared. This study seeks to explain the pattern of forest use, the lack of forest-conserving institutions, and the implications of this study for the development of theories regarding common-pool resources more widely. Using social and biological data, we argue that communities do not create institutions concerning a resource unless two conditions apply: first, those community members depend significantly on the resource; second, that there is a perceived scarcity of the resource. These two necessary conditions do not hold in Moran and, as a result, their communal forest is an open-access resource. Although an open-access resource, we also attempt to account for the fact that the communal forest is in good general condition. "The literature regarding institutions has provided a great deal of work about how communities have managed to protect their communally-held natural resources, in contradiction to what was perceived by some as their inevitable destruction. Design principles (Ostrom, 1990) and their various refinements have attempted to explain how a community can overcome this social dilemma, and construct institutions or rules to help manage their resource more successfully. What is stressed in this debate is the value of the resource to the local community: if the members of a community do not depend significantly on a resource, then they will not construct rules to manage it (Ascher 1995). Less emphasized is how community members perceive the scarcity of the resource. In an economic approach to individual behavior, if a resource is valuable, but not perceived to be scarce or in danger of being scarce, then it may not make sense to individuals to incur the costs resulting from the construction and maintenance of an institution regarding that resource. This would be true no matter how much the community depended on the resource. "In Moran, we find the first condition met: members of the community depend on the forest for a number of products. They use their communal forest's timber for construction, limbs and trunks for fuel, resinous pieces for fire ignition, undergrowth for grazing, and wildlife for eating. Individuals assert that without the products of the forest, they would not be able to survive in the area. However, the second condition does not appear to be met: residents of Moran do not perceive the forest or its products to be scarce, nor do they believe that scarcity will characterize their forest in the near future. Residents resent having to travel a little further and longer to obtain some of the forest products on which they depend. They also resent some government restrictions aimed at forest conservation. But in general they see no great decline in the forest's bounty. In addition to the oral testimony of Moran's residents, biological data also show that residents follow a type of optimal foraging theory when using the forest. "To investigate community members' perceptions, we construct a regression model that evaluates the impact of biophysical and social causes for the number and distribution of pine stems. The biophysical factors do not emerge signficant in the model. However, the areas closer to the settlement or to the major road are significantly more likely to have been exploited for their pine than areas further away from the settlement or road. Further, the average size of the pine is significantly smaller, indicating that larger stems have been cut. These patterns of use suggest that residents follow no rules in their use of pine ... Their communal forest is thus an open-access resource."