Browsing by Author "Thomson, James T."

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African Villages and Public Services
(1978) Thomson, James T.
"This paper presents an analysis of the theories underlying the efforts at development in the Sahel, and then examines some of the probable consequences of what appear to be existing orientations. In particular, the paper will focus on consequences of current state political orientations for village ability to participate effectively in programs designed to improve the management of renewable natural resources. Elements of public choice theory are used to clarify implications of questions raised by the analysis."
Bois de Villages (Niger): Report of an Investigation Concerning Socio-Cultural and Political-Economic Aspects of the Forest Phase of the Project and Design Recommendations for a Possible Second Phase
(1980) Thomson, James T.
"Two weeks' field investigation of IDRC village woodlots in the '3M' Arrondissements of Zinder Department supports throe conclusions. First, villagers express substantial and sharpening interest in reforestation. But thus far, IDRC project 3-P-72-0093 has barely tapped it. Second, this failure flows partially from poor performance in the project's research component. Technically feasible reforestation packages - species and planting techniques adapted to facilitate rapid wood production in the local sahelien environment - were to have been developed. To date they have not been. Selective protection of natural regeneration remains probably the most productive reforestation strategy. Peasants have known about this for years; many would like new information. Third, effective local participation in reforestation has been throttled by exclusive reliance in the IDRC project on a community woodlot system, ill-suited in the local socio-political context to serve as a vehicle for reforestation efforts powered and sustained by local people. Family woodlots offer more tangible incentives for participation and should be vigorously advocated."
Case Study of Majjia Valley Windbreaks
(1985) Thomson, James T.
"This case study provides the kind of background information needed to illustrate the use of Dr. Ronald Oakerson's framework for the analysis of common property problems. It concerns the management of recently established windbreaks, a renewable resource. These particular windbreaks were planted to stabilize soils in a rich agricultural valley in the arid West African Sahel. The present case is interesting for two reasons. First, the windbreak project in the Majjia Valley is widely considered to be a technical success—the trees are flourishing and have stabilized the valley soil. In fact, the windbreaks have grown so much that they must now be harvested to reduce their excess protection capacity, which threatens to shade arable land unnecessarily. Second, because this is a new resource, the management institutions represent a new departure from (rather than reinforcement or extension of) an existing set of local, indigenous resource management institutions. Since the issue of management approach has not yet been resolved, this case is fairly typical of development projects where new institutions have to be designed. The remainder of this paper provides the facts necessary to assess this resource management problem using Dr. Oakerson's framework. However, it does not specify the correct solution. During the workshop, participants will analyze the facts and then propose management institutions or approaches to their development for this situation."
Common Property Forest Management Systems in Mali: Resistance and Vitality under Pressure
(1995) Thomson, James T.; Coulibaly, Chéibane
"This article presents evidence, gathered through a number of rapid rural appraisals, on local initiatives in common property forest management systems in the Fifth Region of Mali. The appraisals are based on a series of in-depth studies conducted over the past five years by several non-governmental organizations (notably the Near East Foundation, CARE/Mali and SOS Sahel)."
Community Institutions and the Governance of Local Woodstocks in the Context of Mali's Democratic Transition
(1995) Thomson, James T.
"This paper addresses two issues. First, it offers a comparative institutional analysis of two different systems for governing and managing woodstocks in a sahelian area of Mali. These institutional arrangements are, respectively, state- and community-based. The analysis highlights the comparative efficiency of each set of institutions. Second, the paper explores the potential impact of community-based resource governance and management activities as one form of sectoral support for the broader process of promoting democratic governance in Mali."
Decentralization in Mali: Action Options
(1992) Thomson, James T.
"This memo addresses several interlinked issues posed by political and institutional changes now underway in Mali. Possibilities for sustainable decentralization and democratic governance appear reasonable, though by no means certain. The memo explores roles USAID/Bamako, as well as other donors, might play to support these changes."
Decentralization in the Sahel: Regional Synthesis
(1994) Thomson, James T.; Coulibaly, Cheibane
"Decentralization is a topical issue in the nine CILSS countries of the West African Sahel and the Cape Verde Islands. These countries, with the partial exceptions of the Gambia and Senegal, have operated for most of the last century under centralized political systems. Over the past fifteen years, however, the centralized model in CILSS countries has come under increasing criticism. It has worsened rather than helped to solve such fundamental problems as sustainable governance and management of renewable natural resources (the basis of the region's economy), and provision of basic levels of public services. Centralized political systems have slowed national economies and impeded more effective governance. Political reforms have become an issue of urgency. But which reforms?"
Decentralization, Service Provision, and User Involvement: A Process to Identify Local-Level Options in the Sahel
(1989) Thomson, James T.; Griffon, Michel
"This proposal envisages a series of activities that link applied research, consultation, and action in an iterative process. Preliminary investigations will concentrate on gather information leading to recommendations for both applied research and actions in an ongoing process of consultation with Sahelian governments. After discussion of these recommendations by concerned parties, modifications (as necessary), and concurrence, a program of action and ongoing applied research will be finalized and initiated."
Decentralized Finance and Management for Development
(1986) Connerly, Ed; Thomson, James T.; Wunsch, James S.
"This concept paper reflects AID's growing concern with the negative consequences of over-centralization in many Third World political, administrative and revenue systems. It also expresses AID'S interest in involving less developed country (LDC) project beneficiaries in the planning, execution, financing, maintenance and control of activities launched with USAID support. It reflects U.S. policy in promoting private sector activities where appropriate. It builds on a foundation of positive program results achieved in some of AID's more successful prior efforts in decentralization."
Firewood Survey: Theory and Methodology
(Agency for International Development, Bureau for Africa, Office of Development Resources, 1980) Thomson, James T.; French, D.; Larson, P.
"This document presents a framework for a survey of firewood problems in Africa. Using survey data, host countries and A.I.D. Missions should be able to more effectively identify and design appropriate projects to either increase firewood supplies or reduce firewood demand. "The document contains two parts. The first, an overview of firewood problems in Africa, lays a theoretical basis for the second part, a recommended survey package consisting of four questionnaires and two inventory instruments for use in host countries. "The overview presents an analysis of African firewood problems, focusing especially on institutional constraints and problems which may discourage production of adequate firewood supplies. It addresses as well two approaches to reducing fuelwood demand: switching to alternative fuels and improving combustion efficiencies in charcoal-making and cooking. "The survey package contains two groups of instruments which are designed to reveal official and individual producers' and consumers' perceptions of firewood situations - do problems exist? where? why? how serious are they? - and the feasibility of various solutions. Group I focuses on rural aspects of firewood problems and includes interviews of forestry officials, rural producer-consumers of wood, and charcoal makers. Group 2, which focuses on urban firewood problems, consists of an urban consumer questionnaire and an alternative fuels price form."
Guesselbodi Forest: Alternative Frameworks for Sustained-Yield Management
(1981) Thomson, James T.
"The GON-USAID Forestry and Land Use Planning Project proposes to manage the Guesselbodi State Forest, located just east of Niamey, on a sustained-yield basis. Main goals of the project are development of brushwood forest management techniques which will permit increased wood production within the forest; and encouragement of public participation in management of the forest as a multiple-use resource which will provide benefits for diverse communities of users, including area herders and farmers as well as woodcutters. "Various studies concerning technical aspects of the resource are now underway or nearing completion. Once provisional results of these studies are available, institutions to foster public participation will have to be established. "This report presents information necessary to adequate design of such popular management institutions. Included here are a brief review of: forest history; current and potential uses of the wood, pasture, arable land and secondary forest products which Guesselbodi does or could generate; and conditions which must be observed in the elaboration of successful participatory management institutions."
How Much Wood Would a Peasant Plant? Public Choice Analysis of Institutional Constraints on Firewood Production Strategies in the West African Sahel
(1980) Thomson, James T.
Introduction: "This essay presents a public choice policy analysis of firewood production possibilities in the West African Sahel, the arid southern fringe of the Sahara Desert. "Demand for firewood has outstripped supply in much of the contemporary Sahel. Arid areas and urban hinterlands now face the worst pinch, but population growth will soon create scarcities in many regions where supplies remain temporarily adequate. Since firewood will almost certainly continue to be the staple cooking and heating fuel of most Sahelien families, sustained severe shortages will sharply reduce many Saheliens living standards. "The pertinent problem thus becomes identification in particular settings of best strategies to prevent serious firewood shortages. Using standard public choice assumptions about human nature, this analysis highlights technical, legal, political and economic impediments to reforestation and then suggests several strategies to reduce or overcome them. Drawbacks as well as advantages of individualist, collective, and mixed approached to Woodstock management are considered. "Arguments and analysis are presented in the following sequence: (1) assumptions and an outline of seven problems to be considered; (2) a partially fictionalized account of one individuals frustrating attempt at fuelwood production, which illustrates some of these problems in a Sahelien local context; (3) consideration in detail of each problem; (4) conclusion."
An Institutional Analysis of Local Level Common Pool Woodstock Governance and Management: Implications for Environmental Policy
(JAI Press, 1996) Thomson, James T.; Brinkerhoff, D.W.
"This chapter uses the Institutional Design and Analysis (IAD) framework to examine a policy problem concerning governance and management of common pool woodstocks in Mali's Fifth Region. The fall of the Malien Second Republic in 1991 posed, among many other issues, the problem of who should take responsibility for controlling access to and use of the country's woodstocks. The essay assesses one solution to that problem now being evolved by a group of thirteen communities south of the Niger River's Inner Delta."
Institutional Dynamics: The Evolution and Dissolution of Common Property Resource Management
(1986) Thomson, James T.; Feeny, David; Oakerson, Ronald J.
"Institutional arrangements for the management of common-pool resources are created and evolve in particular settings. A full understanding of the evolution and survival of such arrangements thus requires dynamic analysis of case studies. The framework presented in Oakerson (1986) may be applied recursively to examine dynamic sequences of change. Thus responses to exogenous shocks in one period become part of the existing set of institutional arrangements in the next, affecting the subsequent path of evolution in institutional arrangements. The dynamic sequences of change in the management of forest resources in Niger (1884-1984) and land resources in Thailand (1850-1980) are the theme of the paper. By applying the model in Oakerson (1986) iteratively, changes in both individual strategies and decision-making arrangements may be made endogenous. The approach is applied at both the local and supra-local levels."
The Institutional Framework for Sahelien Reforestation: Microcatchments, Experiments and Local Autonomy
(1980) Thomson, James T.
"This essay treats issues Sahelien and expatriate foresters, Sahelien governments and foreign aid donor organizations now concede to be crucial to implementation of successful environmental management programs in the Sahel, that much-abused band of territory along the Sahara's southern fringe. Among these issues are: (1) development of effective techniques of reforestation and woodstock management; (2) involvement and active participation of Sahelien peasants in reforestation and woodstock management; (3) identification of appropriate institutional frameworks within which such actions can occur."
Institutional Issues Raised by the Southern Zone Water Management Project
(1988) Thomson, James T.; Waldstein, Alfred S.; Wynne, Susan
"DFM uses the following analytic framework to guide field investigations of existing institutional design problems and to develop feasible solutions to these problems in collaboration with host country rural producers, officials, and PVO representatives. The analytic framework encompasses: the economic characteristics of target renewable resources such as irrigation waters, plateau vegetation, and hillside water-harvesting installations, given technology currently available in the Casamance zone for their management, whether they are private goods, public goods, common property resources, or, toll goods; the institutions at the local, commune, regional, national, and international levels, conceived as sets of rules, which structure decision-making concerning renewable resources, and create positive and negative incentives that channel human behavior into patterns which either encourage or inhibit the appropriate management, maintenance, and enrichment of renewable resources; the interactions which occur, in light of the above, when individuals adopt strategies to pursue their objectives within the sets of rules that govern human capacity to organize and fund activities, access to renewable natural resources, and use of renewable natural resources; and the outcomes in terms of the efficiency and possibly the equity of activities which affect the management and maintenance of renewable resources."
Institutions and Woodstock Governance in Mali
(1992) Thomson, James T.
"This paper explores issues posed by this choice. Since the fall of the Traore military regime in 1991, local efforts are underway to restore control over Bore Forest more fully to villagers who inhabit the forest or live in areas immediately adjacent. The Near Bast Foundation (NBF), a non-governmental organization (NGO), has strongly supported these efforts. The case illustrates generic problems that arise in Mali and other areas of Francophone Africa, where returning to local communities the governance and management authority over renewable natural resources (RNR) claimed after independence by the national government is under consideration. The case is of significance for other parts of Africa and indeed Third World countries as it highlights dilemmas inherent in trying to improve the efficiency and equity of RNR management by transferring political power from the central to local-level governments."
International Food and Renewable Energy Programs in the Sahel: The Effect on Implementation of Local Institutional Structures
(1977) Thomson, James T.
"I propose to investigate the part local governments ought to play in implementation of internationally-organized attempts to increase production of food and renewable energy resources in the drought-stricken West African Sahel. Scholars and practitioners agree that four critical public good problems must be resolved if food and energy production goals are to be achieved. They are: (1) forest conservation, (2) range management, (3) bottom land improvement and (4) associated land tenure issues. My prior research in a Hausa-speaking area of central Niger persuades me that effective management of international efforts to solve these problems hinges upon the capacity of local communities to mount and maintain various forms of collective action. Without such local institutional capability, incentives necessary to encourage individual and group efforts at the rural grass roots are lacking. Absent those incentives, international programs designed to enhance production of food and energy resources and involving the expenditure of literally billions of dollars will be critically, perhaps fatally, undermined."
Local Resource Mobilization in Developing Countries
(1986) Connerly, Ed; Thomson, James T.; Wunsch, James S.
"As the problem of financing the day-to-day operation and maintenance of local services has become more apparent, there has been increased interest in the role local governments can play in mobilizing the resources necessary to cover these recurrent costs. Over the past few years the Syracuse University Local Revenue Administration Project and other groups have devoted considerable effort in learning more about such resource mobilization. While much has been learned, there are still areas of uncertainty due, in great part, to the vast differences in institutions , culture and economic base encountered in different developing countries. At the heart of the current knowledge of local resource mobilization is the role played by incentives—-incentives to local government leaders, incentives to bureaucrats and incentives to local citizens. The system must provide the proper Incentives in order for resource mobilization efforts to succeed. Research in countries as poor as Burkina Faso has shown that local citizens are willing to contribute their own funds for such local public services as education and health from which they feel they will realize valued benefits."
Malawi's Lake Chiuta Fisheries: Intelligent Burden Shedding that Favors Renewable Resources Stewardship
(2006) Thomson, James T.
"This paper on fisheries governance and management in Malawi's Rift Valley Lake Chiuta highlights three key points: (1) the utility of formal special district arrangements in supporting local-level initiatives to introduce order into the exploitation of a large-lake fishery and to ensure its sustainable use; (2) the power of a very simple recordkeeping system of fisheries trouble cases in demonstrating the fundamental commitment to rule of law principles and practices among fishers who have never benefited from donor- or government-financed ROL technical assistance; and (3) the striking advantages that both fishers and the Government of Malawi derive from intelligent burden shedding in this fisheries case. "The paper begins with a description of the technical, community and government factors that gave rise to special district management of the Lake Chiuta fisheries. It then describes how rules governing access to and harvesting of the Chiuta fishery were elaborated, monitored and enforced. It demonstrates once again that committed users can in fact under particular circumstances not just formulate rules governing access and use of renewable natural resources but also shoulder the burdens of monitoring compliance with those rules, enforce them in cases of infraction, and take measures to resolve the inevitable disputes that arise in some trouble cases. The success of this experiment, identified and astutely supported by the Government of Malawi, points the way to significant savings in public expenditures and arguably, much more promising outcomes in governance and management of renewable resources. "This case is extracted from a broader study of formal and non-formal special districts found in four widely-separated countries in Africa."
Mali: The Enabling Framework for User-Based Governance of Forest Resources
(1995) Thomson, James T.
"This paper assesses the probable impact in Mali of the proposed recent reforms in the forestry code and of the new decentralization legislation on the capacity of local users to govern and manage forest resources. The empirical examples used to illustrate the argument are based mainly on long-enduring community experiences in governing and managing forest resources in southern parts of the country's Fifth Region."
Models for Windbreak Management: Institutional Analysis and Design
(1985) Thomson, James T.
"This paper, based on a four-month field investigation conducted by a team of social scientists during April-August 1984, provides an institutional analysis of the Majjia Valley Windbreak Project, in a first section, and then outlines three different designs for institutionalized, participatory windbreak management in the second."
Nigerien Herder Associations: Institutional Analysis and Design; Executive Summary
(1981) Thomson, James T.
"This report analyzes feasibility of herder associations in the Niger Range and Livestock (NRL) project's pastoral zone area. It comprises two broad sub-sections: 1) institutional analysis of rationales for and conditions governing feasibility of herder associations in the project area; and 2) alternative institutional designs for such groups, in terms both of internal organization and relationships to the Government of Niger (GON) administrative hierarchy."
Oxfam Micro-Catchment Project; Ouahigouya, Upper Volta: Preliminary Evaluation
(1980) Thomson, James T.
"The report's introduction describes project purposes, major variables of the micro-catchment technique, resulting constraints on technique extension, character of participating villages and officials contacted (1-11). A second section reviews the evaluation process (11-13). Findings are presented in a third section, which first analyzes villagers' experiences, perceptions and attitudes concerning micro-catchment operations, and probable levels of support for continuing the project in the several communities visited (14-22). It then does the same for officials (22-25). Implications are considered next (24-37). In this context micro-catchment techniques are treated as exercises in appropriately adapted environmental management. Arguments assume villagers' willingness to do 'barefoot science' and to assume risks associated with it. Feasibility of barefoot science, it is argued, depends on a development strategy emphasizing autonomous, local, individual or collective participation. "Conclusions recommend maintaining OXFAM's commitment to the micro-catchment project while attempting to interest other organizations in spreading the OXFAM version of the technique (38-41). Also considered are risks and advantages of efforts to promote the idea among other organizations, in terms of strengthening the fundamental orientation to micro-catchments as barefoot science activity to be carried on by autonomous local units."
Peasant Perceptions of Problems and Possibilities for Local-Level Management of Trees in Niger and Upper Volta
(1980) Thomson, James T.
"This essay compares perceptions of woodstock management possibilities held by peasants living intwo widely separated sets of Sahelien villages, one located in south-central Niger, the other in northern Upper Volta. It assesses willingness to reforest as a function of (1) wood resource availability and (2) the working, or effective, rules of tree tenure. Working rules of tree tenure are structured, broadly, by (a) the character of local politico-judicial activity and (b) the nature-and degree of forest service activities in the areas studied. The overriding concern of the essay is policy analysis: given wood resource scarcity, and thus-need to manage the woodstock for sustained yield in a fragile environment what tree tenure rules most effectively promote popular reforestation?"
Peasants, Rules and Woodstock Management in Zinder Department, Niger
(1982) Thomson, James T.
"This paper analyzes human responses to growing Woodstock (all ligneous plants, from bushes to trees) scarcity in three villages of Inuwa Canton (district) in south-central Mirriah Arrondissement (county), Zinder Department (state), Niger. It notes, among other things, future possibilities for environmental management as defined by villager interest, legal, political and technical constraints."
Public Choice Analysis of Institutional Constraints on Firewood Production Strategies in the West African Sahel
(Resources for the Future, Inc, 1979) Thomson, James T.; Russell, C. S.; Nicholson, Norman
"This essay presents a public choice policy analysis of firewood production possibilities in the West African Sahel, the arid southern fringe of the Sahara Desert."
Special Districts: An Institutional Tool for Improved Common Pool Resource Management
(2000) Thomson, James T.
"This paper explores benefits that rural and urban populations might derive from greater reliance on special purpose or special district governments in solving common pool resource problems. It focuses on West African countries that, for historical reasons, now utilize variants of French institutional arrangements. Many of the points made here may apply as well to countries utilizing British-inspired institutional arrangements. "While special districts occur most frequently in the American context, they do share some characteristics with an important class of French institutional arrangements known collectively as 'intercommunality.' In fact in 1996 France, with some 36,500 communes, counted 19,000 inter-communal institutions (Bernard-Gelabert et Labia: 9). Of these 19,000 institutions, designed to facilitate inter-communal cooperation, a substantial majority (14,551) are single-purpose public enterprises (syndicats intercommunaux a vocation unique SIVU:) (Bernard-Gelabert et Labia: 10). While not autonomous political jurisdictions, as are special districts, SIVUs are closely linked with the local governments that create them. "Provided that special districts prove useful in such settings, precedents thus exist for experimentation in this regard within the institutional tradition that most French tradition West African countries share. Moreover, some French and francophone African applied researchers specializing in economic and institutional aspects of renewable resources have long argued that devolution of renewables governance and management authority from the state to village communities provides an indispensable key to improved performance in the sector (e.g., Bertrand; Diallo; Diallo and Winter; Djibo et al.). "The paper first reviews the rationale underlying current policies promoting the devolution movement in the French tradition group of countries. These policies uniformly limit the extent of devolution to district level, general purpose governments. The paper then reviews an alternative institutional approach, the special purpose district. Four case studies follow, all drawing on applied research on popular efforts at renewable natural resources governance and management (RNRGM) in Niger, Mali and Senegal. Several highlight the importance of state- created enabling frameworks, but also underline the fragility of those frameworks, and implications of fragility for users strategies concerning renewable natural resources. The paper concludes with observations about the potential utility of special districts in French-tradition West African states."
State Theory and Practice in Francophone Africa: French Roots and Perspectives
(1996) Thomson, James T.
"A common institutional design for political structures is found practically everywhere in francophone areas of Africa, from Madagascar to Mali, Guinea to Cameroon. It features a single-centered state whose officials exhibit strong tendencies towards centralization and resistance to authorizing self governance for local communities. That the same basic design should persist, despite poor performance and significant critiques, thirty-five years after independence in some fifteen countries suggests not only a common tradition of institutional practice, but strong common intellectual roots. This is indeed the case. Moreover, since the ideas underlying state practices do affect people's lives and life chances, it is important that practitioners in the area understand of the general implications of those ideas. This chapter sets four objectives: identify the assumptions underlying the French tradition of state design; review briefly the record in francophone Africa of state design and structures, and how it relates to the original French model; examine the country of Mali as a context within which this common design functions, using the governance and management of renewable resources to illustrate the argument; and explore whether other options might be more apt to facilitate efforts of African citizens of these states to solve some or all of their problems by themselves."
Tenda Forest: Possibilities for Popular Resource Management Institutions
(1981) Thomson, James T.
"Assume the goal of efforts to put Tenda Forest Classee (Gaya Arrondissement, Niger) on a sustained-yield management basis is user population involvement in and responsibility for developing and implementing use regulations (with Forest Service back stopping local efforts on technical questions as well as in certain critical rule enforcement situations). Certain kinds of information then become indispensable to deliberate efforts to move as far as feasible towards achieving this ideal. This report outlines information investigators must uncover. It presents a framework for structured interviews which will deal with a series of relevant political, administrative, economic, financial and legal issues."
Tensions between Participation and Expertise in French Watershed Governance and Management
(2009) Thomson, James T.
"This paper assesses French fiscal and institutional approaches to watershed governance and management. These began, as large-scale, coordinated efforts, with passage of major water legislation in the country in 1964. This legislation constituted the first major French policy response to a 20th century challenge collectively identified by French hydrologists, water lawyers and other water experts. Though France is generally 'well-watered,' these experts argued that the country would be endangered within decades by growing shortages of potable water, and as well by inadequate supplies of water required to attain other objectives such as preserving riverine environments and the life forms there found; energy production; irrigation; recreation and tourism, and food production. To respond to this challenge French political decision makers created, by national legislation, six major watershed districts that covered the entire land area of metropolitan France as well as the Departements d'outre-mer and Territoires d'outre-mer (D.O.M.-T.O.M.). These were initially conceived, and functioned solely as, resource mobilization entities with a mandate to raise the funds necessary to finance construction of a wide range of water supply and sanitation infrastructure facilities."
Trouble Case Investigation of a Problem in Nigerien Rural Modernization: Forest Conservation
(University of California Press, 1973) Thomson, James T.; Charlick, R.
"This paper assesses the trouble case methodology as a research tool in the study of Nigerien rural modernization processes. As a vehicle to illustrate the methodology, I take the government forest conservation program, a critical if somewhat neglected component of the overall Nigerien rural modernization effort. "The paper comprises three parts: history of the forestry problem and attempts to solve it (sections I and II); theoretical framework, including a public goods analysis of the problem, a model of legal relationships, and a description of the trouble case methodology (sections III-V); and data and conclusions, consisting of forestry trouble cases, estimates of the effectiveness of current attempts to solve the problem and of other possible approaches, and an assessment of the merits of the trouble case methodology in this type of study (sections VI-VIII). "It is argued here that the Nigerian forest, from the viewpoint of most users, is an unregulated common property. In the absence of regulation it will be destroyed, with disastrous consequences for the environment and the local human ecologies. Regulation is thus a necessary condition for Nigeriens to sustain mutually productive relationship with each other concerning their forest resources. But current enforcement procedures, rendered ineffective by corruption and rule manipulation, fail to curb the developing negative dynamic in which users have little incentive to reorganize their demand patterns and no incentive to generate new supplies as existing ones are exhausted. A tragedy is therefore in the making."