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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Research Communicators
(Department of Library and Information Science, Jadavpur University, 2014) Das, Anup Kumar; Maity, Gautam
"The emergence of Web 2.0 and simultaneously Library 2.0 platforms has helped the library and information professionals to outreach to new audiences beyond their physical boundaries. In a globalized society, information becomes very useful resource for socio-economic empowerment of marginalized communities, economic prosperity of common citizens, and knowledge enrichment of liberated minds. Scholarly information becomes both developmental and functional for researchers working towards advancement of knowledge. We must recognize a relay of information flow and information ecology while pursuing scholarly research. Published scholarly literatures we consult that help us in creation of new knowledge. Similarly, our published scholarly works should be outreached to future researchers for regeneration of next dimension of knowledge. Fortunately, present day research communicators have many freely available personalized digital tools to outreach to globalized research audiences having similar research interests. These tools and techniques, already adopted by many researchers in different subject areas across the world, should be enthusiastically utilized by LIS researchers in South Asia for global dissemination of their scholarly research works. This newly found enthusiasm will soon become integral part of the positive habits and cultural practices of research communicators in LIS domain."
Agronomie, Agriculture, Forêts
(Publisud, 2008) Richard-Mollard, Daniel; Gillard, Jacques; Le Tacon, Francois; Perfect, Trevor John
"Six experts ont participéà l'Évaluation des sciences agricoles, dans des sous domaines divers. Unrapporteur général a étéchargé derecouper les observations, et desituer/'importance du domaine pourleMaroc (ci après). Nous donnons aussi des extraits derapports spécifiques, concernant l'agronomie et les forêts. Les rapports surles Sols et surl'Eau figurentà la suite."
Aka-Farmer Relations in the Northwest Congo Basin
(Cambridge University, 1982) Bahuchet, Serge; Guillaume, Henri; Lee, Richard; Leacock, Eleanor
"For a variety of reasons, research carried out in central and southern Africa has long ignored the problem of contacts between the Later Stone Age populations of hunter-gatherers and the Iron Age peoples who brought techniques of food production, pottery-making and metallurgy. Recent archaeological research in Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe and more sophisticated methods of dating have begun to provide us with evidence on the antiquity of these contacts, dating in some cases to at least the beginning of the Christian era. The Co-existence of these two modes of existence has consisted not merely in a juxtaposition, but also has involved long-term exchange relations without technological assimilation. The antiquity and persistence of these relations compel us to perceive these foraging societies in a new light. Long assumed to have been on the fringe of history, these societies now appear to have been in contact, yet have nevertheless remained distinct. If some of them enable us to observe ancient forms of social and economic organization, they are by no means fossils of a prehistoric state, magically preserved. It is highly likely that centuries of proximity and contacts have had profound influences on both sides. From this viewpoint, it is clear that we must rely heavily on the findings of archdeology, linguistics and human biology for further insight. The case of the Aka Pygmies illustrates the extent of these contacts. It appears that the western equatorial forest fringe, where the Aka live, was penetrated by Savannah people as early as 2400-500 B.C. This colonization, which took the form of local and progressive migrations rather than a single massive move, was carried out by people, perhaps already Bantu, who made stone tools and pottery, and probably had techniques of food production."
Ancient Lands Cast Long Shadows: The Case for Reconnection with English Commons for Sustainable Management and Use
(Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2003) Humphries, Andrew; Berge, Erling; Carlsson, Lars
"This paper attempts to bring into context historical and contemporary aspects of the institutional framework of English commons with particular reference to the upland grazing areas of the North and West which are of particular significance for sheep grazing. The context for a system based on ancient customary practice in the 21st century will be addressed together with proposals for modernising legislation based on statute. The contemporary response of commoners will be outlined with particular reference to Cumbria which embraces 30% of the English common land area. The principle characteristics discussed are relevant to England and Wales. Scotland has a different history and legal framework."
Belgium
(Overseas Development Institute, 1998) Veron, Philippe; Federspiel, Michèle; Shepherd, Gill; Brown, D.; Richards, Michael; Schreckenberg, K.
"Two thousand years ago, most of Belgium was covered by natural forest. The main formations were the oak and birch woods which covered la Campine, the Atlantic oak forests of Central Belgium, and the hornbeam, oak and beech forests of Upper Belgium. First the Gauls cleared patches of forest to practise cultivation and animal husbandry, then the Romans built roads through the forests and made it more accessible."
Beyond State and Market: Institutional Diversity and Polycentricity in Islamic Contexts
(Ergon Verlag, 2018) Malik, Anas
In discussing capitalism in Islamic contexts, and in societies generally, many will focus on the role of the market in relation to the state. My main thesis is that the emphasis on ideal types of market and state are inadequate and misleading, particularly when considering development issues. Instead, understandings of property, authority, and governance generally require more sensitivity to institutional diversity. Changing the starting point to an appreciation of institutional diversity greatly improves analyses and under-standings of potentials. A society’s cultural endowment, including religious tradition, can be understood as a set of institutions responding to collective action problems in society. While much of the literature on political economy in Islamic contexts has emphasized diversity in ideas, interests, and attitudes, institutions have largely been treated as derivative or epiphenomenal. In contrast with mono-lithic depictions of ‘Sharia’ or ‘Islamic Law’, the Islamic tradition presents a rich heritage of institutional diversity, and the means to accommodate insti-tutional diversity. Combined with a political economic approach that em-phasizes institutional diversity and polycentric order, this heritage suggests underappreciated development potentials in contemporary Islamic con-texts. Considering these potentials requires going beyond the market-state dichotomy.
Can the Internet Rescue Democracy? Toward an On-Line Commons
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) Levine, Peter; Hayduk, R.; Mattson, K.
"The digital divide is obviously an important issue, but I want to go beyond it in this chapter. Even if all citizens could use the Internet from home, computer networks would still not improve our democracy by giving citizens more or better control over decisions traditionally made by governments. However, the Internet does have a different kind of democratic potential if we handle it right. In this chapter, I first criticize the main assumptions of the standard optimistic view, and then offer an alternative."
The Challenges of Achieving Conservation and Development
(Beloit College Press, 2012) Ostrom, Elinor
"In this presentation, I will examine the challenges of achieving both development and conservation. In my research, one of the puzzles that I have been struggling with is how people and their ecologies can work together. Some scholars study only ecological systems, some scholars study only people. At the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis we try to study both. This approach is essential for understanding dynamic processes that lead to, mitigate, or avoid ecological and human disasters and move toward achieving sustainability of both ecological and social systems. This research requires that we break down the disciplinary walls that prevent such discussion from happening."
Challenges to Decentralization of Watershed Management: The Case of New South Wales, Australia
(ICFAI University Press, 2008) Fidelman, Pedro; Menon, Sudha Venu; Pillai, P. A.
"Decentralization includes different types of policy reforms aiming to shift powers from centralized to more localized institutions. It has gained increasing support, particularly in the realm of natural resources management (NRM). Moving towards more decentralized forms of NRM can, however, involve remarkable institutional challenges. Understanding the factors that can facilitate and/or constrain decentralization is, therefore, critical in overcoming such challenges, as well as (re)designing and implementing more suitable policies. In Australia, catchment management - a watershed management initiative - is an example of moving decision-making for NRM from the State to the catchment (watershed) level. New South Wales (NSW) was the first Australian State to adopt, in the late 1980s, catchment management as a state-wide statutory policy. Catchment management has since undergone a number of institutional changes. Specific legislation, for instance, has been introduced and reformed, such as the Catchment Management Act 1989, the Catchment Management Regulation 1999, and the Catchment Management Authorities Act 2003. Consequently, Catchment Management Committees, which operated in the 1990s were replaced by Catchment Management Boards in 2000, which in turn, have recently been replaced with Catchment Management Authorities. This paper summarizes some of the findings from a broader study on the NSW catchment management initiative (see Fidelman, 2006), and examines decentralized approaches to NRM as part of such a NSW initiative. Building on the Ostrom's institutional rule sets and the recent theorizing on decentralization of NRM, an evaluative framework was developed to examine catchment management in NSW."
Changing Gender Relationships and Forest Use: A Case Study from Komassi, Cameroon
(Resources for the Future, 2001) Brown, Katrina Myrvang; Lapuyade, Sandrine; Colfer, Carol J. Pierce; Byron, Yvonne
"Economic and environmental pressures affect access to and use of forest resources, and these dynamics affect men and women quite differently over time. Women are especially dependent on nontimber forest products (NTFPs), but the role of these products has changed markedly. All forest products harvested are now commercially traded in much of Cameroon, compared with only a decade ago, when few products had commercial value. Whereas men have been able to diversify their livelihood strategies, women have less room to maneuver and increasingly rely on diminishing forest resources. This situation has profound impacts on the way women and men perceive change as well as on the current and future management of forest resources."
Chapter 3: Foundational Aspects of Polycentric Governance: Overarching Rules, Social-problem Characteristics and Hheterogeneity
(Cambridge University Press, 2019) Thiel, Andreas; Moser, Christine
"In this chapter, we address what we consider some foundational components shaping emergent polycentric governance that can help to explain the scalar organisation and diversity of governance arrangements we encounter as well as their performance. First, we argue that polycentric governance is founded on particular overarching rules, which enable self-organization by providers, producers, consumers and citizens involved in governance of collective goods. Second, polycentric governance draws together a diversity of ways to address the social problems, along with their characteristics and performance criteria, that involved actors bring into negotiations over governance. Variability in social problem characteristics consequently leads to variable governance structures and levels of performance. Third, heterogeneity of communities (e.g. in terms of income, education, values) engaged in polycentric governance can provide further insights regarding why people prioritize certain performative aspects of governance in relation to different criteria and, therefore, seek to realize their aims through a diversity of governance arrangements. This chapter elaborates on the foundational roles these variables play in shaping polycentric governance and highlights existing research gaps regarding key issues related to them."
Chapter 4: Evolutionary Institutional Change and Performance in Polycentric Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2019) Thiel, Andreas; Pacheco-Vega, Raul; Baldwin, Elizabeth
"Polycentric governance has emergent properties that we argue can be explained through an analysis of the dynamics of institutional change. In this chapter, we use institutional change theories and evolutionary and Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) thinking to trace mechanisms observed in the change and emergence of polycentric governance. We offer an explanatory model of how polycentric governance changes. Particularly, we consider institutional change of polycentric governance to be negotiated in interdependent (networks of) action situations. Change (or emergence) of governance is the result of endogenous changes (e.g. in power resources actors hold) and/ or of exogenous drivers such as technological change. Polycentric governance shares characteristics with Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) whose change is evolutionary. We highlight the particular difficulties this perspective entails for assessing institutional performance. We illustrate the evolution of polycentric governance arrangements through two vignettes summarizing case study material from Kenya and Mexico."
Chapter 5: Cooperation in Polycentric Governance Systems
(Cambridge University Press, 2019) Koontz, Tomas M.
"Cooperation is an important way that decision centres interact in a polycentric governance system. Cooperation in governance has been studied by numerous scholars in the field of 'collaboration,' although such scholarship seldom explicitly sets it within the framework of polycentricity. Cooperation involves multiple decision centres working across boundaries to pursue shared goals, and it is especially prevalent for addressing complex socio-ecological systems. This chapter examines cooperation in the Puget Sound basin, USA, for ecosystem restoration. Against a backdrop of multiple federal, state, local, and tribal jurisdictions making decisions about various ecosystem components, the Washington State Legislature created the Puget Sound Partnership to foster cooperation for restoration efforts. Without comprehensive authority structures to direct restoration actions across system levels, the roles of information and resources are critical. This chapter describes how authority, information, and resources affected cooperation in formation of the Partnership and related Local Integrating Organizations, development of ecosystem recovery plans, and implementation of ecosystem recovery projects. It uses preliminary evidence to explore how we might assess polycentric governance performance in terms of outcomes and processes. Overall the Puget Sound ecosystem restoration efforts exhibit relatively high levels of coherence, representation, and adaptability; relatively low levels of efficiency and accountability; and mixed results on efficacy and network building."
Chapter 8: Assessing Performance in Polycentric Governance System Interactions
(Cambridge University Press, 2019) Koontz, Tomas M.; Garrick, Dustin; Heikkila, Tanya; Villamayor-Tomas, Sergio; Thiel, Andreas; Blomquist, William A.; Garrick, Dustin E.
"This chapter compares insights from our empirical cases of three kinds of interactions: cooperation, conflict and conflict resolution, and competition. The elements of authority, information, and resources affected incentives and interactions differently. Focusing on interactions as a unit of analysis points to a variety of performance criteria that may be appropriate. These criteria for assessing outcomes and processes cannot all be optimized at once, as trade-offs are evident, and different types of interaction are likely to entail different performance combinations. In our case studies, no performance criterion scored high across all cases, and no case performed well across all performance criteria."
Colonial Influences on Property, Community, and Land Use in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh
(Duke University, 2000) Baker, J. Mark; Agrawal, Arun; Sivaramakrishnan, Kumbakonam G.
"British rale in the western Himalayan hill state of Kangra, which began in 1846, represented both continuities with, and disjunctures from, precolonial notions of sovereignty, property, and rule. Early colonial administrators, like their predecessors the Katoch rajas, were attuned to the importance of symbolic representations of state power. The early British revenue assessments in Kangra were also modeled after those of the prior Sikh government. However, the first land settlement of Kangra in 1850 facilitated changes in the control, use, and area of agricultural and forest lands in Kangra. These changes resulted from three interrelated processes. First, during the inherently contentious process of recording rights to land, settlement officers in this hill region applied models of property rights and the village community that had developed on the plains and that were informed by European notions of private property and agricultural development. The result was the creation of new 'traditions' of land use and control. Second, Revenue Department officials emphasized the notion of property as a transferable economic resource that was allocated to individual property owners, in contrast to precolonial conceptions of property as an instrument for securing political legitimacy by distributing 'interests' in property among different groups. Third, the Revenue and Forest Departments' use of land ownership as the sole criteria for assigning rights to forests and uncultivated areas increased local inequities; landless and nonagricultural groups were disenfranchised from resources to which they had previously possessed usufructuary rights of access and use."
Common Elements of EC Tropical Forestry Aid
(Overseas Development Institute, 1998) Brown, David; Richards, Michael; Shepherd, Gill; Brown, David; Richards, Michael; Schreckenberg, K.
"European Community (EC) aid to tropical forestry, like all forms of EC development assistance, is strongly influenced by the structure of the European Union and by its political and financial procedures. Before discussing the manner in which tropical forestry aid is managed within the various Directorates-General, we need to review the structure and procedures of the Union and consider the ways in which these features affect the definition and administration of aid policy. The centre of power in the EU is the Council of the European Union. This consists of representatives of the European Member States and the Commission, the actual attendance varying according to the issue under debate. The highest-level body is the Council of the Heads of Government which meets twice yearly and formally approves the policies of the Union. The Council also meets periodically at Ministerial level. For example, the General Affairs Council deals with external affairs and is attended by the Foreign Ministers of the Member States, while Eco®n is attended by the Ministers of Finance."
Common-Pool Resource Theory
(MIT Press (Manuscript Draft), 2004) Schlager, Edella; Durant, R. F.; Fiorino, D. J.; O'Leary, R.
From p. 146: "The Australian fishers are not like Hardin's herders. They have avoided a tragedy of the commons. Why have Australian, but not New England, fishers figured a way out of their tragedy? Hardin's model cannot account for such success; it predicts failure. Until recently, if one turned to the very best scholarly work, one would find only explanations and predictions of failure. This chapter argues, however, that this attitude is beginning to change. Over the past fifteen years, scholars and practitioners have concluded that the tragedy of the commons is no longer the only model available to account for human use of common-pool resources."
Common-Pool Resources and Institutions: Toward a Revised Theory (Draft)
(Workshop Working Paper Series no. W97-18, 1997) Ostrom, Elinor
"Common-pool resources are systems that generate finite quantities of resource units so that one person's use subtracts from the quantity of resource units available to others. Irrigation systems are among the most important type of common-pool resource. Most common-pool resources are sufficiently large that multiple actors can simultaneously use the resource system and efforts to exclude potential beneficiaries are costly. When the resource units (e.g., water) are highly valued and many actors benefit from appropriating(harvesting) them for consumption, exchange, or as a factor in a production process, the appropriations made by one individual are likely to create negative externalities for others."
Commons and Landscape
(Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2003) Olwig, Kenneth; Berge, Erling; Carlsson, Lars
"This essay will argue for the necessity of combining the historical/empirical and the theoretical/institutional oriented approaches to the commons, with an approach that takes cognizance of the commons enormous symbolic importance to society as an epitome of shared abstract values and democracy. The link between these approaches to the commons lies in the conception of the commons as landscape."
Commons for Whom? On New Coastal Commons on North Norwegian Coasts
(Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2003) Sandberg, Audun; Berge, Erling; Carlsson, Lars
"There are dramatic events taking place on North-Norwegian Coasts during this period. On the surface this appears as a surprising shift in the opinion of the coastal population in crucial questions. One such fundamental question in coastal areas has been the issue of Norwegian membership in the European Union, where the opinion is tilting from opposition tied to fishing rights for wild fish towards support tied to marketing access for farmed fish. But underneath this there are other long term processes that might enable us to explain why the once crucial issue of local resource control now seems to be of less importance than it was in 1972 and even as late as 1994. This paper is an initial attempt to outline what is going on in a typical resource-dependent region when the fundamental institutional relations are changed. In doing so, it does not utilize contemporary concepts like privatisation, individualization, re-feudalisation, or other ideologically based constructs as explanatory factors. Rather it is using basic property rights as useful representations of an important analytical link between the biophysical world and the social world. By tracing the effects of different designs of property rights on both natural stocks of fish and on coastal ecosystems, and on social systems like coastal communities, firms, corporations and political parties, we might come nearer to possible explanations of seemingly surprising events. "The fundamental assumption here is that the attempts at a more 'rational' resource management for wild marine fish have had unintended consequences. Over the years this benevolent political gesture has become much like a Trojan horse for coastal communities. Hidden inside precious gift that modern resource management regimes were to the coastal population, there are three dangerous soldiers: one is the soldier of increased social rigidity that rises from increased ecological uncertainty, the second is the soldier of inefficiency and lack of innovation that results from the accumulation of inequality, and the third soldier is the danger of unsustainable use of coastal ecosystems and ecosystem services."
The Commons in Navarra: Urbasa-Andia-Limitaciones
(Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2003) Oses, Nuria; Berge, Erling; Carlsson, Lars
"As the common land in Navarra is so extended and diverse, in the following, I will put my attention in one of these common land: Urbasa and Andia, which have been till recently, state commons. I will analyse who are the actors entitled to appropriate, what are the goods the actors appropriate, how do the actors go about appropriating and what are the actors allowed to do with the good appropriated. I will also analyse the effect that the exploitation of Urbasa and Andia has had on the landscape of these territory."
Commons, Anticommons, Semicommons
(Edward Elgar, 2011) Fennell, Lee; Ayotte, Kenneth; Smith, Henry
This handbook chapter offers a brief introduction to the commons, anticommons, and semicommons models and shows how the three fit together in a unified theoretical framework. I suggest that each of these templates is best understood as a lens for apprehending a single core, challenging fact about resource systems -- their need to accommodate multiple uses that are most efficiently pursued at different scales, whether simultaneously or over time.
Commons: Old and New -- On Environmental Goods and Services in the Theory of Commons
(Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2003) Berge, Erling; Carlsson, Lars
"The modern and largely academic and urban initiated concern with environmental protection of landscapes, species, watersheds, biodiversity, ecosystem-services etc. are framed by a language suggesting that the main concern is the protection and preservation of precarious resources of common interests for mankind. "Thus the values deserving the attention of environmental protection seem to be very different from the concerns shaping the evolution of traditional commons: the control of access to and extraction of resources seen as limited but essential for the survival of local communities. "The paper will explore the theoretical differences and similarities of the two types of interests driving the concern for preserving values. It will be suggested that a basic difference lies in the distinction between values where there is rivalry in appropriation and values where there is non-rivalry. It will further be argued that in designing new institutions for managing protected areas, an understanding of traditional commons and how the new values to be protected are different from and interact with the old values will be important to achieve sustainability of resource use within the protected areas."
Community Rights and Access to Land in Scotland
(Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2003) Sellar, David; Berge, Erling; Carlsson, Lars
"The purpose of the paper was to give a flavour of the great land debate which has been raging in Scotland for some years, and of which the most tangible outcome so far has been the Land Reform Scotland Act. This Act, passed by the Scottish Parliament in January 2003, contains provisions permitting general public access to land, and allowing for the community purchase of land. Before moving on to the land debate, the paper considered a number of preliminary points: the history of commons or 'commonties' in Scotland; whether anything approximating to an allemansrett might be said to exist in Scotland; the Trust concept; and two myths regarding ownership and access."
Comparative Study Across Four States of India - Belgaum District, Karnataka State
(Swiss Development Cooperation- Intercooperation, 2007) Smith, Connie; Tiwari, Shailendra; Vyas, Vivek
"This paper explores the current problems faced by pastoralist communities in Belgaum District, Karnataka, as they try to sustain their semi-nomadic lifestyles in the face of modernising agriculture and changing land use. In Karnataka, pastoralists originate mostly from two communities, the Gollas and the Kurubas (also known as Dhangars). Gollas are mainly from the southern part of the state, but there are many Kurubas in Belgaum district, where their estimated population was 866,267 in 1984. Their traditional occupations are rearing sheep, weaving blankets and agriculture. Most pastoralists in Belgaum District are Kurubas; 80% of them are landless shepherds or labourers, whilst around 20% own land and keep large ruminants. Pastoralists form an important sub-section of the animal husbandry sector in this district, predominantly herding sheep and goats. Pastoralists in this area tend to migrate for short periods of a few months, combining nomadic animal husbandry with small-scale crop cultivation in their 'base' villages."
Comparative Study Across Four States of India - Nilgiris District, Tamil Nadu State
(Swiss Development Cooperation- Intercooperation, 2007) Smith, Connie; Tiwari, Shailendra; Vyas, Vivek
"Given the close relationship between water security and the native forests as well as the reliance of tribal groups on forest products, environmental conservation is clearly not a discrete issue from humanitarian development. However, the total protection of biodiversity sites through the creation of reserves can come at the expense of the socio-economic development of those who rely on such habitiats for survival, since they may be denied access to the forests and/or their products. In our field observations, this was clearly apparent in villages adjacent to the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary (a part of the Biosphere Reserve) where tribal people have been restricted to a small fenced area and have no rights over the forestland. The community has been totally alienated from the forest, not being allowed even to enter the land that until recently was the centre of their livelihoods. Compelled to live within the fenced area, their situation has become prison-like and has resulted in a total loss of traditional forest-based livelihoods. "In addition to this, the creation of the biosphere reserve has massively increased tourism in the district. Yet this expansion has occurred with no proper planning and has brought its own pressures, causing significant environmental degradation which is threatening the long term viability of tourism in the hills. Thus there is a possibility that the deep emphasis on conservation is simultaneously restricting the opportunities for adivasi groups reliant on the forest areas as well as encouraging levels of tourism that cannot be sustained without inducing environmental degradation. Tribal communities thus face two inter-related obstacles: firstly the appropriation of much of the forest area for plantations, which has dramatically increased pressure on remaining resources and compounded environmental degradation, and secondly new legislation restricting access to the forest and grasslands, which whilst attempting to protect biodiversity has also emphasised conservation at the expense of adivasi livelihoods. "In the face of such alienation of livelihoods, the work of the Keystone Foundation seems to offer some viable alternatives. Subsistence livelihoods based on shifting cultivation and migratory herding are clearly no longer sustainable in the modern context of the Nilgiri Hills; with few accessible forest areas such practices can only lead to widespread exhaustion of the natural resource base. Keystone work with tribal communities to diversify livelihood opportunities through income generation activities as well as capacity building, which in the long term will help to provide sustainable alternatives in the changing landscape of the Nilgiris."
Comparative Study Across Four States of India: Gajpati District, Orissa State
(Bangalore, India, 2007) Smith, Connie; Tiwari, Shailendra; Vyas, Vivek
"Orissa is the second poorest state in India with one fifth of the population classed as Scheduled Tribes and thirteen tribes have been classed as Primitive Tribal Groups. Such communities are traditionally reliant on livelihoods derived from forest products. In the south of the state, 87% of the scheduled tribe population live below the poverty line, compared to a state average of 50% for the population overall. Gajapati district is situated in southern Orissa, a district characterised by a low literacy rate and very low standards of living for many of the people. The region is notable for its high population of primitive tribal groups inhabiting an area of undulating terrain, where traditionally they practised shifting cultivation in addition to hunter-gathering practices. Approximately 93% of the rural households in this district have legal title on only 9% of the district's land area. Therefore, one of the major development issues facing the rural poor of the district relates to unsettled landholdings, which has left many tribal communities classed as encroachers on lands that historically they inhabited."
Conceptualizing Sustainability
(Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University and Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science, Tribhuvan University, 1997) Dixon, John M.; Varughese, George; Sharma, Prem N.; Shivakoti, Ganesh P.
"Despite the recent success in expanding global food supply--today's population of 5.8 billion have, on average, 15 percent more food per capita than the global population of 4 billion had two decades ago)--shamefully, more than 800 million are still chronically hungry, mostly living in rural areas. Moreover, reports of civil unrest caused by shortages of food or high prices are all too frequent. Thus, the International Commission on Peace and Food in their report Uncommon Opportunities note that 'food has become a symbol of our collective human endeavor to create a better world for all'. Food production depends ultimately on sound and productive natural resource systems. The per capita availability of land and water for agriculture is limited and declining as a consequence of increasing population, degradation and redirection of land and water to domestic and industrial uses. Moreover, significant environmental costs have been associated with the past successful agricultural growth, such as salinization, soil erosion, lowering water tables, and loss of biodiversity."
Considerations on Governing Heritage as a Commons Resource
(Springer, 2017) Gould, Peter G.
"The 'commons' is gaining attention as a possible alternative model for managing tangible and intangible heritage in a manner that devolves authority and responsibility to local communities through mechanisms that are democratic and privilege local over national or global interests. This chapter reviews the literature on the commons within archaeology and heritage management, evaluates theorizing on the commons in the context of heritage, and explores, through literature review and case studies from Belize and Peru, the challenges and opportunities that arise should archaeologists and heritage managers seek to adopt the commons as a guiding principle for community projects. The chapter emphasizes that the problem of governance—the rules under which the competing interests of stakeholders in a venture manage their activities and resolve their differences—is an underappreciated but critical ingredient in the design of effective commons-like models for heritage management."
Decentralization: Issues, Lessons and Reflections (Manuscript Draft)
(Earthscan, 2005) Capistrano, Doris; Colfer, Carol J. Pierce
"Decentralization of forest governance has been defined and implemented in different ways in a variety of contexts around the world. It has had varying results and impacts both on forests and on different groups of stakeholders with interests in these resources. Although the details may vary, countries' experiences with decentralization include some remarkably similar patterns, particularly in the aspects that appear to contribute to the success of failure of decentralization efforts. "The International Workshop on Decentralization at Interlaken, Switzerland, in April 2004 featured and shared lessons from different countries' experience with decentralization of forest governance. This chapter distills some of the main issues and insights woven through the papers and captures important ideas highlighted during the various sessions of the workshop. It summarizes the patterns that have emerged and reviews how decentralization looks in practice, as opposed to in theory. The chapter also briefly reviews the implications of decentralization for forests and biodiversity conversation. Finally, the chapter notes common challenges and concludes with lessons and observations."
Denmark
(Overseas Development Institute, 1998) Kerkhof, Paul; Shepherd, Gill; Brown, D.; Richards, Michael; Schreckenberg, K.
"Denmark was covered by forests and the human population density was low until early medieval times. From the tenth century onwards the population grew and an increasing proportion of the land was cleared of forest, a process temporarily interrupted during the Black Death. The population density of 20 people per square kilometre in the thirteenth century had doubled by the middle of the nineteenth. Norway and Southern Sweden were part of Denmark for much of this time, and although population densities there were much lower, the trends were similar."
Designing Robust Common Property Regimes for Collaboration Towards Rural Sustainability
(Earthscan, 2007) Brunckhorst, David; Marshall, Graham R.
"The 'outback' of Australia represents a large part of the continent, and is characterised in large part by rangelands -- arid and semi-arid landscapes with occasional monsoon-like rains and low productivity soils used primarily for grazing. These social-ecological systems can be differentiated as particular biocultural or landscape region, such as the northern savanna. Despite the sometimes large distances between neighbours, these are interdependent systems with external influences, including those of distant governments. In understanding, facilitating, or possibly re-designing institutional arrangements for collective action and resource governance in the outback, knowledge by local people of the design characteristics of robust community-scale institutions will be important. Appropriate business structures might offer a supportive framework for collective decisions that facilitate adaptive management enhancing sustainability and endurance. "After summarising the characteristics of enduring common property regimes, we draw on three projects we have been closely involved with to describe how legal entities or corporate structures might be employed to enhance robustness of the institutional arrangements. All are Australian grazing systems, one in the Mallee rangelands and Riverland in South Australia, and two on the relatively richer soils of the New England Tablelands of New South Wales. Each example involves the development of a form of common property regime for collective decision-making, action and governance of landholder groups and/or communities. Facilitating and supporting (but not stifling) this institutional development through legal entities or corporate structures can contribute robustness. Balancing individual versus collective rationale, and risk management of internal and external stresses enhances robust capabilities. Some corporate structures or combinations of entities might, in different ways, be useful in the development and evolution of robust institutional arrangements for collective use and governance of various resources across multiple scales of ownership. "Anderies and co-authors differentiated resilience, which arises from spontaneous self-organising processes within a system (such as an ecosystem or a social network), from robustness that arises in addition from conscious efforts to increase a system's capacity to adapt to internal and external stresses. The more we understand how to facilitate robustness in linked social-ecological systems, the better equipped we become to design institutional arrangements capable of enhancing the resilience of those ecosystems we depend on (Anderies et al., 2004). The on-ground experiments discussed in this chapter seek particularly to understand how groups of farmers can move towards sustainable natural resource management and enterprise development by crafting institutional arrangements enabling them to manage their combined resources cooperatively. Such arrangements can contribute both resilience and robustness. In building robustness, we are particularly interested here in how to take advantage of opportunities the existing suite of business structures (supported by a state's legal system) might contribute to robustness of common property regimes."
Determinants of Successful Cooperation in Agricultural Markets: Evidence from Producer Groups in Poland
(Springer, 2008) Banaszak, Ilona; Hendrikse, G.
"The main question posed in the paper is why some cooperative arrangements in agricultural markets survive and succeed while others fail. Data were collected from 62 Polish farmer cooperative organizations called producer groups. The main aim of those organizations was to organize joint sales of output produced individually by their members. Some of the groups were functioning effectively while others had disbanded or were no longer performing their essential functions. Variables such as the leader’s strength, previous business acquaintances, initial selection of members, and number of members have a significant positive impact on the likelihood of success of the researched organizations."
DG V, DG VI and DG XVI [Directorates General V, VI, and XVI]
(Overseas Development Institute, 1998) Brown, David; Shepherd, Gill; Brown, David; Richards, Michael; Schreckenberg, K.
"Structural Funds are available as non-reimbursable grants, on the basis of co-financing ('part-financing') with the relevant Member States. The level of co-financing depends on the objective of the programme, and is up to a maximum of between 50 and 85%. There are five sets of priority objectives: Objective 1: Structural adjustment of regions whose development is lagging behind Objective 2: Economic conversion of areas seriously affected by industrial decline Objective 3: Combatting long-term unemployment and facilitating integration into working life of young people and those threatened with exclusion from the labour market Objective 4: Preventive measures to combat unemployment associated with industrial change Objective 5a: Structural adaptation of agriculture and fisheries Objective 5b: Economic diversification of vulnerable rural areas The relevance of the Structural Funds in the present context relates to the few overseas territories of the Member States located in the tropics. The main ones are the four overseas Departements of France, Martinique, Guadeloupe, ReÂunion and Guyane, all of which have the same legal status as any other French departements."
DG VIII [Directorate General VIII]
(Overseas Development Institute, 1998) Stoneman, Catherine; Brown, David; Shepherd, Gill; Brown, David; Richards, Michael; Schreckenberg, K.
"As the Directorate-General responsible for Development Co-operation with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, DG VIII occupies an unusual position with regard to development aid. Not only does it control `budgetary allocations' voted by the European Parliament to the respective development-related budget lines, but it also has access to the so-called `nonbudgetary funds' in the form of the periodic pledges which are made directly by the Member States to the European Development Fund. Unlike the budget lines, the EDF does not form part of the EC Budget and is thus outside direct Parliamentary control. Unusually, therefore, DG VIII action is conditioned not only by Commission-wide influences such as the Maastricht Treaty, but also by the bilateral and extra-budgetary financing arrangements associated with the multi-annual Lome Conventions. DG VIII's geographical mandate reflects the history of the European Union and the colonial history of several of its Member States."
Different Farming Methods -- But no Solution to Improve Rural Sustainability and to Save Australia's Family Farm
(InTech, 2013) Muenstermann, Ingrid
"Australia's best known common property system, the Tilbuster Commons, failed after five years despite being economically and environmentally successful. Reasons for the failure could be related to interpersonal relationships. This chapter will look at Elinor Ostrom's philosophy of the commons and at lessons learned from the Tilbuster Commons. The purpose of the chapter is to establish the significance and usefulness or otherwise of different farming methods to create sustainable rural societies and economies."
Dynamics of the Coastal Zone in the High Islands of Oceania: Management Implications and Options
(Institute of Pacific Studies, 1993) David, Gilbert; Waddel, E.; Nunn, P.D.
"This article focuses on the relationships between the human and the physical parameters of the coastal zone. The first part is concerned with defining the boundaries, terrestrial and maritime, of the coastal zone. The second part deals with its dynamics. It first discusses the overall dynamics of the relationships between the foreshore and both the land and marine environments adjacent to it. It then proceeds to explain the internal dynamics of the coastal environment itself, distinguishing between the land component, the marine component, and the interface between the two. The third and final part concerns the preservation of the coastal zone and its place in the sustainable development of high islands. Following a brief overview of the dangers that threaten this fragile environment, it stresses its economic and human potential, and discusses problems raised by the pricing of the coastal zone."
Ecological Complexity
(Norton, 1992) Myers, N.
"However hard it is for me to visualize the scale of biological richness in a tropical forest, I find it far more difficult to imagine the complexity of interactions between plants and animals, and between them and their physical environs. After all, if there are l,000 species within one particular square kilometer of forest, their relationships with each other--their comings and goings, their incessant encounters with associates and enemies--certainly number tens of thousands of interactions, probably hundreds of thousands, possibly many more. I sometimes speculate that, given our scant understanding to date, I likely fail to recognize the very scale of a forest's complex functioning. In other words, I have little idea of how massively complex it is. "Thus it is the complexity of a tropical forest that excites me when I stand amid those stately trunks and their convoluted vegetation abuzz with creatures of myriad forms. Whereas it would take me many moons to identify and document the main species (certainly not all of the species--I would need the rest of my life for that) within l00 meters of where I stand, it would take me many times longer to trace even a portion of their interrelationships, their energy flows, their distinctive roles in the phenomenon that makes up a tropical forest. What I see is probably surpassed in complexity by only one other living entity on Earth--that which is between my ears. Yet how far short is my gray matter from gaining even an intuitive sense of the full intricacy of the scene before me."
Enabling Policy Frameworks for Successful Community Based Resource Management Initiatives
(East-West Center and Regional Community Forestry Training Center, 2001) Suryanata, Krisnawati; Dolcemascolo, Glenn; Fisher, Robert; Fox, Jefferson; Suryanata, Krisnawati; Dolcemascolo, Glenn; Fisher, Robert; Fox, Jefferson
"The workshop is the ninth in a series on 'Community-Based Management of Forestlands'. Since 1986, the Ford Foundation and the East-West Center have attempted to document the changes taking place in the management of Asia's forests as national governments collaborate with local communities and civil society to design win-win land management scenarios. The workshops have engaged key actors in dialogue and debate over new policies and practices. These brief sabbaticals provided an opportunity for forestry practitioners to assess and anticipate these changes within their countries, and to compare their experience with other national efforts. The writing workshops are also an important venue for busy practitioners to the take time to reflect upon and document their experience for wider analysis and sharing. The 2001 writing workshop brought together fifteen participants from eight countries. These people have all been involved in promoting collaborative approaches to environmental management. Though emphasis is generally on forestland management, this year's workshop was expanded to include irrigation management (papers by Pangare, Parajuli and Tan KimYong) because of the long history of institutional development in the management of irrigation resources. In all cases, participants are operating within a policy framework that espouses varying degrees of decentralization. Although decentralization holds the promise of administrative efficiency and more equitable distribution of benefits (Cheema and Rondinelli 1983), many decentralization efforts have neither empowered local communities nor improved forest management. Agrawal and Ribot (1999) have argued that, in order to realize many of the lauded benefits of decentralization, powers need to be transferred to lower level actors who are both elected and downwardly accountable. Empirical analyses of the lines of accountability are key to our understanding of the nature of decentralization and community-based resource management initiatives. Equally important is an examination of the conditions that facilitate downward accountability such as policy environments and local socio-political institutions."
The Environment as a Common Good in the Time of Globalization: Its Conceptualization and Social Perception
(Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2003) Pardo, Mercedes; Echavarren, Jose M.; Aleman, Eliana; Berge, Erling; Carlsson, Lars
"It is usual to consider the environment as a common good, but we are far from having a clear definition of either of them: the environment and the common. Both vary according the scope of the analysis (world, national, regional, provincial, local), the different societies, and the diverse elements included, and so vary the social perception and action on the environment. On the other hand, new and increasing demands from the environment as a common good, as it is the case of preserving biodiversity or landscape among others) might clash with traditional commons. Societies face now a challenge to compatibilize traditional commons and the new common: the environment. In order to study the idea of the environment as the new common is relevant to pay attention to legal conceptions and issues related with property rights. A conceptual and historical clarification of the sense and meaning of common is required. In this paper the conceptual problematic of the term common for the case of the environment is analyzed, and the change in its social perception within the process of industrialization and globalization. A case study of Navarre (Spain) show how people conceive Nature in terms of common good."
Ethical Implications of Carrying Capacity
(W. H. Freeman, 1977) Hardin, Garrett; Baden, John
From p. 112: "The carrying capacity of a particular area is defined as the maximum number of a species that can be supported indefinitely by a particular habitat, allowing for seasonal and random changes, without degradation of the environment and without diminishing carrying capacity in the future. There is some redundancy in this definition, but redundancy is better than inadequacy. Using deer as an example, the true carrying capacity of a region must allow for the fact that food is harder to get in winter than in summer and scarcer in drought years than in 'normal years.' If too many head of deer are allowed in the pasture they may overgraze it to such an extent that the ground is laid bare, producing soil erosion followed by less plant growth in subsequent years. Always, by eating the grasses that appeal to them, herbivores selectively favor the weed grasses that are not appealing, thus tending to diminish the carrying capacity for themselves and for their progeny in subsequent years."
Europe: An Overview
(Overseas Development Institute, 1998) Shepherd, Gill; Brown, D.; Richards, Michael; Schreckenberg, K.
"This book provides an overview of the ways in which Europe offers support to tropical forests through aid and research. Each of the Member States' current programmes is examined, along with those of the various Directorates-General (DGs) in the European Commission which support tropical forestry. It is called a Sourcebook because it will probably be used more as a work of reference than as a book to read from start to finish. Its intended audience is threefold. Above all, its authors hope that it will be of value to the developing countries with which the European Union (EU) works. The book should make it simpler to understand the way in which aid to forestry is organised from country to country and within the Commission; it will indicate each donor's target countries for the funding of tropical forestry, and will suggest the particular interests of each."
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."
Financial Transfers to Sustain Cooperative International Optimality in Stock Pollutant Abatement
(Edward Elgar, 1998) Germain, Marc; Toint, Philippe; Tulkens, Henry; Faucheux, S.; Gowdy, J.; Nicolai, I.
"It is well known that the transnational character of many environmental problems (for example, greenhouse gas emissions, acid rain, pollution of international waters) requires cooperation among the countries involved if a social optimum is to be achieved. The issues raised thereby have often been addressed, in the economic literature, using concepts borrowed from cooperative game theory."
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."
Forest Finns vs. Swedish Commons
(Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2003) Wedin, Maud; Berge, Erling; Carlsson, Lars
"The Savolax expansion 1400-1500; Svidden cultivation as a general; Svidden cultivation made by forest Finns; spruce forest, slash- and burn, forest rye; Svidden 'culture': Access to land more important than ownership, using large areas; Extended expansion to Scandinavia, first Sweden, later Norway and even the colony New Sweden. Also migration east and southwards (religion). Reasons for migration (push-): Civil war, war against Russia, deterioration of climate, overpopulation, taxation (noble people who were granted land as reward for instance Ruovesi and Rautalampi) (and pull) the search for new svidden areas. Two choices: change the way to support themselves or migrate. The state asked for new settlements, gave about six years of freedom from taxation."
Framework for Analyzing the Knowledge Commons (Draft)
(MIT Press, 2005) Hess, Charlotte; Ostrom, Elinor
"Who hasn't heard of the six blind men of Indostan encircled around an elephant? The six-one a political scientist, one a librarian, one an economist, one a law professor, one a computer scientist, and one an anthropologist-discover, based on their own investigations, that the object before them is a wall, spear, a snake, a tree, a fan, and a rope. The story fits well with the question that propelled this chapter: how can an interdisciplinary group of scholars best analyze a highly complex, rapidly evolving, elephantine resource such as knowledge? Trying to get one's hands around knowledge as a shared resource is even more challenging when we factor in the economic, legal, technological, political, social and psychological components-each complex in their own right-that make up this global commons."
France
(Overseas Development Institute, 1998) Bedel, Jean; Brown, David; Shepherd, Gill; Brown, David; Richards, Michael; Schreckenberg, K.
"The pattern of forest ownership, like agricultural land ownership in general, has been significantly influenced by the egalitarian ideology of the French Revolution. The principle of equal inheritance of all heirs was enshrined in the Code NapoleÂon of 1804 which still forms the basis of French civil law. One result of this has been a tendency to fragmentation of land holdings. Today, more than 70% of the total forest area is under private ownership, and 25% of this is in small ownerships(less than 4 ha).2 Only 12% of forests are under state ownership, while 18% are owned by collectivite publiques (local government authorities3). The forests of France are notably diverse in species type; 89 tree species are found, 61% of them broadleaf, especially oak (Quercus spp.) and beech (Fagus spp.), with the remaining 39% conifers, particularly pine (Pinus spp.), or (Abies spp.) and spruce (Picea spp.). Coppice woodlands still cover almost one half of the forest area. The fragmented nature of many of the forest holdings poses some difficulties for the operation of the processing industries, which tend to be concentrated near the ports, far from many small producers, and the economics of small-scale management in France are a subject of debate among forestry professionals. France is the leading producer of hardwoods in Europe, while in production of conifers it is surpassed only by the Scandinavian countries and Germany. In addition to timber, France's forests provide a range of other products and services, including a number of important and distinctive non-timber products (various fruits and nuts; cork from the cork oak [Quercus suber]; mushrooms and truf¯es; etc). The French are renowned for their love of hunting; revenue from the issue of hunting permits for government forests alone brought in more than FF 170 m. in 1992."
From Natural History to History of Nature: Redefining the Environmental History of India
(Editions de I'Orstom, 1996) Sangwan, S.; Roland, Waast; Yvon, C.; Bonneuil, C.
"The two observations, one from a metropolitan savant and the other from a colonial 'devotee' of nature confirm that ecological discourse at the centre and colonial periphery descended at a particular historical juncture. They also reiterates that the discourse had its roots in the broad domain of natural history. History of ecology (ecological ideas), as it stands now, is burdened with metropolitan bias with practically no discussion on its agenda in the colonial peripheries. One most concrete example being the (de)construction of natural history tradition on the Indian periphery. While a few consider it as simply a favourite 'mind-relaxing' exercise for men cut-off from home surroundings,o thers read as plain statistical surveys ('stampcollecting') without any reference even to the pressing demands of colonial state. A major shift came with professional historians joining the debate. Making 'colonialism' as the ultimate boundary of a scientific discourse on the periphery, the 'second wave' of scholarship links the data gathering exercise with the 'changing ideologies' of imperialism."
The Future of International Environmental Law: A Law of the Ecological Commons?
(West Group, 2012) Bollier, David
"The first section of the chapter looks at the conceptual and historical background of the commons, as seen through readings by Garret Hardin and commons scholars such as Elinor Ostrom and Lewis Hyde. The next section introduces new notions of stewardship over the long term, often in contrast to regimes of private property rights and exclusive individual ownership for market gain. This accounts for the many deep tensions between private property law and the commons. A third section surveys a number of contemporary ecological commons and proposals for new commons such as acequias (community-operated waterways) that enable Native Americans to steward scarce water supplies in New Mexico; the Potato Park in Peru that empowers indigenous people to assert stewardship rights over a genetically valuable potatoes; community fishing regimes for endangered fisheries; and 'stakeholder trusts' and 'social charters' as a new paradigms of governance of ecological resources. The point is that we need new sorts of institutional innovation to manage the atmosphere, oceans and fresh water more responsibly. Finally, a fourth section considers the future of the commons and ecological governance that nation-states should strive to support."
Gender Relations, Rural Transformation and Technological Change
(ORSTOM, 1985) Evans, Alison
"This paper takes as its starting point evidence of the negative and contradictory effects of technological packages on women's autonomy and status. Just how serious these negative effects are, in quantitative terms, and why women and men should accept this bleak situation, is not completely clear in the existing literature. This paper argues for an extended research approach looking at technological change as a product of social and political relations. Technology is a central component of current food self-sufficiency strategies, and women are primary contributors to food production points to the policy relevance of this type of research."
Governing Social-Ecological Systems
(Elsevier, 2006) Janssen, Marco A.; Ostrom, Elinor; Tesfatsion, L.; Judd, K.L.
"Social-ecological systems are complex adaptive systems where social and biophysical agents are interacting at multiple temporal and spatial scales. The main challenge for the study of governance of social-ecological systems is improving our understanding of the conditions under which cooperative solutions are sustained, how social actors can make robust decisions in the face of uncertainty and how the topology of interactions between social and biophysical actors affect governance. We review the contributions of agent-based modeling to these challenges for theoretical studies, studies which combines models with laboratory experiments and applications of practical case studies. "Empirical studies from laboratory experiments and field work have challenged the predictions of the conventional model of the selfish rational agent for common pool resources and public-good games. Agent-based models have been used to test alternative models of decision-making which are more in line with the empirical record. Those models include bounded rationality, other regarding preferences and heterogeneity among the attributes of agents. Uncertainty and incomplete knowledge are directly related to the study of governance of social-ecological systems. Agent-based models have been developed to explore the consequences of incomplete knowledge and to identify adaptive responses that limited the undesirable consequences of uncertainties. Finally, the studies on the topology of agent interactions mainly focus on land use change, in which models of decision-making are combined with geographical information systems. "Conventional approaches in environmental economics do not explicitly include nonconvex dynamics of ecosystems, non-random interactions of agents, incomplete understanding, and empirically based models of behavior in collective action. Although agent-based modeling for social-ecological systems is in its infancy, it addresses the above features explicitly and is therefore potentially useful to address the current challenges in the study of governance of social-ecological systems."
The Growth of the Commons Paradigm
(MIT Press, 2007) Bollier, David
From page 27: "...it can be a formidable challenge to explain that the commons is more pervasive than we may realize, and that it can be a highly effective way to create economic and social wealth. That is precisely what this book seeks to demonstrate and explain. A commons model is at work in the social systems for scholarly communication, in the work of research libraries as they gather and share knowledge, and in the behavior of scientific communities as they generate and disseminate their research. A commons model is at work in the new EconPort, which manages a large economics literature for its user community, and in the Conservation Commons, which is building a 'global public domain' for literature about the environment and conservation. ..."The commons has too many variations to be captured in a fixed, universal set of principles. Each commons has distinctive dynamics based on its participants, history, cultural values, the nature of the resource, and so forth. Still, there are some recurring themes evident in different commons. A key goal of this chapter is to showcase the many different sorts of commons operating in American life today and to illustrate how, despite significant differences, they embody certain general principles."
Hunting and the Quest for Power: The James Bay Cree and Whitemen in the 20th Century
(McCelland & Stewart, 1995) Feit, Harvey A.; Morrison, R.B.; Wilson, Carl
"This chapter has been called 'Hunting and the Quest for Power' because it is about different quests for power and how they have interacted in the recent history of the James Bay region of northern Quebec. The key terms of this title are ambiguous; hunting means different things to the Cree than it does for other Canadians, and so, too, with power. The quest for power is a metaphor the Cree might use for the life of a hunter; it is also a metaphor Euro- Canadians might use for the goals of both northern developers and government bureaucracies. ... "When the Cree began their opposition to the James Bay hydroelectric scheme in 1972, they asked if I would present some of the results of my research to the courts and then use them in the negotiations. It was an unexpected happenstance that my study proved to be of some use to the Cree, and one for which I was thankful. I served as an adviser to the Cree organizations during the negotiation and implementation of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, regularly from 1973 through 1978, and on an occasional basis thereafter. This took me into a new set of interests in the relationship of the Cree to the government and toward a deeper interest in Cree history. The results of some of these experiences are described in the latter parts of this chapter."
Impact of Soil Fauna on the Properties of Soils in the Humid Tropics
(Soil Science Society of America, 1992) Lavelle, P.; Blanchart, E.; Martin, A.; Spain, A.V.; Martin, S.
"The sustainability of soil fertility in agricultural systems of the humid tropics has recently become a major issue as a consequence of continued land degradation and the critical need to provide more food. For socioeconomic, pedological, and ecological reasons, the development of sustainable high-input agriculture has proven to be slow and difficult and much effort needs to be directed towards the improvement of productivity in low-input agriculture."
Impacts of AKST on Development and Sustainability Goals
(International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, 2009) Leakey, Roger; Kranjac-Berisavljevic, Gordana
"The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) looks realistically at how we could effectively use agriculture/AKST to help us meet development and sustainability goals. An unprecedented three-year collaborative effort, the IAASTD involved more than 400 authors in 110 countries and cost more than $11 million. It reports on the advances and setbacks of the past fifty years and offers options for the next fifty years. The results of the project are contained in seven reports: a Global Report, five regional Sub-Global Assessments, and a Synthesis Report. The Global Report gives the key findings of the Assessment, and the five Sub-Global Assessments address regional challenges. The volumes present options for action. All of the reports have been extensively peer-reviewed by governments and experts and all have been approved by a panel of participating governments. The Sub-Global Assessments all utilize a similar and consistent framework: examining and reporting on the impacts of AKST on hunger, poverty, nutrition, human health, and environmental/social sustainability. The IAASTD was initiated by the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, with support from the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and other sponsors. Its goal is to analyze the potential of agricultural knowledge, science, and technology (AKST) for reducing hunger and poverty, improving rural livelihoods, and working toward environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable development."
Institutional Adminstrative, and Management Aspects of Land Tenure in Zambia
(UNU Press, 1986) Banda, C.T.A.
"It is patently obvious that the system of tenure in the State land areas has overwhelming advantages in that it provides an indefeasible title, a negotiable title, and a title that can be pledged to raise capital as well as provides for the succession of title. Certain restrictions on tenure are imposed by laws enacted by the Government. Such restrictions are in the national interest rather than in any local interest, and they may always be readily ascertained. It is desirable, in the interest of both the individual and the country, that these advantages be extended to the tenure of reserve lands and trust lands. At the same time, it must be recognized that rural people are generally conservative in thought and changes might, therefore, have to be gradual so that confidence is not undermined."
Institutional Analysis
(International Development Research Centre, 1998) Pomeroy, Robert S.
"Institutional analysis is the identification of various resource users, stakeholders and organizations involved in community-based coastal resource management (CBCRM). It also involves an examination of the institutional arrangements, the set of rights and rules for CBCRM in a community. An institutional analysis is usually conducted early in the CBCRM process during the planning phase. The level of detail can range from a simple description of the existing coastal resource management system to a very detailed analysis of the management system in terms of equity, efficiency and sustainability."
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 Arrangements and the Commons Dilemma
(ICS Press, 1988) Ostrom, Elinor; Ostrom, Vincent; Feeny, David; Picht, Hartmut
"Would reasonable humans, trying to order their own long-term relationships in a productive manner, structure a situation in such a perverse way? Reasonable humans may, of course, structure situations in this manner when they wish to prevent the participants in a situation from cooperating with one another. Some cooperation among participants may lead to harms externalized on others, as in criminal conspiracies or economic cartels. Cooperation is not an unambiguous good in all situations (see Ullmann-Margalit, 1977). Is the only 'choice' available to rational human beings a 'choice' within the constraints of an externally imposed structure? Once we accept this limited view of choice, we are doomed to accept the imposition of structure by external authorities as the only way out of perverse situations such as the Commons Dilemma. I do not accept such a limited view of choice; I now turn from this critique to a more positive approach to the study of Commons Dilemmas. "In the next section I will briefly describe four commons situations that have not resulted in tragedy. If we arc to understand how individuals can escape from tragedy, we need to study 'success stories' carefully. These stories are particularly interesting because none of them relies on central control or market mechanisms as its primary mode of management. Empirical cases provide the grist for further theoretical development. Once I have presented these four cases, then, I will turn to several substantive and methodological lessons to be learned from analysis of them."

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