The Role of External Agents in the Development of a Common Property Rights Institution: The Extractive Reserve Chico Mendes in Brazilian Amazonia

Abstract

"It is now well established that under certain conditions, common property regimes can provide the necessary incentives for the sustainable management of natural resources. Scholars have examined the features that these institutions must have to prevent resource depletion and when users are likely to develop robust common property regimes. One of the key factors identified in the literature on common property regimes is the role of the external context and in particular that provided by the role of the state in supporting and protecting common property rights. This paper focuses on the interaction between the external context and the users of a particular common resource: it examines the role that international concern with deforestation interacting with national and local/internal factors has had in shaping a common property regime, the Extractive Reserves Chico Mendes in Brazilian Amazonia. The paper is structured in four parts. Section one presents an overview of the recent developments in the literature on common property regimes. Section two reviews the external context of the case study - the evolution of national and international policies for Brazilian Amazonia. Section three examines the process that led to the creation of extractive reserves. Section four analyzes the features of the Chico Mendes reserve based on the authors' interviews with the inhabitants of the reserve and key informers. Finally, section five summarises the examination of extractive reserves and discusses the robustness of the Extractive Reserve Chico Mendes."