Biological Diversity Protection and Self-Regulation of Local Communities: Some Implications of a Reflexive Institutionalist Approach

Abstract

"Since the signature of the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), there has been a growing interest in the role of community self -regulation in the protection of biological diversity. Extensive field research on the role of cooperative processes in rational behavior attests the possible efficiency of institutional design based on self -regulation. Our hypothesis is that this approach remains however insufficient, insofar as it does not take into account the asymmetrical conditions of contextual efficiency of the proposed strategies of regulation. We apply this epistemological critique to the recourse to self -regulation in the protection of biodiversity, in order to explore some policy implications. In that sense we consider the development of institutional incentive mechanisms oriented toward the capacitation of the reflexivity on the contextual efficiency, such as in the propositions of a hierarchical framing of self -regulation of Common Pool Resources in polycentric systems or in the development of ethical codes of conduct in epistemic communities concerned with the preservation of local knowledge."