Informal Cooperation in the Commons? Evidence from a Survey of Australian Farmers Facing Irrigation Salinity

dc.contributor.authorMarshall, Graham R.en_US
dc.coverage.regionPacific and Australiaen_US
dc.date.accessioned2009-07-31T14:43:00Z
dc.date.available2009-07-31T14:43:00Z
dc.date.issued2000en_US
dc.date.submitted2001-07-02en_US
dc.date.submitted2001-07-02en_US
dc.description.abstract"Land and water management plans developed for the four irrigation districts surrounding Deniliquin in the River Murray catchment are said to be at the leading-edge of Australian institutional innovations for integrated resource management. Farmers have been strongly involved in the development of the Plans and in deliberations regarding their implementation. Implementation accountabilities have been devolved to Murray Irrigation Limited, a company wholly owned by its irrigator customers. The plans primarily focus on an emerging tragedy of the commons, with the area's soils are predicted to become increasingly degraded by salinisation unless local cooperation is achieved in limiting watertable recharge. The irrigator-owned company can thus be regarded as a common property regime insofar as its watertable management function is concerned. "The community ownership rhetoric behind these institutional developments seems to signify an attempt to come to terms with the high, often prohibitive, transaction costs typically associated with formal governance of a common-pool resource. The reasoning appears to be that local human and social capital is the key to finding institutional arrangements which realise the potential of local informal capacity for self-organisation and thereby lessen the need for formal governance. "In an effort to go beyond anecdotal evidence of the alleged contribution of the informal in this instance, a face- to-face survey of 235 farm businesses was undertaken. This allowed the influence of various products of social capital, including trust, reciprocity and norms, on both farmer commitment to, and intention to comply with, their district's plan to be tested statistically. Findings are discussed in the paper."en_US
dc.identifier.citationconfdatesMay 31-June 4en_US
dc.identifier.citationconferenceConstituting the Commons: Crafting Sustainable Commons in the New Millennium, the Eighth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Propertyen_US
dc.identifier.citationconflocBloomington, Indianaen_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10535/2165
dc.languageEnglishen_US
dc.subjectIASCen_US
dc.subjectcommon pool resourcesen_US
dc.subjectagricultureen_US
dc.subjectconservationen_US
dc.subjectirrigationen_US
dc.subjectsurveysen_US
dc.subjectcommunity participationen_US
dc.subjectsalinizationen_US
dc.subjectinstitutional analysisen_US
dc.subjectsocial capitalen_US
dc.subjectinstitutional economicsen_US
dc.subjecttransaction costsen_US
dc.subjectreciprocityen_US
dc.subject.sectorAgricultureen_US
dc.subject.sectorWater Resource & Irrigationen_US
dc.submitter.emailhess@indiana.eduen_US
dc.titleInformal Cooperation in the Commons? Evidence from a Survey of Australian Farmers Facing Irrigation Salinityen_US
dc.typeConference Paperen_US

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