scholarly journals Cooperation in the Commons: Community-Based Rangeland Management in Namibia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Layne Coppock ◽  
Lucas Crowley ◽  
Susan Durham ◽  
Dylan Groves ◽  
Julian Jamison ◽  
...  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Global Poverty Research Lab Submitter ◽  
D. Layne Coppock ◽  
Lucas Crowley ◽  
Susan L. Durham ◽  
Dylan Groves ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Karlan ◽  
David Coppock ◽  
Lucas Crowley ◽  
Susan Durham ◽  
Dylan Groves ◽  
...  

Abstract Classic theories suggest that common pool resources are subject to overexploitation. Community-based resource management approaches may ameliorate “tragedy of the commons” effects. Using a randomized evaluation in Namibia’s communal rangelands, we find that a comprehensive four-year program to support community-based rangeland and cattle management led to persistent and large improvements for eight of thirteen indices of social and behavioral outcomes. But effects on rangeland outcomes, cattle productivity and household economics were either negative or nil. Positive impacts on community resource management may have been offset by communities’ inability to control grazing by non-participating herds and inertia in the rangeland sub-system. This juxtaposition, in which measurable improvements in community resource management did not translate into better outcomes for households or ecosystem health, demonstrates the fragility of the causal pathway from program implementation to intended socioeconomic and environmental outcomes. It also points to challenges for improving climate change adaptation strategies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Layne Coppock ◽  
Lucas Crowley ◽  
Susan Durham ◽  
Dylan Groves ◽  
Julian Jamison ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Margo Deiye

<p>This paper is about Nauru and its people, institutions, policies and in particular the communitybased fisheries management programme (CBFM). This study aims to identify those elements in the CBFM that makes it successful, where the institution endures overtime with a well-managed and thriving fisheries resource. This study explores the success criteria of community-based resource management.  The literature review covered broad and interdisciplinary literatures including the commons, comanagement, adaptive co-management and complex social-ecological systems in an attempt to identify some elements of success in community-based and co-management systems.  The study explores some of the current co-management practices and approaches in the Pacific region. A small number of Pacific fisheries experts and community-based practitioners were interviewed to share their views and experiences on lessons learnt and the implications of climate change for fisheries management in the region.  The study undertook a dwelling survey of 270 individuals and a gender-based focus group interviews in Nauru. This is to further investigate the willingness and capacity of the Nauruan people to participate in the CBFM while facing the poor economic conditions, the loss of traditional ecological knowledge and customary marine tenure, poor information about the state of marine resources, and limited opportunities for livelihood diversification.  An enabling environment is critical for development of such a framework, a functioning of institutions and having appropriate policies and legislation in place. Adaptive learning is important in successful a management framework. It can foster the development of an individual through social learning institutions within and between governments and communities and further promotes information sharing and awareness-raising.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 507-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Schorr

Abstract This article argues that modern commons theory has been substantially shaped by early modern ways of thinking about the evolution of civilizations. In particular, it has hewed closely to models that gelled in the Enlightenment-era works known as “stadial theory,” by authors such as Lord Kames and Adam Smith, and passed down to the twentieth century, to theorists including Garrett Hardin, Harold Demsetz, and Elinor Ostrom. It argues that stadial thinking reached modern commons theorists largely through the disciplines of anthropology and human ecology, paying particular attention to the debate among anthropologists over aboriginal property rights, colonial and international development discourse, and neo-Malthusian conservationism. The effects of stadial theories’ influence include a belief among many that private property represents a more advanced stage of civilization than does the commons; and among others a Romantic yearning to return to an Eden of primitive and community-based commons. Thus do deep cultural attitudes, rooted in the speculative thinking of an earlier age, color today’s theories — positive and normative — of the commons.


1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan H. Smith ◽  
Fikret Berkes

Possible solutions to the commons problem have rarely been investigated systematically by the use of biological data on the status and sustainability of the resource. The edible White-spined Sea-urchin (Tripneustes ventricosus) resource of St Lucia, West Indies, is highly prized and vulnerable to exploitation, as is indicated by recent declines in its stocks. In the south-east of St Lucia the resource was almost entirely depleted in an area in which access was free and open. It was not depleted in the other two areas in which there were access controls. In one case, the area was under government control as a marine reserve; in the other, there was a locally practised ‘closed season’ and community-based management of access into a bay.The results of our study indicated that both government controls and informal, community-level controls can lead to successful resource-management outcomes. These findings challenge the ‘conventional wisdom’ that commonly-owned resources are destined to be overexploited.


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