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This data article contains a description of a dataset collected by a survey on a traditional communal water irrigation system. This is the Muang fai, a 700-years old communal irrigation system in Northern Thailand. The Muang fai is managed through a series of regulations that are close to Ostrom's principles of effective common property resources (Ostrom, 1990). The survival of this long-standing practice, including its knowledge of the water-flow characteristics of the watershed, is under threat as new technologies, such as groundwater pumping, become increasingly accessible. The target population of the survey was the group of Longan farmers who are located within the 12 villages that are engaged in Muang fai Sop Rong in Chiang Mai Province, Northern Thailand. Information was specifically collected about irrigation practices, farmland characteristics and socio-economic variables from 570 longan (their main crop) farmer households. Roughly half of these sampled farmers practise Muang fai, the other half practise underground pumping irrigation. The irrigation information collected includes type of irrigation (surface or underground), the quantity of water used, pumping methods (if pumps are used). Farming characteristics collected include volume and value of the harvests, land size, and distance to irrigation canal. Socioeconomic characteristics included among others: farmers’ income, expenditure, education, off-farm employment and Muang-fai membership. This dataset can be a source of baseline information for future research as well as help preserve the knowledge of this tradition.

Understanding complex (social) phenomena benefits from combining different tools, perspectives, expertise, and experiences. Research designs that combine approaches are gaining in popularity. Carrying out research in interdisciplinary teams, however, is a challenging, high-investment activity. Unawareness of and reflecting on conflicting ways of seeing or studying the world may endanger project success. Agent-based modelling has proven instrumental in bringing together different approaches. Yet, this potential enabler remains an unusual combination partner: the additional prevalent lack of transparency about what is combined, and how, obstructs advancement. We therefore invite our readers behind the scenes of our multi-year research collaboration where we combine agent-based modelling with controlled behavioural experiments to advance the understanding of collective resource use in a common pool resource dilemma. The paper contributes by 1) being an example in sharing the processes of combining approaches, and by 2) highlighting the enabling role of ABM in combining research approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater is a largely unseen common pool resource. Yet, driven by strong economic incentives, whether or not encouraged by existing policies, and the difficulty to exclude others, groundwater users are competing with each other to extract as much as possible, with devastating consequences for its sustainability. The challenges faced for sustainably managing such common pool resources, on which people have established de facto individual rights, are manifold. However, creating a market for trades of some kind in ecosystem services associated with groundwater could actually enhance the protection of this critical resource on the basis that protection can benefit individual groundwater users economically as well as provide a broader public good. This article uses Elinor Ostrom's design principles as an analytical tool to examine how market-based approaches such as payments for ecosystem services (PES) fit with some of the governance models that could be used to protect and enhance groundwater as a common pool resource. It argues that while there are specific design challenges to be overcome, PES as an institutional tool can align with Ostrom's ideas for the governance of groundwater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a concern regarding the sustainability of current global fishing effort and how to most effectively manage common pool fisheries resources. Without the allocation of appropriate property rights, both industrial and small-scale fisheries are susceptible to the tragedy of the commons due to the open access nature of un-regulated fisheries. To address this risk of fishery overexploitation, some isolated, small-scale fishing communities have formed cooperatives as a management tool to improve livelihood options and provide access to property rights for some fishery resources. The Fish Production Cooperative Society of Punta Abreojos, Baja California Sur, Mexico, is a good example of a highly organized fishing cooperative in existence since 1948. Through the use of interviews, this study uncovers the perceptions and opinions of the cooperative fishers to answer the question of what characteristics are necessary to sustaining a well functioning cooperative. There are many economic and social benefits of being a member, but the highest specific response was the ability to take out loans. The most common perceived threats to the success of the cooperative are the occurrences of natural phenomena. Members realize the importance of following the rules set by the cooperative, but the motivations for doing so change the longer a fisher works in the cooperative. Results indicate that fishers consider protection of resources, economic security, unity, and progress essential for maintaining their cooperative. Punta Abreojos is an example of a community that has worked for generations to become marine stewards while maintaining an economically viable fishery.

India has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of a larger quasi-experimental impact assessment, we assess the pandemic’s effects on household coping behavior in 80 villages spread across four districts and three states (n = 772). Half of these villages were targeted by a largescale common land restoration program spearheaded by an NGO, the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES). The other half are yet to be targeted but are statistically similar vis-à-vis FES’s village targeting criteria. Analyzing the results of a phone survey administered eight to ten months into the pandemic and its associated lockdowns, we find that the livelihood activities of households in both sets of villages were adversely impacted by COVID-19. Consequently, most households had to resort to various negative coping behaviors, e.g., distressed asset sales and reduced farm input expenditure. From the same mobile survey data, we construct a Livelihoods Coping Strategies Index (LCSI) and find that households in villages targeted by FES’s common land restoration initiative score 11.3% lower on this index on average, equating to a 4.5 percentage point difference. While modest, this statistically significant effect estimate ('p' < 0.05) is consistent across the four districts and robust to alterative model and outcome specifications. We find no empirical support that our observed effect was due to improved access to common pool resources or government social programs. Instead, we speculate that this effect may be driven by institutional factors, rather than economic, a proposition we will test in future work.

Globally, rangelands face interacting pressures from climate, land-use, socio-economic and political changes, all of which threaten herder livelihoods and grassland health. Given these dynamics, it is often unclear which policies would best support sustainable land use and livelihoods in the future. There are multiple theories for how tenure, rules, social relations and environmental variability intersect to influence pastoral resource governance, but these have largely been developed based on empirical data from specific social and environmental contexts. Few studies have attempted to evaluate empirically how the factors driving pastoral management decisions might vary across a social-ecological gradient. In this work we attempt to reconcile the current diversity of theories around pastoral resource governance with an empirical dataset on household herd and pasture management decisions in Mongolia, where there is ongoing debate over proposed rangeland policies, including formalization of land tenure. We assess the relationship between theorized predictors of herder behavior (i.e. formal rights, formal rules, social capital, and environmental variability), and household-level management decisions about pastoral mobility and storage. We compare our findings from a survey of 760 households across four ecozones to predictions from pastoral resource governance theories to assess which theories best match the complex realities on the ground. We observed a continuum of de facto pastoral governance regimes that roughly map onto a social-ecological gradient defined by (i) resource variability and predictability, and (ii) the relative prevalence of formal rule-based vs. implicit norm-based governance. We find that rules, social capital, and forage availability are the strongest predictors of whether a household will reserve forage, with consistent effects across ecological zones. In contrast, social ties and environmental conditions most strongly predict mobility practices. While most households reserved pastures regardless of tenure status, those households who do not reserve pastures are more likely to lack formal use rights. Our findings reinforce the importance of avoiding "one size fits all" rangeland governance policies. We demonstrate that herders make decisions in response to environmental productivity and variability over space and time, and that social ties and mobility are critical for maintaining access to forage. This may explain why many herders remain skeptical of formal pasture tenure, which could restrict this flexibility. Policies that ensure herders' collective rights to pasture through large-scale zoning rather than tenure could potentially achieve both secure pasture rights and maximum flexibility. • We compare competing theories about the governance of resources in pastoral systems. • We test these theories with an empirical dataset from Mongolia, where there is ongoing debate over proposed rangeland policies, including formalization of land tenure. • Rules, social capital, and forage availability influence resource storage more than formalized tenure. • Social relations are key for maintaining mobility practices. • We describe a continuum of de facto pastoral governance regimes along a social-ecological gradient. • Findings reinforce the importance of avoiding "one size fits all" rangeland governance policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exchange plays a number of roles within societies, including the provisioning of necessary and prestige resources. The elucidation of these different roles requires documenting how different kinds of material were used and how these resources became distributed. These studies are particularly prominent in Polynesia, especially the Sāmoan archipelago. However, the nature and scale of artifact transfer within and outside the archipelago are debated given deficiencies in the empirical record. Here, we remedy this situation by examining trends in Sāmoan intra-archipelago exchange using geochemical and limited technological analyses of a lithic assemblage from the Manu‘a group of the Sāmoan archipelago. Our results indicate that material from multiple basalt sources is present, including several sources outside the Manu‘a group. It is apparent that this nonlocal material was used differently than local material as 95% of analyzed adzes were manufactured of the former. However, there is no evidence to suggest that this nonlocal material was differentially distributed or controlled at the scale of the group or site. We argue that this is evidence of decentralized exchange and that imported materials became common pool resources to support community resiliency and sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used common pool resource experimental economic games to explore the effects of natural disasters on Mongolian pastoralists' common pool resource management. In this game, two anonymous players have access to a hypothetical envelope of money from which they can withdraw funds. Three versions of the game were used: a version in which the amount of money players can withdraw is constant, one where the amount of money could change by chance, and a version where the amount could change because of a hypothetical natural disaster (dzud in Mongolian). The results indicate that framing the game as a natural disaster had no framing effects on players' behavior in two regions of Mongolia: one that is highly susceptible to winter weather disasters and one that is less susceptible. These results suggest that cultural norms and values regarding common pool resource use might prevent over-extraction in rural Mongolia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world currently faces an unprecedented phase of global environmental change largely driven by the combined impact of anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation. Adaptation to global environmental changes in natural resource management is often hindered by high levels of uncertainty related to environmental impact projections. Management strategies and policies to support adaptation measures and sustainable resource management under substantial environmental uncertainty are thus urgently needed. The paper reports results of behavioral irrigation experiments with farmers and students in the region of Hangzhou in China. The experimental design simulates a small-scale irrigation system with five parties located along an irrigation channel. The first treatment adds weather variability with a drying tendency that influences water availability in the irrigation channel. In the second treatment, the participants can select one of two adaptation options. Our results suggest that participants react with a marked delay to weather uncertainty. In addition, upstream players are more likely to adapt to uncertainty than those further downstream, and groups who show higher levels of cooperation more frequently invest in adaptation measures. Lastly, extraction inequality in earlier stages is found to constitute a key obstacle to collective adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Politik is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The overexploitation of common pool resources is frequently associated with open access regimes in which each resource user operates independently of all other resource users. The outcome is a Nash equilibrium of the prisoner's dilemma. Restricted access regimes of the sort identified by Ostrom and colleagues typically ensure that individual resource users do not operate independently. Taking a quantum approach to the theory of games, we argue that the institutional arrangements involved in common pool resource management imply the "entanglement" of the strategies of resource users. For a very simple case — two firms exploiting a common pool fishery — we show that there exists an "entanglement" mechanism that assures the cooperative outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge of the shared resources—or commons—that aquaculture systems rely on, and the appropriate rule and norm systems to govern them—or institutions—is far behind other natural resource use sectors. In this article, we provide a conceptual framework for identifying the social and environmental commons creating collective action problems for aquaculture governance. Collective action problems, or social dilemmas, create problems for governing shared resources because the typical strategies for individual use (maximisation; free riding) are often divergent from broader group interests (e.g. fair contributions; sustainable use). This framework helps identify two types of collective action problems in aquaculture: first‐order (direct use and provision of commons) and second‐order (provision, maintenance and adaptation of institutions to govern commons). First‐order aquaculture commons with governance challenges include water quality, water quantity, physical space, inputs, genetic diversity, mitigating infectious disease, earth and climate stability, infrastructure, knowledge and money. Second‐order institutions govern the use of first‐order commons. These include rule and norm systems that structure property rights and markets, aiming to better align individual behaviour and collective interests (e.g. sustainability goals) through governance. However, which combination of institutions will fit best is likely to be unique to context, where aquaculture has important differences from capture fisheries and agriculture. We provide four case examples applying our conceptual framework to identify existing aquaculture commons, institutions and governance challenges in Peru (mariculture), the Philippines (earthen ponds), Nepal (raceways) and Denmark (recirculation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deeper integration of conservation and crime science can help determine how one can scale the relative specificity of crime science to the more diffused context of harms and victims associated with conservation crime. Keywords: common pool resources; community-based management; crime science; environmental criminology; fisheries; governance; Mexico; sea cucumber; ciencia criminológica; criminología ambiental; gobernanza; manejo basado en la comunidad; México; pepino de mar; pesquerías EN common pool resources community-based management crime science environmental criminology fisheries governance Mexico sea cucumber ciencia criminológica criminología ambiental gobernanza manejo basado en la comunidad México pepino de mar pesquerías 1 12 12 03/02/22 20220201 NES 220201 Introduction Conservation crime - deviant human use of natural resources - can manifest across any context in the world with diverse negative effects. But if community-based conservation systems are increasingly asked to manage conservation crimes, then communities may be newly tasked with monitoring crime rates, responding to and preventing crime, or partnering with crime control authorities they previously have not engaged with. [Extracted from the article]

Inequalities in access are a major concern for the management of common pool resources. In the case of irrigation water, inequalities are often explained by spatial "head-ender/tail-ender" distinctions, determined by distance to the water source. However, inequalities in access are also produced by social relations and social institutions. Drawing from ethnographic research in Ağlasun, a rural town in the south-west of Turkey, we examine socio-spatial inequalities vis-à-vis water access in a small-scale, locally managed irrigation system. Our findings demonstrate that spatial "head-ender/tail-ender" differences in the irrigation system intersect with social relations. By introducing the concept of "social head-enders," we emphasize how social and political relations may introduce a complementary asymmetry in access to water between farmers. Analyzing the socio-spatial dynamics in such asymmetric systems allows us to further explore the interaction between access and authority. This leads us to illustrate important conditions for more equitable and democratic local irrigation governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hydrogeology Journal is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studia Ethnologica Croatica is the property of Studia Ethnologica Croatica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The sport of surfing is best enjoyed with one rider on one wave, but crowding makes that optimal assignment increasingly hard to attain. This study examines the phenomenon of surf localism, whereby competitors are excluded from waves by intimidation and the threat of violence. An alternative way to accommodate crowds is contained in the surfer's code, which sets informal rules and self-enforced regulations to avoid conflict in the water. Both regimes establish property rights over common pool resources with no state intervention, creating a setting wherein users face the question of cooperation or conflict. The disposition to cooperate and follow norms has been shown to vary substantially across different cultures, though. Employing data from over seven hundred surf spots on the European Atlantic coast, this study reports evidence that certain informal cultural norms significantly reduce the probability of violent exclusion, while formal state institutions mostly are irrelevant. The results also indicate that informal norms become more important with greater resource quality and, possibly, with increasing scarcity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of a larger quasiexperimental impact assessment, we assess the pandemic’s effects on household coping behavior in 80 villages spread across four districts and three states (n = 772). Half of these villages were targeted by a largescale common land restoration program spearheaded by an NGO, the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES). The other half are yet to be targeted but are statistically similar vis-à-vis FES’s village targeting criteria. Analyzing the results of a phone survey administered eight to ten months into the pandemic and its associated lockdowns, we find that the livelihood activities of households in both sets of villages were adversely impacted by COVID-19. Consequently, most households had to resort to various negative coping behaviors, e.g., distressed asset sales and reduced farm input expenditure. From the same mobile survey data, we construct a Livelihoods Coping Strategies Index (LCSI) and find that households in villages targeted by FES’s common land restoration initiative score 11.3% lower on this index on average, equating to a 4.5 percentage point difference. While modest, this statistically significant effect estimate (p < 0.05) is consistent across the four districts and robust to alterative model and outcome specifications. We find no empirical support that our observed effect was due to improved access to common pool resources or government social programs. Instead, we speculate that this effect may be driven by institutional factors, rather than economic, a proposition we will test in future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominance of the severed mineral estate has been long been considered an axiomatic principal of oil and gas law. Within this paradigm, the split-estate mineral owner enjoys broad rights to use the surface estate as is reasonable and necessarily incident to mineral development. Dominance, accordingly, can be understood as exit: the right of the mineral owner to develop its subsurface property without association or coercion from others. However, this formalist view has eroded in the face of shifting social norms regarding environmental protection, the interests of privacy and enjoyment of surface owners, the recognition of new property interests in the subsurface, and changing sociological views regarding the value and utility of fossil energy production. While surface land has become increasingly fragmented and more valuable, advances in horizontal drilling technology have permitted erosion of the doctrine of mineral estate dominance. A realist view of the ordering between surface and mineral estates today indicates that the estates are increasingly enmeshed and indivisible within coupled human and natural systems. As a result, a binary and boundary-based adjudication of the concomitant rights of surface and mineral owners discourage cooperation and result in utilitarian concerns, environmental harms, and inefficient resource use. This article examines the convergence of surface and mineral estates within the framework of mismatched property interests and common resource problems. It challenges the binary dominant-servient ordering of surface and mineral property. It suggests that resource-scale management facilitates incorporation of liberal commons principals into governance of the vertical commons in a manner that supports more robust environmental regulation and economically and socially productive use of shared resources.

Many organizations provide sustainable resource management workshops in the Peruvian Amazon. Some teach climbing techniques to communities who harvest wild Mauritia flexuosa palm fruit because most harvest is done by cutting down adult female palms. The objectives of this study were to describe the approaches and identify the factors and conditions linked to adopting sustainable harvesting practices and explain what conditions may be necessary for achieving conservation outcomes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 474 heads of households in 24 communities, as well as focus groups with community leadership in each community. Project managers from 15 organizations that provide workshops and two instructors that teach climbing workshops were also interviewed. Analysis relied on the design principles of common pool resources and research on enabling conditions, which predict that certain contextual factors may be required for the establishment of effective resource management. We find no evidence that training workshop participation led to long-term behavior change absent institutional changes such as the establishment of informal but enforced individual spatial property rights. However, there is strong community adoption of climbing practices in areas where these enforced property rights are coupled with provision of climbing equipment and training. Lessons learned from this project explore characteristics of successful workshops, providing insights for effective conservation. We suggest adopting a diagnostics step to evaluate existing community conditions, a formal plan for collaboration among organizations, emphasis on broader institutional reforms to alleviate conservation disincentives related to non-exclusivity, and impact evaluation to assess strategies.

Overfishing has become a major global issue that endangers ecosystems and the livelihoods of millions of people. Weak enforcement and illicit fishing behaviors limit the effectiveness of institutional arrangements designed to curb overfishing. In this paper, we designed and tested a series of potential interventions to reduce overexploitation driven by illegal fishing. We use surveys, interviews, and common pool resource experiments to investigate the behavior of Mexican fishermen in the upper part of the Gulf of Baja California. We find that resource exploitation can be reduced using a mechanism that regroups fishermen according to their past fishing exploitation levels. More precisely, we observe that the announcement of this mechanism and the actual regrouping reduce common pool exploitation, regardless of group composition. Further experimental evidence shows that the regrouping intervention also achieves the desired outcomes in environments with informational asymmetries or regrouping imperfections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Incentivizing the adoption of efficient irrigation technology is a common, yet largely unsuccessful, approach to sustainably managing water. • A local collaborative governance approach in Kansas has resulted in reduced groundwater withdrawals with the support of producers. • To scale up this policy strategy, lawmakers should seek to replicate its success on a local level rather than expanding to larger geographic areas. Sustainable water management is increasingly essential on local to global scales, especially in regions where water scarcity is causing immediate environmental, social, and economic harm. While academics and politicians agree on the need to reduce pressure on critical water resources, the path toward that goal is not clear. Here, we present an interdisciplinary evaluation of two distinct policy approaches toward water conservation to determine whether they reduced the depletion rate of the High Plains Aquifer in the Central United States. Several studies have demonstrated, and our findings support, that subsidizing the purchase of more efficient irrigation technology failed to reduce water consumption. However, a structural approach in which state-facilitated, but locally-derived, limits were placed on water consumption did successfully reduce groundwater extraction with the support of local agricultural producers. We analyze these results using a political, sociological, and economic theoretical framework and conclude that to build upon the success of this collaborative governance model, states should seek to replicate localized groups rather than expanding management boundaries to incorporate larger geographic areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents the results of framed field experiments designed to study the co-enforcement of access to common pool resources. The experiments were conducted in the field with artisanal fishers in Chile. In the experiments, members of a CPR group (called insiders) not only decided how much to harvest but also invest in monitoring to deter poaching by outsiders. Sanctions for poaching were exogenous as if provided by a government authority. Treatments varied the level of the sanction and whether the monitoring investment was voluntarily provided by insiders or collectively provided by a group vote. Results suggest that co-enforcement can reduce poaching by outsiders and increase harvests by insiders, but the insiders' monitoring investments tended to offset their gains in harvest earnings. Higher poaching sanctions and voting on monitoring contributions, separately and together, led insiders to invest enough in monitoring to eliminate the average gains from poaching. However, poaching was not eliminated despite zero or negative average poaching earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas experimental studies of common pool resource (CPR) dilemmas are frequently terminated with collapse of the resource, there is considerable evidence in real-world settings that challenges this finding. To reconcile this difference, we propose a two-stage model that links appropriation of the CPR and provision of public goods in an attempt to explain the emergence of cooperation in the management of CPRs under environmental uncertainty. Benchmark predictions are derived from the model, and subsequently tested experimentally under different marginal cost-benefit structures concerning the voluntary contribution to the provision of the good. Our results suggest that the severity of the appropriation problem may significantly be mitigated by the presence of an option for voluntarily contributing a fraction of the income surplus from the appropriation phase to the provision of the public good.

A survey11 The survey instrument is available as supplementary content in the research publication by Kaluma and Umar (2021) [1] was conducted with 64 respondents to examine the outcomes of participatory fisheries management in Mweru-Luapula fishery, northern Zambia [1]. The survey was complemented by five focus group discussions (FGDs) and two key informant interviews. The study evaluated the performance of Village Fisheries Management Committees (VFMCs), analysed participation of fishers in management activities and assessed fishers’ compliance to fisheries regulations. Ostrom's Eight Design Principles and White's Typology of Interests were employed in the analysis of VFMC Performance and Fishers’ participation respectively [2,3]. Descriptive statistics and content analysis were employed to analyse the quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Results show inadequate funding to the Department of Fisheries; capture of benefits and VFMC positions by local elites and weak enforcement of fisheries regulations. A nominal form of participation characterizes the co- management system and resource users are not engaged in decision- making. Besides inconsistent patrols by VFMCs and Department of Fisheries, results further show low compliance to the seasonal fish ban and persistent use of illegal fishing practices within the fishery.

Participatory practices are prominent strategies for increasing the legitimacy and effectiveness of resource commons governance. Despite increases in participatory practices legitimacy of such governance is in decline. Remaining commons are sites of conflict echoing wider disillusionment in democratic governance across mature liberal democracies. Much participatory governance literature argues that more involvement of citizens in deliberation and decision-making is the solution, turning away from representative practices to strengthen direct participation in commons governance. In this paper we draw on seminal work in political representation theory to examine legitimacy and political agency in participatory governance practices. We develop a conceptual lens drawing on key elements of: Hannah Pitkin's The Concept of Representation; Michael Saward's Representative Claim; and, Vivan Schmidt's throughput model of legitimacy. The lens comprises three 'conditions' for analyzing how political agency of participants is constituted through institutional processes: authorization, dissent and exit, and accountability. We argue that this conceptual lens can serve the participatory turn in commons governance by enabling explicit consideration of the links between political participation and representation as foundations of democratic legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents results from an RCT exploring whether a behavioural intervention can improve the conservation of a common pool resource. The literature on common pool resource management suggests that the existence of rules and sanctions is important to resource conservation. However, behavioural science suggests that individuals have finite cognitive capacity and may not be attentive to these rules and sanctions. This paper investigates the impact of an SMS message intervention designed to improve users' knowledge of and attentiveness to existing forest use rules. An RCT in Uganda explores the impact of these messages on forest use and compliance with the rules. This paper finds that SMS messages raise the perceived probability of sanctions for rule-breakers. However, SMS messages do not induce full compliance with forest use rules or systematically reduce forest use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most common pool resource (CPR) dilemmas share two features: they evolve over time and they are managed under environmental uncertainties. We propose a stylized dynamic model that integrates these two dimensions. A distinguishing feature of our model is that the duration of the game is determined endogenously by the users’ collective decisions. In the proposed model, if the resource stock level below which the irreversible event occurs is known in advance, then the optimal resource use coincides with a unique symmetric equilibrium that guarantees survival of the resource. As the uncertainty about the threshold level increases, resource use increases if users adopt decision strategies that quickly deplete the resource stock, but decreases if they adopt path strategies guaranteeing that the unknown threshold level is never exceeded. We show that under relatively high uncertainty about resource size, CPR users frequently implement decision strategies that terminate the game immediately. When this uncertainty is reduced, they maintain a positive resource level for longer durations.

The article is devoted to the challenges of the labour market in the post-socialist period. It discusses the issues related to the physical properties of the post-socialists labour force and the social and legal framework in which it operates. Labor traditionally is considered to be a private good in the economic literature, possessing the properties of high excludability and rivalry. We argue that in the post-socialist period, labour looks more like a common pool resource system rather than a private good. In the absence of appropriate legal and social structures, such a system is likely to operate under the conditions of open access. In the long run, this could lead to a depletion of this resource. We argue that looking at labour in the frame of common pool resource, first we can justify better the use of the traditional instruments for intervention at the labour market, and second, this could help to develop a more efficient system for preserving and development of the labour force in the long run.

Irrigation is important for global food supply and is vulnerable to climate change. Internalized cultural norms are important for the performance of Common Pool Resource (CPR) regimes such as irrigation systems, but much is unknown about the role of norms in shaping irrigation performance. This paper applies multi-level selection (MLS) theory and CPR theory to a stratified, semi-random sample of 71 irrigation systems of distinct cultural origins in the Upper Rio Grande Basin of the United States to test hypotheses related to the role of norms in irrigation system form and function. Results show that internalized norms of cooperation are strongly associated with the rules and technologies adopted by irrigators, the frequency of water use violations, average crop production, and the equality of crop production. Systems with internalized norms of cooperation have adopted rules and technologies which are associated with increased care for the commons, public goods, and higher equality between irrigators. Further, agents designated as monitors of CPR use have different effects depending on whether irrigators possess cooperative or competitive norms. Notably, the presence of monitors that enforce rules that are incongruent with norms is associated with increased water use violations and lower average crop production. These findings add weight to the growing body of work giving greater attention to cultural context when analyzing user-governed CPR regimes and climate resilience, and further illustrate the compatibility of MLS theory with other prevailing theories in CPR research.

Common pool resources, such as forests, shrubs, and grasslands, have been and continue to deliver a valuable contribution to the livelihood of millions of smallholder farmers in the mixed farming system areas. However, these resources are threatening by the overuse of the local community in the Ethiopian highlands. Studies accommodating sustainable management of ecological, economic, social, and institutional criteria on common pool resources are very limited over those highlands. The study is aimed at evaluating the performance of common pool resources management schemes in Goncha district, in the northwestern highlands of Ethiopia. It was developed as an alternative management scenario of common pool resources. Participatory key informant interviews were conducted with purposely selected twenty-four farmers, twelve practitioners, and three experts to generate the data. The data were analyzed by using a multi-criteria analysis (weighted score) method. The study indicated that complete enclosure management of forests and shrublands was highly contributed to enhancing biodiversity and curb gullies expansion, while poorly performed in harvesting and fair distribution of fodder and fuelwood. Alternatively, grasslands management in the periodic enclosure without rotation was largely emphasized on the fair distribution of fodder. Natural forests and shrublands in the semi-open-access management and grasslands in the open-access management were performed between very weak and poor performance to almost all criteria/indicators. Therefore, the management schemes of common pool resources should reformulate to the integrated premise of ecological, economic, institutional, and social criteria for sustainable management and productive crop-livestock mixed farming systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examined the outcomes of participatory fisheries management in Mweru- Luapula fishery in northern Zambia. The main objectives were to: evaluate the performance of Village Fisheries Management Committees (VFMCs), analyze participation of fishers in management activities and to assess fishers' compliance to fisheries regulations. Data were collected through structured interviews with 64 respondents, five focus group discussions and two key semi-structured interviews. Ostrom's eight design principles and White's typology of Interests was employed to analyze VFMCs performance and fisher participation respectively. Descriptive statistics and content analysis were employed to analyze the quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Results show that inadequate financial support to the Department of Fisheries has culminated in the capture of benefits by VFMC positions by local elites, and ultimately weakened enforcement of fisheries regulation. A nominal form of participation characterizes the co-management as resource users are not engaged in decision making and power still resides with the Department of Fisheries. Low compliance to the seasonal fish ban by fishers due to inconsistent patrols by VFMCs and Department of Fisheries has resulted in persistence of illegal fishing practices that threaten conservation of fish in the fishery. The minor positive outcomes of co-management suggest its ineffectiveness in curbing illegal fishing activities. A common property regime where smaller groups of fishers exploit a portion of the fishery with locally designed operational rules is therefore recommended to replace the ‘consultative’ type of co-management prevailing in Mweru- Luapula fishery.

The paper analyses open access and common property resource systems drawing insights from new institutional economics, especially property rights theory and policy analysis. This analysis of common pool resources (CPRs) under common property regimes indicates that local communities devise formal and informal institutions in managing the local commons. The paper further discusses how N. S. Jodha’s empirical work on the economics of CPRs has enhanced our understanding of the role of CPRs in the livelihood strategies of the poor in the developing world. Devolution of authority to local resource users is emphasized as an institutional imperative in designing appropriate forms of governance structures for CPR management.

Although subsistence poaching is a large threat to wildlife conservation in Southern Africa, this behavior is seldom researched. Our understanding of individual and community level factors that drive such behavior is limited because of both lack of data and the literature's predominant focus on commercial poaching. The main objective of this study is to contribute to this scanty literature by examining the factors that are correlated to subsistence poaching in the Great Limpopo, a transfrontier reserve spanning across Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. We use collected primary data from a sample of 2282 respondents and 85 villages that are part of the transfrontier conservation area. We focus on two features, reported subsistence poaching incidences in the community and the previous hunting of individuals, a behavior that is now forbidden in this area. We find through multivariate regression analysis that the likelihood for reported poaching incidences was higher in communities with a larger proportion of young men, plenty of wildlife, and experiencing wildlife conflict. In addition, our survey results illustrate that there is less poaching in communities where local people trust each other, respect institutions, perceive that the management of the park is good, and view wildlife as an asset. Some of these variables can be influenced by appropriate interventions; our findings suggest that capacity building in local institutions, use of community-based crime prevention approaches, training related to wildlife management, and public awareness campaigns could be used by policy makers to affect individuals' perceptions and behaviors in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research problem: Theories of organising are dominated by a neoliberal agenda. This authority has been disrupted by social and sustainable entrepreneurship research that highlights alternatives to this hegemony. The motivation for this paper is to argue that the emergence of internet platforms contributes to new ways of working in the social solidarity economy (SSE). We focus our exploration on organisational practices and characteristics, evaluating platforms as contributions to commoning. Method: Our approach offers a way out of the public–private dichotomy. We build theory by positioning the SSE as a series of approaches that hybridise redistribution, reciprocity and market: three distinct strategies of social organisations for achieving their primary purposes. Utilising Elinor Oström's theory of common pool resource institutions (CPRIs) and her design principles, we appraise three internet platforms (Kiva, Loomio and Kickstarter). We triangulate organisational, academic and media narratives to assess the embeddedness of their commoning practices and potential as social innovations for a postcapitalist economy. Contribution to knowledge: Social enterprises (SEs) can develop internet platforms that use CBPP to build and support the SSE. This is the first paper to deploy Oström's work to study how SEs use CBPP, thereby developing the theoretical connections between these two fields. Our findings are part of a discourse that challenges neoliberalism and identifies how the SSE contributes to sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Analyzes the impact of the two individual property rights on the grassland ecological conditions, herders' livelihoods and livestock production. • Establishes an analysis framework of grassland property system from the perspective of the resource system and resource units. • Highlights the importance of a nested property right system in grassland sustainable management. • Provides theoretical perspective for grassland property system and development of CPR theory. The common pool resource (CPR) theory has made invaluable contributions to the governance of natural resources in the past decades, but few literatures have specifically paid attention to the different property right arrangements of resource system and resource units, and their relationship. In this paper, we take two types of grassland property right system on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) in China, one is grassland contract system under that the previous grassland common use was given up and the other is grazing quota system under that the common use is still kept in the community level, as cases to present the different consequences on the ecological conditions, herders' livelihoods and livestock husbandry. Furthermore, from the perspective of property rights of resource system-units, we explore why the two systems resulted in the different consequences. We find that the grazing quota system indicated by the number of livestock each household allowed to raise has more advantages in improving the herders' livelihoods and reducing the livestock production costs, and both systems could alleviate the grazing pressure though the long-term effects of the contract system might be negative on ecological conditions. The main reason why the grazing quota system works better is that this type of individual use rights were clarified based on the resource units so the grassland could be kept common use as an integrated resource system, while the contract system was claimed by physically dividing the resource system by fencing, thus the resource system was fragmented which led to mismatch with the large scope movement needs of livestock grazing. We argue that, theoretically, the grazing quota system is a private property rights embedded in the grassland common property right system, which forms a nested property right regime. Our findings have important implications for both of the CPR theory and practical rangeland management worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Wellbeing 'turn' influencing regional development. • The concepts are differently constituted. • Nuanced and mixed methods approach is required. Wellbeing has become important in regional development policy as decision-makers grapple with delivering public goods from industry exploitation of resource commons. We asked how these differently constituted concepts–'regional development' and 'wellbeing' – are handled in the literature. We identified four findings: i) an increasing focus on holistic sustainable development in regional development; ii) different approaches for pre-development planning and post-development impact assessment; iii) four key wellbeing components most common in regional development; iv) emergence of mixed methods approaches to investigating wellbeing and regional development. We conclude that synthesising wellbeing and regional development within a carefully designed interdisciplinary approach is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Understanding the different perceptions of the local community regarding the use and management of common pool resources, such as exclosures, could better support targeted interventions by government and development partners. Here, we report on a study conducted in the Gomit watershed, northwestern Ethiopia, using a survey and key informant interviews, to examine community perceptions on (a) the biophysical condition (i.e., challenge of land degradation and restoration), (b) the action situations (user's access to and control over resources and decision‐making processes involved in taking actions in managing the exclosure), (c) actors' interactions (formal and informal institutions involved in the management of exclosures), and (d) perceived outcomes (benefits and tradeoffs of managing exclosures). Many people in the Gomit watershed recognize land degradation as a serious problem and believe that exclosures support restoration of degraded landscapes and improve ecosystem services. Informal institutions play a key role in managing exclosures by improving benefit sharing and mobilizing the local community for collective action. However, some community members have concerns about recent expansion of exclosures because of (a) limited short‐term derived benefits, (b) reductions in fuelwood availability, (c) increased degradation of remaining communal grazing lands, and (d) poor participation of marginalized groups in decision making. Addressing such concerns through the promotion of short‐term benefits of exclosures and increasing community participation in decision‐making and benefit sharing is crucial. The study provides evidence to support government and development partners on the establishment and management of exclosures through identifying the benefits and drawbacks as perceived by different sectors of the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]