Collective Action, Property Rights and Decentralization in Resource Use in (original) (raw)
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COLLECTIVE ACTION, PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND DEVOLUTION OF FOREST AND PROTECTED AREA MANAGEMENT
This paper aims to accomplish two tasks: One, it presents a framework to help analyze the devolution of the use, management, and governance of resources. It does so by bringing together several strands of work on institutional analysis and property rights, and building on theories of collective action. These writings are highly relevant to our understanding of governance and devolution, but their relationship to devolution and governance requires closer examination than it has previously received. Two, the paper provides empirical evidence from two cases on devolution of forest use from India and Nepal to illustrate and examine the offered framework. The devolution of forest use in Kumaon in India and efforts to involve local population in the management of protected areas in the Terai of Nepal form the two contrasting studies of the origins and implementation of devolution. Studying these contrasting cases enables us to examine the propositions we advance about the relationships between characteristics of devolutionary initiatives, the likelihood of an initiative being implemented successfully, and resource-related outcomes.
Decentralization of Natural Resource Governance Regimes
Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 2008
This chapter reviews the literature on natural resource decentralization with an emphasis on forests in developing countries. This literature can be located at the intersection between discussions of good governance and democracy, development, and poverty alleviation, on the one hand, and common property resources, community-based resource management, and local resource rights, on the other. Policies implemented in the name of decentralization, however, are often not applied in ways compatible with the democratic potential with which decentralization is conceived, and only rarely have they resulted in pro-poor outcomes or challenged underlying structures of inequity. Greater attention to who receives decentralized powers, the role of property rights, the notion of "the local," and the meeting of expert and local knowledge provides insights into key issues and contradictions. Fundamental differences in conceptions of democracy, participation, and development lie behind these contradictions and shape strategies for the redistribution of access to political power and resources, which is implied by decentralization.
Decentralisation and democratic forest reforms in India: Moving to a rights-based approach
Forest Policy and Economics, 2014
There is a consensus in the literature and widespread policymaker support on the desirability of democratic decentralisation of natural resources governance. However, few decentralisation initiatives in developing countries have led to more democratic governance of natural resources. India's Recognition of Forest Rights Act (RFRA), 2006, was enacted as a result of democratic processes driven by demand for recognition of forest rights by forest dwellers. RFRA represents a political, demand-based effort to reform forest governance through a provision of rights to forest-dependent people. India also continues to operate the joint forest management (JFM) programme, a more traditional state-initiated decentralisation effort. The two parallel forest reform programmes being carried out in the same landscapes provide a unique opportunity to study democratisation of forest governance in the country with the world's largest number of forest-dependent people. We examine JFM and RFRA on the criteria of delegation of power and authority, downward accountability and impact on forest-dependent poor to understand the substantively different spaces that they open for democratic forest governance. We find that the implementation of the RFRA has been strongly opposed by powerful interests, and its more radical provisions related to community rights over forests have largely remained unimplemented. However, our findings, drawing from both primary and secondary sources, also bring out the potential of the RFRA to hold the forest bureaucracy accountable to forest-dweller communities and its ability to shift tangible legal powers and authority to forest dwellers.
Decentralised and Effective Forest Resource Governance in India
South Asia Research, 2017
Within the context of decentralised environmental governance, this article seeks to answer the question which institutional arrangements may be most effective in delivering the promise of better community-centred forest governance. The specific objective is to analyse the impact that decentralisation of resource management has on the effectiveness of forest governance. Using a comparative case study framework, the article finds that decentralisation functions better when nested structures with a plurality of bodies are in operation. However, the case studies also highlight the need for constant monitoring as a necessarily ongoing crucial process to protect the ecological sustainability of forest resource governance as well as strengthening equitable social structures at the village level.
Decentralising Governance of Natural Resources in India: A review
"This paper provides a broad overview of the past and ongoing efforts at decentralising the governance of natural resources (DGNR) in India. The focus is on ‘governance’, which includes both day-to-day management as well as broader decision-making regarding resource ownership, access and use, and associated legal, administrative and fiscal arrangements. We assume that more decentralisation than what prevails today is better, but emphasise the need for multi-layered governance as well. The post-independence efforts at DGNR can be broadly categorised into 3 groups. Stateinitiated partnerships include joint forest management, participatory canal and irrigation tank management, and participatory watershed development programmes. In parallel, there are state-initiated efforts at full devolution of governance, viz, the setting up of Panchayati Raj institutions in general and the special efforts in tribal areas. The third category is communityand NGO-initiated efforts, with or without state recognition. The motivations for and the design and implementation of these programmes vary significantly. In particular, decentralised governance is not the goal of partnership programmes. However, the experience shows that these programmes fail to meet even their limited objectives (let alone the rhetoric of community participation and empowerment that they adopt) in a sustained and equitable manner precisely because of lop-sided institutional design and inadequate devolution of powers. The community-initiated efforts show that when the state has limited its role to that of legal support and laying down the ground rules for sustainable use, resource management is much more effective. Unfortunately, even historically state-recognised community management systems are falling prey to the bureaucratic push for increased state control through the socalled partnership programmes. And the devolution efforts have essentially not taken off the ground. Our review provides insights into several ongoing debates about the shape of DGNR. It shows that successful decentralisation does not mean complete handing over of resource ownerhip but a judicious structuring of relatively autonomous local organisations within transparent and reasonable regulatory processes. It also suggests that because governance issues include questions of resource access and allocation across diverse users, the local organisation should be a broad-based democratic one, not confined to particular user groups. At the same time, to prevent elite capture, the direct economic benefits from resource utilisation need to be kept out of the local organisation’s purview. On the question of top-down versus bottom-up implementation of DGNR, our review suggests the need for a graduated, enabling approach with focused implementation in a few areas. At the same time, it warns against throwing money at DGNR—the changes required are primarily in rights, responsibilities and mindsets, and the role of funding has to be kept secondary. Mainstreaming DGNR into national democratic processes in India faces several challenges from within and without. Internally, political and bureaucratic support is sorely lacking. Externally, the economic environment and development policies being pursued militate against both decentralised governance and sustainable natural resource use. And the deeply embedded hierarchical social structures in most parts of India continue to pose a formidable challenge to decentralised democracy. Efforts will be required on many fronts and levels to make significant progress on decentralising NR governance in the country."
Article, 2019
It is argued that, in the absence of legislation, the outcome of decentralisation initiatives in forestry remains limited in terms of devolution of power and assigning authority to politically weak forest-dependent communities are concerned. In this context, the ongoing implementation process of the Forest Rights Act provides an opportunity to examine the institutional arrangements for devolution of power and authority, and measures the extent to which this Act offers space for democratic and inclusive forest governance by the local people. Based on micro-level field work in parts of West Bengal, India, the paper argues that understanding roles of institutions under 'democratic decentralisation' framework is not enough for meaningful democratic decentralisation, particularly for forest resources. If democratic decentralisation of natural resources is to succeed, a variety of factors embedded in the institutions, like actor, power and accountability, is to be recognised.
Democracy, Equity and Common Property Resource Management in the Indian Subcontinent
Development and Change, 1996
This article addresses the relationship between democracy, equity and common property resource management in South Asia, both at the national and at the local level. Its substantive focus will be largely on forests, and its geographical concentration mostly on India, although other sectors (primarily water) and areas (Nepal and Bangladesh) will also be included. The article opens by looking at Garrett Hardin's (1968) three strategies to preserve the commons. It finds that democratic politics is compatible with both privatization and centralization as conserving strategies (although not necessarily successful). With the third approachlocal controldemocracy has at best a problematic relationship, for where governmental units are the relevant actors, there tends to be more interest in consuming than in conserving or preserving resources at the local level. Local user groups, however, do much better at common property resource management, because they can restrict membership and thus avoid free riders, and they can establish a close linkage in their members' minds between benefits and costs of participating in group discipline to maintain the resource.
Recentralizing while decentralizing: how national governments reappropriate forest resources
World Development, 2006
Decentralization initiatives have been launched in the majority of developing coun-14 tries, but these rarely lay the foundations necessary to reach decentralization's purported efficiency 15 and equity benefits. This paper uses a comparative empirical approach to show how central gov-16 ernments in six countries-Senegal, Uganda, Nepal, Indonesia, Bolivia, and Nicaragua-use a 17 variety of strategies to obstruct the democratic decentralization of resource management and, 18 hence, retain central control. Effective decentralization requires the construction of accountable 19 institutions at all levels of government and a secure domain of autonomous decision making at 20 the local level.
Conditions for Successful Local Collective Action in Forestry: Some Evidence From the Hills of Nepal
Society & Natural Resources, 2005
In the context of an ongoing debate on the type of institutions or tenurial arrangements that are appropriate for the sustainable management of common pool resources (CPRs), this article examines the role played by local institutions in determining the conditions of two forests located in the Middle Hills of Nepal. The institutional robustness of the forests' governance systems is evaluated using Ostrom's (1990) design principles that characterize the configuration of rules devised and used by long-enduring CPR institutions. The findings show that the two forests are different in level of historical degradation as well as present condition, and these differences are generally explained by the structural characteristics of the local institutions governing the forests. The analysis indicates that Ostrom's design principles are useful for analyzing institutional robustness of local forest governance systems. However, some of the principles need modification or expansion if they are to be prescribed for forestry situations.
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Forest Matters, April 2015
Village communities function most successfully when they are situated in a nested series of institutions. Academics often state that villages are self-governing and should have complete control over their natural reources, especially forests, and that the colonial policy of forest reservation was a cause of the alienation of communities, and that JFM (joint forest managment) is likewise against the tenets of panchayati raj. However, the reality is that many communities are successful in protecting their forest resources precisely in collaboration with the state, and do not see any contradiction between the different institutions.