scholarly journals Shifting policies, access, and the tragedy of enclosures in Ecuadorian mangrove fisheries: towards a political ecology of the commons

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Beitl
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Fishery Management ◽  
Shrimp Farming ◽  
Shrimp Aquaculture ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Mangrove Resources

After decades of mangrove deforestation for the development of shrimp farming, the Ecuadorian state began to officially recognize the ancestral rights of traditional users of coastal mangrove resources in the late 1990s. This article traces the trajectory of coastal policy change and the transformation of mangrove tenure regimes from an implicit preference for shrimp aquaculture to a focus on conservation and sustainable development with greater community participation through the establishment of community-managed mangrove areas called custodias. I argue that while the custodias have empowered local communities in their struggle to defend their livelihoods and environment against the marginalizing forces of global shrimp aquaculture, the implementation of common property arrangements for mangrove fishery management has changed the nature of property rights, the distribution of resources, and social relations among collectors of mangrove cockles (Anadara tuberculosa and A. similis). I suggest a need to develop a political ecology of the commons, an analytical approach applied here to examine the fundamental shift in the nature of the struggle over mangrove resources, from artisanal fishers versus shrimp farmers to a struggle between compañeros: members of associations versus independent cockle collectors. Such a shift in the struggle over resources threatens to undermine the sustainability of the fishery. I conclude that shifting access may be an important underlying factor contributing to a tragedy of enclosures in Ecuador's mangrove cockle fishery.Keywords: political ecology; property rights; common property; access; tragedy of enclosures; shrimp aquaculture; mangroves; artisanal fisheries; Anadara spp., Ecuador

The Expanses of Sustainability and the Limits of Privatarianism

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
Resource Conservation ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Sustainability Problems

AbstractA review of contributions to the resource conservation literature shows that sustainability problems are seen as caused by “common property.” This “tragedy of the commons” is understood as the result of the failure to assign fully property rights to individuals. The supporting assumptions and premises to these “privatarian” arguments are explicated and examined. After refuting the main premises, it is argued that the application of neoclassical assumptions and premises overlooks other legitimate forms of ownership as effective solutions to the tragedy of the commons. In revisiting other categories of ownership, the limits of privatarianism are identified and the prospects for solutions to sustainability problems are expanded.

The Political Ecology of Fisheries Depletion in Amazonia

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret D. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Third World ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The Political ◽  
Small Community ◽  
Terra Firme ◽  
Common Property Resources ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Community Fisheries

Because fish populations are the classical examples of common-property resources, Garrett Hardin's ‘tragedy of the commons’ is frequently cited as the cause of their decline. However, it has now been shown that many small community fisheries, as well as a number of larger commercial fisheries, are not managed according to the ‘commons’ model but rather are subject to internal limitedentry restrictions which prevent resource overexploitation. Further, Hardin's model ignores critical relationships which exist between common-property and private resources in many Third World rural societies. Changes in these relationships have significant implications for sustained yield management of common-property resources, such as fisheries, in these societies.In Amazonia, the current changing relationship between common-property and private resources on the terra firme uplands profoundly affects the degree of exploitation that is experienced by the region's fisheries. It also has important implications for the survival of Amazonia's flood-forests which play a critical role in the region's fisheries ecology.

scholarly journals The Different Meanings of Land in the Age of Neoliberalism: Theoretical Reflections on Commons and Resilience Grabbing from a Social Anthropological Perspective

Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haller
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Common Pool Resources ◽  
The State ◽  
Common Pool ◽  
Land Acquisitions ◽  
The Commons

Recent debates in social anthropology on land acquisitions highlight the need to go further back in history in order to analyse their impacts on local livelihoods. The debate over the commons in economic and ecological anthropology helps us understand some of today’s dynamics by looking at precolonial common property institutions and the way they were transformed by Western colonization to state property and then, later in the age of neoliberalism, to privatization and open access. This paper focuses on Africa and refers to the work of critical scholars who show that traditional land tenure was misinterpreted as customary tenure without full property rights, while a broader literature on the commons shows that common-pool resources (pasture, fisheries, wildlife, forestry etc.) have been effectively managed by locally-developed common property institutions. This misinterpretation continues to function as a legacy in both juridical and popular senses. Moreover, the transformation of political systems and the notion of customary land tenure produced effects of central importance for today’s investment context. During colonial times a policy of indirect rule based on new elites was created to manage customary lands of so-called native groups who could use the land as long as it was of no value to the state. However, this land formally remained in the hands of the state, which also claimed to manage common-pool resources through state institutions. The neoliberal policies that are now demanded by donor agencies have had two consequences for land and land-related common-pool resources. On the one hand, states often lack the financial means to enforce their own natural resource legislation and this has led to de facto open access. On the other hand, land legally fragmented from its common-pool resources has been transformed from state to private property. This has enabled new elites and foreign investors to claim private property on formerly commonly-held land, which also leads to the loss of access to land related common-pool resources for more marginal local actors. Thus, the paper argues that this process does not just lead to land grabbing but to commons grabbing as well. This has furthermore undermined the resilience and adaptive capacity of local populations because access to common-pool resources is vital for the livelihoods of more marginal groups, especially in times of crisis. Comparative studies undertaken on floodplains in Botswana, Cameroon, Mali, Tanzania and Zambia based on a New Institutional Political Ecology (NIPE) approach illustrate this process and its impacts and show how institutional transformations are key to understanding the impacts of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLA) and investments in Africa.

scholarly journals Ambidextrous Lockeanism

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy Christmas
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Resource Use ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Residential Development ◽  
Private Ownership ◽  
Natural Resource Use ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Ownership Of Land

AbstractLockean approaches to property take it that persons can unilaterally acquire private ownership over hitherto unowned resources. Such natural law accounts of property rights are often thought to be of limited use when dealing with the complexities of natural resource use outside of the paradigm of private ownership of land for agricultural or residential development. The tragedy of the commons has been shown to be anything but an inevitability, and yet Lockeanism seems to demand that even the most robust common property arrangements be converted to privatized units. This often motivates a move away from natural law in the moral analysis of property rights. I argue however that it is not the deontological nature of Lockean principles that are at fault, but rather the manner of their application. Lockean theory often exhibits a bias in favour of private property: assuming that only private property can protect one’s interest in autonomy, and therefore asserting that each individual has a power of private acquisition. Starting with a claim against interference however enables us to mould the appropriate property rights to each individual’s particular interest in autonomy. This sometimes leads to private ownership, but often leads to various forms of commons.

Political ecology III

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 795-802 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew D. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
Research Experiences ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Political Economies ◽  
The Commons

Different intellectual strands within political ecology have analyzed changing forms of property institutions and the commons in particular. While engaging these topics from a number of different perspectives, they share common understandings of property rights as relational, contested, and shaped by broader political economies. What is less acknowledged is that political ecologists have, in different ways, studied the hybrid and mixed forms of property institutions that are often concealed or ignored in the tripartite division of private, common, and national properties that dominates institutionalist literatures. These theoretical commitments and research experiences are well-suited for understanding the proliferation of hybrid property institutions associated with neoliberal forms of governance. By briefly reviewing their synergies, this report seeks to bring these diverse strands in conversation. It concludes by highlighting useful avenues of political ecological research and practice that are raised by commoning scholarship and activism.

scholarly journals Property, possession and natural resource management: towards a conceptual clarification

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
SABINE HOFFMANN
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Natural Resource Management ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Common Property ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Literature ◽  
Management Regime ◽  
The Commons ◽  
The One

Abstract:There are few concepts that are more central to natural resource management than those of property and property rights. Given their importance, it might be expected that there would be some consensus in the economic literature about what property and property rights are. However, no such consensus seems to exist. In fact, different authors use the same terms to denote quite disparate concepts and ideas, impeding rather than advancing progress in understanding natural resource management. As but one example, there is hardly a concept that has been as fundamentally misunderstood as that of the commons. That misunderstanding notwithstanding, there is another, less familiar, more common and even more fundamental one: the persistent confusion of possession with property. This article argues that the distinction between possession and property is of particular importance for comprehending the meaning of institutional shifts from one resource management regime to another. It therefore reviews concepts central to natural resource management, by distinguishing between state, private, common property and possession on the one hand and open access on the other.

Vickers Hot Springs

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Hot Springs ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Common Property Resource ◽  
Resource Conflict ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
The Common

Vickers Hot Springs is located near the rural Southern California town of Ojai, and local residents have long enjoyed soaking in the sulfuric pools. But as knowledge of the springs spread, the area saw increases in fights, traffic, burglaries, and drug use. In response, two residents purchased the land and committed to restore the property while allowing limited public access, subsequently generating a great deal of controversy within the community. Privatizing Vickers Hot Springs follows the archetypical lesson of Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin stated that the problem for common-pool resources was that a finite amount of services are demanded by a potentially infinite number of users, who have little to gain by sacrificing for the common good. But Hardin's theory does not always apply. Many communities have come together to manage resources, often without government oversight. Thus, the question is not whether or not Hardin's theory is accurate, but rather “under what conditions it is correct and when it makes the wrong predictions.” Case studies provide nuance to the broad brushstrokes of a theory, and whether Hardin's parable is applicable depends on the particularities of the common property resource conflict. Employing the frameworks established by Hardin, Dietz et al., and Ostrom, this paper examines the management of Vickers Hot Springs within its broader social, ecological, and political context, asking whether the particular circumstances of this resource use conflict made privatization the most predictable outcome.

Staking out an inshore commons: Pound-netting in Gilded Age America

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15
Author(s):  
David Ress
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Fish Species ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Important Food ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Over Exploitation ◽  
Specific Part

Controversy over the expansion of pound netting in the largest US fisheries of the late nineteenth century marked an early conflict between those who considered fisheries a commons and those who sought to establish property rights in a fishery. Pound-netters physically staked out a specific part of the sea for their exclusive use, and their conception of their property rights resulted in significant overfishing of important food – and oil – fish species. Here, just as with the commons that many economists argue inevitably result in over-exploitation of a resource, regulation was rebuffed and the fisheries collapsed.

scholarly journals Probiotics as Antiviral Agents in Shrimp Aquaculture

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bestha Lakshmi ◽  
Buddolla Viswanath ◽  
D. V. R. Sai Gopal
Keyword(s):  
Antimicrobial Agents ◽  
Antiviral Agents ◽  
Shrimp Farming ◽  
Shrimp Aquaculture ◽  
Viral Diseases ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Treatment And Prevention ◽  
Power Enhancement ◽  
Shrimp Farms ◽  
Criteria For Selection

Shrimp farming is an aquaculture business for the cultivation of marine shrimps or prawns for human consumption and is now considered as a major economic and food production sector as it is an increasingly important source of protein available for human consumption. Intensification of shrimp farming had led to the development of a number of diseases, which resulted in the excessive use of antimicrobial agents, which is finally responsible for many adverse effects. Currently, probiotics are chosen as the best alternatives to these antimicrobial agents and they act as natural immune enhancers, which provoke the disease resistance in shrimp farm. Viral diseases stand as the major constraint causing an enormous loss in the production in shrimp farms. Probiotics besides being beneficial bacteria also possess antiviral activity. Exploitation of these probiotics in treatment and prevention of viral diseases in shrimp aquaculture is a novel and efficient method. This review discusses the benefits of probiotics and their criteria for selection in shrimp aquaculture and their role in immune power enhancement towards viral diseases.

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