Common Property Resource Management in Vanuatu - Perspectives from a Community

<p>Vanuatu's common property natural resources provide essential ecological services for the global community and sustain the livelihoods of 80% of the Vanuatu population. Sustainable management of natural resources is dependent on locally developed systems that govern common property resources. Understanding the drivers of commons management problems from local resource-users' perspectives is essential to know how local governance systems can be supported and strengthened. I explore locally identified drivers of commons management problems using a case study of the Tangoa Island community of South Santo, Vanuatu. Methods include participatory rural appraisal (PRA) techniques and 31 interviews with local people. Literature from Vanuatu as well as 18 interviews with Vanuatu government departments, NGOs, and aid donors informs how relevant the issues identified in the case study are for other communities across Vanuatu. I found that drivers at different contextual scales, from local to global, affect two main elements of a community's cooperative capacity for commons management - social cohesion and governance systems. The issues identified by the Tangoa Island community affect many Vanuatu communities because they are driven by wider processes of social, cultural, economic, and institutional change. Approaches to support and strengthen local social and governance systems can target drivers at multiple contextual scales.</p>

Common Property Resource Management in Vanuatu - Perspectives from a Community

<p>Vanuatu's common property natural resources provide essential ecological services for the global community and sustain the livelihoods of 80% of the Vanuatu population. Sustainable management of natural resources is dependent on locally developed systems that govern common property resources. Understanding the drivers of commons management problems from local resource-users' perspectives is essential to know how local governance systems can be supported and strengthened. I explore locally identified drivers of commons management problems using a case study of the Tangoa Island community of South Santo, Vanuatu. Methods include participatory rural appraisal (PRA) techniques and 31 interviews with local people. Literature from Vanuatu as well as 18 interviews with Vanuatu government departments, NGOs, and aid donors informs how relevant the issues identified in the case study are for other communities across Vanuatu. I found that drivers at different contextual scales, from local to global, affect two main elements of a community's cooperative capacity for commons management - social cohesion and governance systems. The issues identified by the Tangoa Island community affect many Vanuatu communities because they are driven by wider processes of social, cultural, economic, and institutional change. Approaches to support and strengthen local social and governance systems can target drivers at multiple contextual scales.</p>

Community forestry in Nepal: a model of common property resource management

The management of common forest land as community forest in Nepal is in practice since 1978. Studies showing the linkages between community forestry and common property resource are scanty in the country. This article discusses characteristics of common property resources and the principles and practices of community forestry in Nepal which is an example of common property resource management between Government agencies and users (co-managers). Forest User Groups (FUGs ) are the institutions responsible to manage the common property.

"Social Exclusion and Common Property Resource Management in South India: An Analysis of Community Forest Management in Andhra Pradesh "

in the context of high growth driven economy, the concept of social exclusion and inclusion acquired significance in academic and public policy circles. Most of studies on social exclusion focused on urban based exclusion and rural developmental interventions are not being given due attention. This article attempts to assess the performance of community forest management scheme from the prescriptive of social seclusion. Attempt is being made to indentify the multiple sources and process of social exclusion in the operational process of community forest management scheme in Andhra Pradesh and thereby locating the spaces for inclusion of excluded. The general trend is sample villages is that social exclusion of people is explicitly visible and this is product of collaborative effort of the nexus between forest department, and dominant social groups in village.

Managing inequality: the political ecology of a small-scale fishery, Mweru-Luapula, Zambia

This paper starts from the perspective that resource management approaches are based upon a body of environmental knowledge. By analysing fisheries management in Mweru-Luapula, Zambia, I argue that this body of environmental knowledge has 1) remained largely unchanged throughout the recent shift to co-management and 2) is to a great extent based upon general paradigmatic conventions with regard to common property regimes. The article outlines the historical trajectories of both resource management and the political ecology of Mweru-Luapula's fishing economy. Using a relational perspective – by looking at interaction of the local fishing economy with external developments, but also by examining socioeconomic relations between individual actors – this article exposes constraints and incentives within the local fishing economy that are not absorbed in the current co-management regime. These findings challenge both policy goals and community-based resource management itself. I argue that governance of small-scale fisheries – in order to close the gap between locally based understandings, policy and legislation – should always be built upon all dimensions (social, economic, ecological, and political) that define a fisheries system.Keywords: co-management, common-property resource management, political ecology, Mweru-Luapula fishery, Zambia.

The Rise of the Region in Global Environmental Politics

This essay examines some of the reasons for the upsurge in interest in regional approaches to global environmental challenges. One reason is a growing sense of obstruction and drift at the global level. With the rate of formation of new global environmental agreements lagging, with many existing agreements seemingly stalled, and with the momentum of global summitry having faded, regions may seem a more pragmatic scale at which to promote the diffusion of ideas, the development of institutions, and social mobilization for change. Beyond political pragmatism, there are also conceptually interesting—if still debatable—arguments that regions hold promise for strengthening global environmental governance. The regional scale may offer superior conditions to the global for common-property resource management—although the historical track record seems mixed at best, and formidable barriers to collective action remain. Regions may be more conducive to promoting norm diffusion—although the causal direction appears to be more strongly global-to-regional than vice versa. However the conceptual promise of the regional scale plays out in practice, there is also a compelling ethical argument for a regional focus, as mitigation failures at the global level condemn particular locales to formidable challenges of adaptation.