Collective Titling and the Process of Institution Building: The New Common Property Regime in the Colombian Pacific

This research is an empirical examination of institutional developments in Afro-Colombian communities that have occurred since the change in the property rights regime in 1991. I surveyed 82 local leaders of 42 communities to understand whether these communities have succeeded in designing and implementing rules to manage their collective land and its resources. I found that the new property regime has not replaced individuals’ informal land holdings, which are still managed as de facto individual private property and are traded in the informal land market. However, the process of collective titling has changed local environmental governance by creating local rules and legal tools to guard against encroachment by intruders. Beyond the establishment of formal property rights, the process of community and authority building based on the expectation of collective titling has begun to formalize the management of the territory. Communities with and without collective titles have promoted new rules and procedures to manage their resources. However, monitoring and enforcement of the rules are weaker than expected.     

Multi-Scale Dimensions of Indigenous Land Tenure in the Amazon

This study demonstrates the importance of scale in understanding the common property institutions of indigenous groups in the Amazon. Using the example of the Pueblo Kichwa de Rukullakta, an ethnic Kichwa group in the Ecuadorian Amazon, we analyze land tenure arrangements at the household, community, and territory levels using a common property framework. The specific bundle of rights identified by the framework is held at the household level but households rely on community and territory level arrangements for their enforcement. Land claims at the community and territory level also serve to define the pool of legitimate rights holders at the next lower level. Due to the importance of scale in understanding indigenous land tenure generally, we suggest an adaptation of the common property framework to explicitly recognize the role of scale. This adapted framework identifies the function, characteristics, and means of enforcement for land claims at each scale of analysis.     

Property as sovereignty in micro: the state/property nexus and the Cyprus Problem

This article shows that landed property can be an exercise of state sovereignty in micro. I argue that property tightly relates to statehood and that the concept of ‘community’ offers us a lens with which to investigate that relation. Property's ‘communal’ character in Cyprus often transcends individual rights to ownership. A house belongs not to an individual, but to persons in their capacity as members of either the Greek-Cypriot or Turkish-Cypriot constitutional communities of the Republic. Focusing on the moral and political claims that ensue from this premise, I show how refugee Cypriots encounter and rearticulate the state in a variety of institutions as they lay claims to property (periousia) – their own or others’. Consequently, I argue that thinking through ‘community’ contributes to understandings of the linkage between property and statecraft (what I call the state/property nexus). In turn, this allows us to better comprehend statehood in post-conflict domains.     

Maya medicine in the biological gaze: bioprospecting research as herbal fetishism

The relationship of human societies to territory and natural resources is being drastically altered by a series of global agreements concerning trade, intellectual property, and the conservation and use of genetic resources. Through a characteristic style of collective appropriation of their tropical ecosystems, Maya societies have created local institutions for governing access to their common resources. However, new mechanisms of global governance require access to Maya biodiversity for world commercial interests. The Chiapas Highland Maya already face this prospect in the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group drug discovery project, which proposes to use Maya medical knowledge to screen plants for potential pharmaceuticals. The ethnobiological focus of the project emphasizes the naturalistic aspects of Maya medicine, primarily the use of herbal remedies. This biological gaze decontextualizes the situated knowledge of Maya healers, ignoring the cultural context in which they create and apply that knowledge. The search for raw materials for the production of universal medical technology results in symbolic violence to the cultural logic of Maya peoples. Only the full recognition of Maya peoples' collective rights to territory and respect for their local common-resource institutions will provide ultimate protection for their cultural and natural patrimony.     

Fragmentation,Cooperation and Power: Institutional Dynamics in Natural Resource Governance in North-Western Namibia

Contemporary theoretical accounts of common pool resource management assume that communities are able to develop institutions for sustainable resource management if they are given security of access and appropriate rights of management. In recent years comprehensive legal reforms of communal rural resource management in Namibia have sought to create an institutional framework linking the sustainable use of natural resources (game, water, forest) and rural development. The state, however, ceded rights to rural communities in an ambiguous and fragmented manner, creating a number of instances of overlapping property rights and different legal conditions for different natural resources. Nowadays communities grapple with the challenge of developing institutions for these resource-centered “new commons”. This paper describes the process of local institutional development, focusing on the challenges arising from the necessity to define group boundaries, the issues arising from monitoring and sanctioning within newly defined institutions, and the ideological underpinnings of different trajectories of communal resource management.     

KINSHIP MATTERS: WOMEN's LAND CLAIMS IN THE SANTAL PARGANAS, JHARKHAND

This article discusses the strengthening of kinship ties amongst the Santal community in a village in Jharkhand state in India. The context of progressive marginalization from the state and markets has resulted in the Santals asserting their adivasi identity by recourse to customary institutions as well as rigidifying patrilineal rules of inheritance. While this leads generally to an erosion of women's rights to inherit land, under certain circumstances women are supported by kin elders when they bring grievances to the legal courts. Women's relationship to their kinship group thus seems ambiguous: kinship can simultaneously be not only a source of deprivation and suppression but also a way of staking claims to resources, especially in the face of the inadequacies of formal state mechanisms.     

Forest protection in Central India: do differences in monitoring by state and local institutions result in diverse social and ecological impacts?

Protection of forests and wildlife outside protected areas (PAs) is necessary for the conservation of wildlife. Extension of conservation efforts outside the existing PA may result in restrictions on local forest resource use. Such situations arise due to differences in understanding of forest as a resource for communities and as a conservation space for endangered species. A clearer focus is needed on the functionality and socio-ecological outcomes of different forest management institutions to address such issues. We conducted a study in a forest landscape connecting Pench and Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserves (TRs) in Central India. The two main forest management institutions were the Forest Department (FD) and local communities managing forest resources. We conducted vegetation surveys and focus group discussions in 15 villages selected based on presence or absence of active protection and monitoring of forest resources by either FD or local people. We found that forests with monitoring had significantly higher tree density and vegetation species richness compared to forests without monitoring. Tree density was observed to be higher in sites monitored by villagers rather than those monitored by FD. Self-regulation and resource sharing in locally monitored forests were more acceptable to local communities. In forests monitored by the FD, local communities indicated a feeling of alienation from the forest that weakened their motivation to protect the forest and wildlife. Recognition of local community rights is essential to achieve conservation goals and reduce social conflicts outside PAs, requiring collaboration between state and local institutions.     

Co-Opting the Elders: The Political Economy of State Incorporation in Africa

The new institutional economics provides the basis for a theory of institutional change that helps to explain economic and political change among the East African pastoral Orma. A restudy of the Orma in 1987, following a six-year absence, revealed many changes in property rights over common grazing. The need for change in property rights led the elders to yield considerable authority to the state in return for enforcement of new property rights. The lessons from this case study of state incorporation relate also to the issue of state formation, and more generally to the process of change in institutions such as marriage, lineage, clan, gerontocracy, and patron-client relations.     

Common Property and Conservation: The Potential for Effective Communal Forest Management Within a National Park in Mexico

Common property regimes may contribute to environmental conservationand offer a complementary institutional model to state-run protected areas. The potential conservation value of common property management is of particular significance in Mexico, where a large majority of forests are held communally. Systems of common property management often exist in a context of close institutional overlap with state institutions. This project assessed the function of a common property regime nested within Lagunas de Montebello National Park (PNLM) in Chiapas, Mexico. We documented forest status and analyzed common property forest management institutions following severe fires that threatened forest conservation. Forests managed by the common property regime are less intact than federal forests, yet still moderately conserved, and many attributes necessary for common property management are functional, despite the recent fire crisis. Yet external authorities contest common property management by local institutions, resulting in limited joint management by the national park and the community. Formalization and expansion of de facto cooperation between the federal and community institutions may enhance forest conservation within PNLM.     

Individualized Pastureland Use: Responses of Herders to Institutional Arrangements in Pastoral China

This paper analyzes increasingly individualized herding behavior after the implementation of a grazing ban policy in northern China based on empirical research in 12 pastoralist villages. The findings reveal that de-collectivization of pastureland has not necessarily led to direct changes in individual land use strategies. Instead, a wider institutional context influenced by the implementation of a grazing ban has led to more individualized herding and increased short-term considerations of profit maximization in the study area, both of which are seen to undermine the sustainable use of pastureland. Based on our observations of herder responses to privatization, the grazing ban and a short experiment with lifting the grazing ban, we propose that the special characteristics of grassland and pastoralism call for institutions that facilitate locally originated pasture land use practice (e.g., co-operative herding, self-organized management) instead of exclusive reliance on a rigidly defined private property regime focused on fixed property boundaries.     

Evolving institutions for collective action by selective imitation and self-interested design

Human behavior and collective actions are strongly affected by social institutions. A question of great theoretical and practical importance is how successful social institutions get established and spread across groups and societies. Here, using institutionalized punishment in small-scale societies as an example, we contrast two prominent mechanisms - selective imitation and self-interested design - with respect to their ability to converge to cooperative social institutions. While selective imitation has received a great deal of attention in studies of social and cultural evolution, the theoretical toolbox for studying self-interested design is limited. Recently Perry, Shrestha, Vose, and Gavrilets (2018) expanded this toolbox by introducing a novel approach, which they called foresight, generalizing standard myopic best response for the case of individuals with a bounded ability to anticipate actions of their group-mates and care about future payoffs. Here we apply this approach to two general types of collective action – “us vs. nature” and “us vs. them” games. We consider groups composed by a number of regular members producing collective good and a leader monitoring and punishing free-riders. Our results show that foresight increases leaders' willingness to punish free-riders. This, in turn, leads to increased production and the emergence of an effective institution for collective action. We also observed that largely similar outcomes can be achieved by selective imitation, as argued earlier. Selective imitation by leaders (i.e. cultural group selection) outperforms self-interested design if leaders strongly discount the future. Foresight and selective imitation can interact synergistically leading to a faster convergence to an equilibrium. Our approach is applicable to many other types of social institutions and collective action.     

Local livelihoods and institutions in managing wildlife ecosystems: The case of Babile Elephant Sanctuary in Ethiopia

This paper analyzes inherent incentives and institutional challenges in managing elephant sanctuary ecosystems, using the case of the Babile Elephant Sanctuary in Ethiopia. The study was based on the data collected from local communities experiencing different livelihood systems and experts from the local state authorities. A total of 35 interviews were conducted for an in-depth case study. Results show that historical and socio-political factors have undermined the effectiveness of state-based institutions in managing the ecosystem. The welfare loss of local communities relying on the ecosystem has resulted in a dispute between the state managing the ecosystem and those holding customary rights to the delineated land. Absence of adequate compensation for the crop damage by elephants has made the local people to regard the state intervention as unfair action. The study suggests the need to search for institutional frameworks that can transform hostile relationship into a mutually beneficial one. Such condition may ensure humans’ peaceful co-existence with the wildlife without destroying the habitat and constraining sustainable livelihoods.     

Seed Systems and Farmers’ Seed Choices: The Case of Maizein the Peruvian Amazon

This paper analyzes how local seed system institutions support seed diversity, itself a requirement for agrobiodiversity maintained on-farm. The paper focuses on maize seed diversity in the central Peruvian Amazon. Using household and community level data from three different cultural groups from the central Peruvian Amazon, empirical results show the importance of collective action and the mediating role of ethnicity in the functioning of informal seed systems that in turn affect farmers’ choices regarding conservation of seed diversity. This implies that policies are needed to protect the relatively open seed exchanges of such local practices as a way to sustain on-farm agrobiodiversity.     

Social Geomatics: Participatory Forest Mapping to Mediate Resource Conflict in the Bolivian Amazon

This paper describes a participatory mapping method field tested with agro-extractive settlements in the Bolivian Amazon. A regional transition from customary to formal property rights resulting from sweeping 1996 land tenure reforms has led to confusion and conflicts over resource rights, a problem compounded by recent high market prices for Brazil nuts. In response to community requests to clarify resource rights to Brazil nut trees, CIFOR offered to train community members to map trees, trails and other key features themselves. This experience indicates that local residents can map their resources in an effective and efficient way and in the process gather necessary information to mediate competing claims, demonstrate their legitimate resource claims to external stakeholders and make management decisions. We argue that maps and properties are more likely to be seen as legitimate reflections of de facto rights if local stakeholders are involved as a group from the outset.     

The Creation and Dissolution of Private Property in Forest Carbon: A Case Study from Papua New Guinea

This paper shows how the prospect of a forest carbon market in Papua New Guinea added a new element of instability to national forest policy and property processes that were already moving in contradictory directions. In particular we examine attempts by foreign investors to forge voluntary carbon agreements with customary landowners after the Bali climate change conference of 2007, and the mobilization of state institutions to counter these ‘private dealings’. We highlight the connection between the ways that these processes played out at both national and local scales, with a focus on the highly contentious Kamula Doso forest area in Western Province. We conclude with some observations on the way that the constitutional protection of customary land rights inhibits the formalization of marketable rights in forest resources, including forest carbon, and creates an inconclusive circularity in the operation of forest policy and property processes at different levels of social and political organization.     

Patterns of loss and regeneration of tropical dry forest in Madagascar: the social institutional context

Loss of tropical forests and changes in land-use/land-cover are of growing concern worldwide. Although knowledge exists about the institutional context in which tropical forest loss is embedded, little is known about the role of social institutions in influencing regeneration of tropical forests. In the present study we used Landsat images from southern Madagascar from three different years (1984, 1993 and 2000) and covering 5500 km(2), and made a time-series analysis of three distinct large-scale patterns: 1) loss of forest cover, 2) increased forest cover, and 3) stable forest cover. Institutional characteristics underlying these three patterns were analyzed, testing the hypothesis that forest cover change is a function of strength and enforcement of local social institutions. The results showed a minor decrease of 7% total forest cover in the study area during the whole period 1984-2000, but an overall net increase of 4% during the period 1993-2000. The highest loss of forest cover occurred in a low human population density area with long distances to markets, while a stable forest cover occurred in the area with highest population density and good market access. Analyses of institutions revealed that loss of forest cover occurred mainly in areas characterized by insecure property rights, while areas with well-defined property rights showed either regenerating or stable forest cover. The results thus corroborate our hypothesis. The large-scale spontaneous regeneration dominated by native endemic species appears to be a result of a combination of changes in precipitation, migration and decreased human population and livestock grazing pressure, but under conditions of maintained and well-defined property rights. Our study emphasizes the large capacity of a semi-arid system to spontaneously regenerate, triggered by decreased pressures, but where existing social institutions mitigate other drivers of deforestation and alternative land-use.     

Preservation or degradation? Communal management and ecological change in a southeast Michigan forest

Local communities play an increasingly important role in the management and conservation of forests at local and global scales. Conventional analyses of community forest management tend to view the outcomes of these efforts, as with common pool resources (CPRs) more generally, as contingent on the ability of local institutions to control collective levels of extractive use and enforce group rules. This paper provides a case study of a community forest in southern Michigan, in the Midwestern United States, that challenges these assumptions about community-based forest management. The factors driving change in this forest are not tied to excessive extraction or disturbance by human agents but rather the proliferation of shade-tolerant invasive species. The community institutions and values that made it possible for the forest to grow and mature now threaten its very existence. By discouraging any form of active management, the forest has become susceptible to the growing pressures of human-induced environmental change such as the introduction of exotic plant species. Biodiversity conservation in such contexts consequently relies not only on restraining local forest utilization practices or the preservation of land from development, but on active management interventions by local forest users. Understanding the impact of community management on CPRs in human-dominated ecosystems will require broadening the scope of analysis to account for the importance of active management and the potentially deleterious effects of preservationist approaches on native biota.

Transforming Institutions among Pastoralists: Inequality and Land Privatization

This article analyzes how a community of Samburu pastoralists in Kenya transformed their land tenure system from communal to private ownership. It demonstrates the dynamic nature of institutional change processes by examining exogenous and endogenous factors that created conditions conducive to change. Inequalities and conflicting interests among different social groups provided impetus for change as well as ammunition to attack or defend common property. Privatization emerged from conflict among social groups, predicated on the relative power positions of the parties—positions that shifted over time in response to strategic actions of individuals and groups. In turn, the adoption of private property altered social relationships, creating new norms regarding land ownership, individual rights, and authority. [Keywords: institutions, Africa, pastoralism, property rights, social norms]     

Chinese ethnicities in neoliberal Singapore? State designs and dialect(ical) struggles of community associations

Since the late 1990s, Singaporean state authorities have been increasingly marketing the city state as a knowledge-based hub between mainland China and western societies. Their focus on Mandarin-speaking mainlanders contrasts with Singapore's historical Chinese roots. By investigating the daily activities of Hokkien and Teochew community associations, I argue that these associations are finding ways to adapt to state initiatives that market a China-centric identity and target mainlanders. These dialect-based associations try to profit from state designs, while at the same time reclaiming their own historical distinctiveness. Drawing on qualitative work, I document the temporal practices of local dialect-based associations in reaction to neoliberal state initiatives that reduce Chineseness to a de-historicized skill set and stress how state–community interactions shape evolving Chinese ethnicities of the city state.     

Poverty and institutional management stand-off: a restoration and conservation dilemma for mangrove forests of Tanzania

Mangrove forests of Tanzania are reserved by law, but the capacity to effectively enforce this institution has remained far from reach and mangrove forests continue to be exploited as cheap sources of wood and forest land for other uses. Often, the rural poor who depend on mangroves for their subsistence are pointed out by the state institutions as culprits of the degradation. Promisingly though, this paradigm is being offset by the emerging positive view about human proclivity for caring and nurturing common resources. Traditional and community based forest management practices are emerging as appropriate alternatives to state control and institutional arrangement for ensuring sustainable management of forest resources. Nonetheless, community based management has not yet been robustly implemented for mangrove forests in Tanzania. Retrospectively, this paper argues that nationalization of mangrove forests has not been successful in reversing mangrove degradation. The experiences have instead been the frictions between people and the state, as desperate rural poor continue to plunder on and make a living at the expense of mangrove forests. The paper exemplify how policy failure, weak or dysfunctional state institutions in Tanzania compounded by little participatory awareness and self commitment are ruining the restoration and conservation initiatives.