Browsing by Subject "common-pool resources"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4

Open Access
A novel framework for analyzing conservation impacts: evaluation, theory, and marine protected areas.
(Ann N Y Acad Sci, 2017-07) Mascia, Michael B; Fox, Helen E; Glew, Louise; Ahmadia, Gabby N; Agrawal, Arun; Barnes, Megan; Basurto, Xavier; Craigie, Ian; Darling, Emily; Geldmann, Jonas; Gill, David; Holst Rice, Susie; Jensen, Olaf P; Lester, Sarah E; McConney, Patrick; Mumby, Peter J; Nenadovic, Mateja; Parks, John E; Pomeroy, Robert S; White, Alan T
Environmental conservation initiatives, including marine protected areas (MPAs), have proliferated in recent decades. Designed to conserve marine biodiversity, many MPAs also seek to foster sustainable development. As is the case for many other environmental policies and programs, the impacts of MPAs are poorly understood. Social-ecological systems, impact evaluation, and common-pool resource governance are three complementary scientific frameworks for documenting and explaining the ecological and social impacts of conservation interventions. We review key components of these three frameworks and their implications for the study of conservation policy, program, and project outcomes. Using MPAs as an illustrative example, we then draw upon these three frameworks to describe an integrated approach for rigorous empirical documentation and causal explanation of conservation impacts. This integrated three-framework approach for impact evaluation of governance in social-ecological systems (3FIGS) accounts for alternative explanations, builds upon and advances social theory, and provides novel policy insights in ways that no single approach affords. Despite the inherent complexity of social-ecological systems and the difficulty of causal inference, the 3FIGS approach can dramatically advance our understanding of, and the evidentiary basis for, effective MPAs and other conservation initiatives.
Open Access
Integrating simultaneous prosocial and antisocial behavior into theories of collective action.
(Sci Adv, 2016-03) Basurto, Xavier; Blanco, Esther; Nenadovic, Mateja; Vollan, Björn
Trust and cooperation constitute cornerstones of common-pool resource theory, showing that "prosocial" strategies among resource users can overcome collective action problems and lead to sustainable resource governance. Yet, antisocial behavior and especially the coexistence of prosocial and antisocial behaviors have received less attention. We broaden the analysis to include the effects of both "prosocial" and "antisocial" interactions. We do so in the context of marine protected areas (MPAs), the most prominent form of biodiversity conservation intervention worldwide. Our multimethod approach relied on lab-in-the-field economic experiments (n = 127) in two MPA and two non-MPA communities in Baja California, Mexico. In addition, we deployed a standardized fishers' survey (n = 544) to verify the external validity of our findings and expert informant interviews (n = 77) to develop potential explanatory mechanisms. In MPA sites, prosocial and antisocial behavior is significantly higher, and the presence of antisocial behavior does not seem to have a negative effect on prosocial behavior. We suggest that market integration, economic diversification, and strengthened group identity in MPAs are the main potential mechanisms for the simultaneity of prosocial and antisocial behavior we observed. This study constitutes a first step in better understanding the interaction between prosociality and antisociality as related to natural resources governance and conservation science, integrating literatures from social psychology, evolutionary anthropology, behavioral economics, and ecology.
Open Access
Mobility of Common-Pool Resources and Privatization of Land Tenure in the Argentine Semi-Arid Chaco
(Conservation and Society, 2008) Altrichter, Mariana; Basurto, Xavier
During the last few decades there has been a strong tendency towards privatisation of land tenure to increase protection and sustainable use of natural resources. We assess this approach in the context of land privatisation in a dry region of the Argentine Chaco where low income peasants depend on multiple common-pool resources (CPRs) to survive and where most recently privatisation of land tenure has also included large absentee landowners. We hypothesise that the results of such policies depend in part on the mobility of the resources in question, and compare the harvesting practices of CPRs of varied mobility before and after the conversion of land to private property to assess the effects of privatisation. We found that privatisation by low income peasants increased control of access to stationary and low mobility CPRs but highly mobile species continued being used as open access and over-exploited. In contrast, the later privatisation of land by large absentee landowners is likely to pose serious threats to the conservation of the ecosystem in general, and to the ability of low income peasants to maintain their livelihoods in this region.
Open Access
Rethinking scale in the commons by unsettling old assumptions and asking new scale questions
(International Journal of the Commons, 2020-01-01) Smith, H; Basurto, X; Campbell, L; Lozano, AG
© 2020 The Author(s). Scale is a powerful concept, a lens that shapes how we perceive problems and solutions in common-pool resource governance. Yet, scale is often treated as a relatively stable and settled concept in commons scholarship. This paper reviews the origins and evolution of scalar thinking in commons scholarship in contrast with theories of scale in human geography and political ecology that focus on scale as a relational, power-laden process. Beginning with early writings on scale and the commons, this paper traces the emergence of an explicit scalar epistemology that orders both spatial and conceptual relationships vertically, as hierarchically nested levels. This approach to scale underpins a shared conceptualization of common-pool resource systems but inevitably illuminates certain questions and relationships while simultaneously obscuring others. Drawing on critiques of commonplace assumptions about scale from geography, we reread this dominant scalar framework for its analytic limitations and unintended effects. Drawing on examples from small-scale fisheries governance throughout, we contrast what is made visible in the commons through the standard approach to scale against an alternative, process-based approach to scale. We offer a typology of distinct dimensions and interrelated moments that produce scale in the commons coupled with new empirical and reflexive scale questions to be explored. We argue that engaging with theoretical advances on the production of scale in scholarship on the commons can generate needed attention to power and long-standing blind spots, enlivening our understanding of the dynamically scaled nature of the commons.