Governing the commons beyond harvesting: An empirical illustration from fishing.
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2020-01
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Harvesting has received most theoretical, empirical, and policy attention towards understanding common-pool resource dilemmas. Yet, pre-harvesting and post-harvesting activities influence harvesting outcomes as well. Broadening the analytical focus beyond harvesting is needed to imagine new ways of theorizing and governing the commons. Fishing-which is synonymous with harvesting-is a case in point. We contribute to a beyond-harvesting research agenda by incorporating concepts from common-pool resources theory that have not received enough attention in the literature. We compare two ubiquitous self-organizing strategies (i.e., fishing cooperatives and patron-client relationships) fishers use to access means of production and analyze their effects on the distribution of benefits resulting from harvesting. We use rarely available longitudinal data of monetary loans to fishers in Mexican small-scale fisheries and find that cooperatives can deliver broader distribution of benefits than patron-client relationships. Our study highlights the importance of historically and contextually situating analyses linking the effects of pre-harvesting processes on harvesting outcomes, and the benefits of broadening the scope of inquiry beyond a narrow policy attention on harvesting to move towards a fuller understanding of commons dilemmas.
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Basurto, Xavier, Abigail Bennett, Emilie Lindkvist and Maja Schlüter (2020). Governing the commons beyond harvesting: An empirical illustration from fishing. PloS one, 15(4). p. e0231575. 10.1371/journal.pone.0231575 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/20605.
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Xavier Basurto
I am interested in the fundamental question of how groups (human and non-human) can find ways to self-organize, cooperate, and engage in successful collective action for the benefit of the common good. To do this I strive to understand how the institutions (formal and informal rules and norms) that govern social behavior, interplay with biophysical variables to shape social-ecological systems. What kind of institutions are better able to govern complex-adaptive systems? and how can societies (large and small) develop robust institutions that provide enough flexibility for collective learning and adaptation over the long-term?
My academic and professional training is based on a deep conviction that it is through integrating different disciplinary perspectives and methods that we will be able to find solutions to challenging dilemmas in natural resources management, conservation, and environmental policy. Trained as a marine biologist, I completed a M.S in natural resources studying small-scale fisheries in the Gulf of California, Mexico. Realizing the need to bring social science theories into my work on common-pool resources sustainability, I earned an MPA and a Ph.D. in Management (with a minor in cultural anthropology) from the University of Arizona and under the supervision of Edella Schlager. Following I spent two years working with Elinor Ostrom, 2009 co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, at the Workshop for Political Theory and Policy Analysis of Indiana University. Methodologically, I am familiar with a variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches and formally trained to conduct Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA or more recently fsQCA), that allows among other things, systematic comparisons of middle range N sample sizes and address issues of multiple-causality.
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