Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-05T08:18:26.404Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Local governance of ecosystems and community co-management

from Part V - Governing ecosystem services

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2015

Jetske A. Bouma
Affiliation:
VU University Amsterdam
Jetske A. Bouma
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL)
Pieter J. H. van Beukering
Affiliation:
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Get access

Summary

Introduction

The popularity of local governance approaches in ecosystem management has increased over the last decades. There seem to be several reasons for why this has been the case. First, top-down approaches to ecosystem governance have not been very cost-effective as the costs of top-down enforcement of resource-use restrictions have been relatively high (Somanathan et al., 2009). This has been the case in water management, fisheries management, forest management, wetland management, nature conservation, etc. Also, especially in conservation-oriented approaches, the livelihood costs of prohibiting resource use, and sometimes even displacement of local communities, have been enormous (Cernea and Schmidt-Soltau, 2006). As a result, conservation agencies and governments have started exploring alternative approaches to ecosystem governance like integrated conservation–development approaches and community co-management in order to reduce adverse livelihood impacts, increase local participation, and reduce monitoring and enforcement costs. Second, an understanding has been emerging that ecosystems do not necessarily need to be managed by governments solely but that local communities can self-govern common-good resources effectively as well. Ostrom (1990) showed that communities can sustainably manage forests, pastures, wetlands, and other common-good resources, and that collective resource rights do not need to result in a “tragedy of the commons” if local governance mechanisms exist. This understanding, in combination with the finding that top-down governance of ecosystems has often not been very effective, has resulted in a decentralization of common-good resource management worldwide. Third, the human right to self-determination has become an important argument for local ecosystem governance, especially since people living in biodiversity-rich spots are often marginalized: not only are poverty and biodiversity strongly correlated, biodiversity hotspots coincide with indigenous peoples’ territories, indigenous peoples that are often not well represented in decision-making processes concerning their livelihoods (Colchester, 2004).

Type
Chapter
Information
Ecosystem Services
From Concept to Practice
, pp. 250 - 263
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agrawal, A. (2001). Common property institutions and sustainable governance of resources. World Development, 29: 1649–1672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agrawal, A. and Gibson, C. (1999). Enchantment and disenchantment: the role of community in natural resource conservation. World Development, 27(4): 629–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balmford, A, Bruner, A., Cooper, P., et al. (2002). Economic reasons for conserving wild nature. Science, 297(5583): 950–954.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bawa, K. S., Rai, N. D., and Sodhi, N. S. (2011). Rights, governance, and conservation of biological diversity. Conservation Biology, 25(3): 639–641.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berkes, F. (2004). Rethinking community-based conservation. Conservation Biology, 18(3): 621–630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouma, J. A., Bulte, E. H., and van Soest, D. P. (2008). Trust and cooperation: social capital and community resource management. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 56: 155–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouma, J. A., Joy, K. J., and Steyn, M. (2013). Poverty, livelihoods and the conservation of nature in biodiversity hotspots around the world. In van Beukering, P. J. H., Papyrakis, E., Bouma, J., and Brouwer, R. (eds), Nature’s Wealth: The Economics of Ecosystem Services and Poverty. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bowler, D., Buyung-Ali, L., Healey, J., Jones, J., Knight, T., and Pullin, A. (2012). Does community forest management provide global environmental benefits and improve local welfare?Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 10(1): 29–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, S. (2005). Microeconomics: Behaviour, Institutions and Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (2002). Social capital and community governance. Economic Journal, 12(483): 419–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cernea, M. M. and Schmidt-Soltau, K. (2006). Poverty risks and national parks: policy issues in conservation and resettlement. World Development, 34(10): 1808–1830.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colchester, M. (2004). Conservation policies and indigenous peoples. Environmental Science and Policy, 7(3): 145–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danielsen, F., Burgess, N., and Balmford, A. (2005). Monitoring matters: examining the potential of locally-based approaches. Biodiversity and Conservation, 14: 2507–2542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, B. and Cristopher, T. (2007). Poverty and biodiversity: measuring the overlap of human poverty and the biodiversity hotspots. Ecological Economics, 62: 93–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rustagi, D., Engel, S., and Kosfeld, M. (2010). Conditional cooperation and costly monitoring explain success in forest commons management. Science, 330(6006): 961–965.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Salafsky, N. and Wollenberg, E. (2000). Linking livelihoods and conservation: a conceptual framework and scale for assessing the integration of human needs and biodiversity. World Development, 28(8): 1421–1438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sobrevila, C. (2008). The Role of Indigenous Peoples in Biodiversity Conservation: The Natural but Often Forgotten Partners. Washington DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
Somanathan, E., Prabhakar, R., and Mehta, B. S. (2009). Decentralization for cost-effective conservation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(11): 4143–4147.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stern, M. (2008). Coercion, voluntary compliance and protest: the role of trust and legitimacy in combating local opposition to protected areas. Environmental Conservation, 35(3): 200–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunderlin, W, Angelsen, A., Belcher, B., et al. (2005). Livelihoods, forests and conservation in developing countries: an overview. World Development, 33(9): 1383–1402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×