3.1. Introduction
3.2. Collective Action and Common Property Resources
3.3. Profiles of Benefits and Costs
The range of socioeconomic themes that could usefully be broached here is wide indeed, ranging over treatment of externalities, non-market values and valuation, conflict resolution, etc. We can economise on space and coverage here because of the longer treatment of some of these matters in the companion review on "Perspectives on Policy and Management Research in the CGIAR." One focused starting point in thinking about public management and institutional issues in natural resource management is to recognise that natural resources are heterogeneous and present different management issues, limiting generalisation about such issues with regard to "natural resources." Some of the differences with respect to management, especially those related to social cohesion and information status can be conveniently summarised in a simple tabular form as is done below. This portrayal distinguishes, on the one hand, whether the resource in question is (a) relatively known and predictable, or (b) little known and/or unpredictable, and on the other hand, whether the resource users are (a) an identifiable and coherent group, or (b) lacking group identity and structure. Some examples of important NRM situations can thus be tabulated:
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Matrix of Illustrative NRM Situations | ||
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Natural Resource is: | ||
|
Users-Managers are: |
Known and predicatable |
Little Known and unpredictable |
|
Identifiable and Coherent Group |
(I) Irrigation Water Management |
(II) Coastal Fishing (done by resident fisher groups) |
|
Lacking Group Identity and Cohesion |
(III) Forest Management |
(IV) Rangeland |
In situation (I), the prospects of user-managers taking responsibility for the sustainable and beneficial management of the resource are greater, other things being equal, whereas in situation (IV), getting responsible user behaviour (with regard to the long-term viability of the resource) is more problematic. Situations (II) and (III) are intermediate in this regard. Management of inland fisheries, for example, is likely to be somewhere near the middle of the matrix. In some "traditional" range management situations (such as IV), however, informal institutions and strong cultural norms have evolved, particularly with regard to conflict resolution, so that grazing resources can be managed close to some optimum (Sandford, 1983).
As Sandford and others have reported, when governments and donor agencies have tried to intervene to introduce (or impose) their own rules and institutions in situations such as (IV), these have been usually unsuccessful, unless building on the traditional patterns and norms of resource management. It should be no surprise that probably the NRM area where self-management by resource users has been most widespread and successful is with respect to irrigation water (Uphoff, 1986a; Meinzen-Dick et al., 1994).
Soil conservation resembles situation (I) but it presents some different cost and benefit patterns, as discussed below. These make collective action to protect soil less attractive to users of this resource. Watershed management has characteristics of (II), (III) and (IV) and is therefore more complex analytically and also operationally more difficult. "To the extent that the resource and the users are well known and identifiable, local institutions become more viable. Conversely, when the resource is more uncertain and the set of users ill-defined, higher level institutions have a greater role to play in NRM." (Uphoff, 1986b).
The concern when looking at either set of institutions with regard to NRM is not with the institutions themselves so much as with their implications for behaviour by the same set of persons, most simply referred to as users. These are the persons who have some right to extract benefit from the resource in question, whether it be formal-legal or by common law or tradition. This question of different kinds and degrees of resource tenure, referred to loosely as ownership, will be returned to below, as it is one of the most important institutions that affect user behaviour.
The above discussion focusing on social cohesion and information should be seen against a broader backdrop of rural NRM operatives, largely resource-poor farmers in much of the less-developed world, responding as best they can to pressures on their scarce resources arising from increasing population pressures, and to changes in the policy environment to which they are subject. Increasingly, with the globalisation of the world economy, the liberalisation of trading arrangements, and varying responses of national governments as they struggle to adjust to the newly emerging trends, the policy environment is wide geographically, dynamic and not always easy to predict. As farmers are thrown to the mercy of the international market place, it is reasonable that they should be supported in their managerial tasks by policy decisions that underpin their security of tenure, foster the supply of relevant planning information, perhaps smooth out some of the more extreme fluctuations in commodity prices, ease some of the pain of dealing with natural calamities such as drought, and so on.
The rural natural resource management task has doubtless become more difficult for the majority of the world's farmers in recent decades, notwithstanding the assistance that has been received from the availability of new technology. Needless to say, the prospects in store make the future management challenge even more daunting, not to mention inevitably more demanding of better technologies, especially in the NRM arena, and of better policies for the rural sector to help it play its needed role in development. Research surely has a crucial part to play in all these aspects, and the contribution of social-science research will be vital to guiding and implementing technological interventions as well as forging progress in the policy domain. These themes, together with their implications for socioeconomic work under the CGIAR are taken up at length - more so than is possible here - in the companion strategic review "Perspectives on Policy and Management Research in the CGIAR", which should be read in conjunction with the present review. Since, however, it will largely be the billions of resource-poor farm managers themselves who will actually be doing most of the work that will be needed, it is as well now to ponder some of the social mechanisms they will be using.
Two bodies of literature in the social sciences - on collective action (CA) and on common property resources (CPRs) - have spoken directly to behaviourial issues in NRM (Jodha, 1992, 1995). Unfortunately, the two have often suffered in their interpretation through confusion with the "tragedy of the commons" argument of Hardin (1968). In fact, the respective analyses speak to similar behaviourial dynamics and motivations, but they speak to different sets of concerns. One reading of the literature says that there is no reason to expect sustainable NRM by the public if the resources are held as property in common. The conclusion drawn is that the best prospects lie in looking to management by public (state) institutions or to private-property solutions. A more recent reading of the literature is that, under enough conditions to make the conclusion important, resource users collectively can be trusted, often better than state or "official" private managers, to utilise soil, forest, grassland and other biological resources well.
The feasibility and sustainability of CA was first and most effectively challenged by Olson (1965). He proposed that voluntary group action to achieve/maintain some common good was unlikely to occur or be sustained because it was "rational" for individuals to be "free riders," not contributing their share to the cost of creating the desired public good. Individual net benefit would be maximised by "shirking" while getting nevertheless the benefit of what was created by others' efforts.
Kimber (1981) showed how this supposedly "rational" analysis is itself illogical and internally inconsistent. It rests on the assumption that only the "free rider" is rational, and all others irrational, willing to create a common good that the shirking individual can enjoy without cost. Since individuals recognise the fallacy of such logic, Kimber argued, they (or at least most, or a sufficient number) are willing to make their expected contribution as long as their benefit from the common good exceeds their personal cost. This is consistent with observed behaviour, though it is also the case that, in many instances, collective action does not occur and possible public goods are not created because individuals prefer to let others bear the disproportionate "start-up costs" of collective action.
This analysis was extended to the NRM domain by Hardin, who contended that natural resources would be overutilized, to the point of degradation because, by the same kind of logic, it was rational for individual users to exploit a resource such as grassland or forests at the expense of others. They would get the full benefit but bear only a fraction of the cost of any incremental resource extraction.
For a while, this argument cast a long shadow over the whole NRM enterprise, and it prompted calls for privatisation of forest, range and other resources, or for the arm of the state to be made longer and stronger. The Prisoner's Dilemma analysis from the field of game theory was invoked to explain and support Hardin's pessimistic conclusion. But just as the CA argument was overstated, so did social scientists find flaws in the prediction of "tragedy."
First, there were many empirical examples of effective and even long-standing collective action regimes to manage and sustain natural resources (especially Netting 1976, and Ostrom, 1990). But it also became clear that the Prisoner's Dilemma logic of "defecting" to take advantage of others applied to rather limited, even artificial circumstances - once-only interactions, no communication among parties, etc. - so that it could not serve as a model for all or even most NRM situations.
Second, and more importantly, people came to see and understand the distinction between "common property" and "open access" resources (Anderson and Thampapillai, 1990). One could expect "tragic" consequences with the latter, but they did not need to occur with CPRs, unless the regime of norms, expectations and enforcement mechanisms surrounding common property broke down, e.g., due to in-migration of "strangers" or pressures of over-population.
Certainly "free riding" and "the tragedy of the commons" exist, but these behaviourial patterns are not necessary or universal. There can be a similarly rational basis for more altruistic and cooperative behaviour than these models predict (Uphoff et al., 1990; Uphoff, 1992; White and Runge, 1994). The literature on these issues can be summarised by saying that it is quite evident that the distribution of costs and benefits is a major influence on behaviour; "free riding" is a possible deterrent to collective action even if it is not an inevitable one; people are not motivated only by individual material self-interest; social norms and cultural traditions can make the welfare of others (including particularly future generations) important motivating factors; collective action presents some special problems but also opportunities when CPRs are involved; and institutions are essential for providing "assurance" that encourages collective action (Runge, 1981, 1984; Ostrom, 1990; White, 1992a).
Having indicated that individual and collective behaviour is not simply a function of costs and benefits (net benefits), it is important to take note of these factors since they are important influences on people's willingness to invest in and sustain institutions that manage natural resources effectively. In Uphoff's (1986b) previous work on local institutional development for NRM, among other sectoral activities, he was concerned with the incentives for users to undertake responsibilities for resource management on an individual or collective basis. The alternative would be government control (though possibly by local rather than central government).
Uphoff (1986b) identified four main dimensions along which NRM benefits can vary with respect to the users (or potential users) involved. The same distinctions can be made with regard to costs:
1. Temporal dimension(a) Benefits accrue immediately or very soon, or
(b) Benefits accrue after a long time.2. Spatial dimension
(a) Benefits accrue locally, or
(b) Benefits accrue remotely.3. Tangibility
(a) Benefits are quite evident, or
(b) Benefits are relatively difficult to identify.4. Distribution
(a) Benefits accrue to the same persons who incur the costs of management, or
(b) Benefits accrue to different persons from those who bear the costs of management.
It can be expected that user responsibility will be more feasible where NRM benefits, relative to costs, accrue quickly (1a), locally (2a), visibly (3a), and to those who bear the cost (4a). Conversely, a larger role for government institutions is likely to be needed where benefits are delayed (1b), remote (2b), difficult to identify (3b), and do not accrue to the investor of effort, money or forgone use (4b).
There is thus an important difference between soil conservation as a form of NRM and irrigation water management. Whereas efficient and equitable management of irrigation water produces quick (1a) and visible (3a) benefits to those persons and to the area where management investments are made (4a and 2a), soil conservation's benefits are usually delayed (1b) and often hard to identify (3b). They do occur locally (2a), but the main beneficiaries are likely to be persons downhill or downstream (4b), who are less likely to be flooded out or to suffer dry-season water shortage. Some persons downstream may indeed benefit from the deposition of top soil, even if others bear some costs of deposition, such as need to dredge canals.
Watershed management as a complex activity also has a less favourable net benefit profile than some other forms of NRM: more delayed than quick benefits (1b); and many benefits that are relatively hard to see and measure (3b) - as well documented in the several studies at the East-West Centre, e.g., Easter et al., (1986) and elsewhere Lee and Dinar (1995) provide a recent review. From a policy perspective, even greater difficulties arise when conflicts arise over use of the scarce water resource (Dinar and Loehman, 1995). Many of the difficulties in management depend on how the watershed is delimited. Watershed management has often been taken to refer to the upper, forested areas, the catchment area that captures rainfall that flows eventually to the downstream portions. With such a confining definition, it is clear that a considerable share of benefits from "watershed management" occur outside "the watershed" (2b) and go to persons located downstream (4b). But if the whole watershed is taken as a management unit (as is the central proposition in this paper), and if users within it consider their collective benefits and costs as a whole, these two obstacles to effective watershed management are mitigated, if only because there can be mechanisms for compensation and compensatory action within this larger watershed unit. Such compensation is not necessarily easy to arrange to the satisfaction of all concerned, especially if resettlement is required. The experience of the World Bank and others with the Narmada projects in north-west India, for instance, illustrates the imperative need for participatory approaches to project design (OED 1995).
