This 3-day workshop covers topics related to common pool resources, collective action, and property rights. Day 1 introduces CGIAR and discusses agriculture and common pool resources. Day 2 defines key concepts like common pool resources, collective action, and property rights. It examines the tragedy of the commons and strategies to address it. Day 3 looks at drivers of tenure insecurity, institutional arrangements for strengthening tenure security, and tools and indicators for monitoring and evaluation. The workshop aims to provide knowledge and frameworks to support sustainable governance and management of natural resources.

1. AG 4390/AG 5371:
Global Agriculture Leadership Academy
COMMON POOL RESOURCES, COLLECTIVE
ACTION AND PROPERTY RIGHTS
Rowena Andrea Valmonte-Santos (Senior Research Analyst)
Ruth Meinzen-Dick (Senior Research Fellow)
With support from CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and
Markets Flagship 5 Research Team
Department of Agriculture, Texas State University|
23 March 2023

2. SCHEDULE
1:00-3:00pm, Wednesday, March 22:
 CGIAR and its Research Centers
 Agriculture Sector and Common Pool Resources
2:00-4:00pm, Thursday, March 23:
 Common Pool Resources
 Collective Action and Property Rights
3:00-5:00pm, Friday, March 24:
 Application
 Country Case Study

3. Common Pool Resources

4. Common Pool Resources
 Natural resources – open access
• Pastureland/Rangeland
• Forest
• Groundwater
• Streams
• Rivers
• Lakes
• Fisheries in open waters

5. Issues on Common Pool Resources
 Tragedy of the Commons
• presumes that group members are
never able to communicate and
coordinate around a collective
benefit
• individuals are always trapped and
in a situation of impossibility to
cooperate
Low excludability, high subtractability
Heterogeneous resources over space
and time
Multiple, overlapping uses
Gender differences in resource uses,
dependence, priorities

6. Strategies to Address the Tragedy of the Commons
 Imposition of private
property rights
 Government regulation
 Development of collective
action arrangement
Source: Meinzen-Dick, Markelova, and Moore 2010.

7. Collective Action and Property Rights
CG RESEARCH PROGRAM.
FLAGSHIP 5. GOVERNANCE OF NATURAL
RESOURCES

8. OUTLINE
Defining
Concepts and
Scope
• Governance of land and
water
• Collective action
• Property and tenure rights
Drivers and
Consequences of
Tenure Security
• Land rights and tenure
insecurity
• Household or individual
rights
• Collective action/rights
Institutional
Arrangements
and Governance
• Formalization of collective
rights
• Individual or household
level – land titling
• Land banking
• Land acquisition
procedures
• Hybrid tenure for water
Tools and
Indicators on
Tenure Security
• Multistakeholder
processes
• Tools to improve
accountability
• Monitoring and evaluation
tools

9. Defining Concepts and
Scope

10. Defining Concepts and Scope
 Natural resources
• Open access
• Common-pool resources
• No formal rules nor structure on utilization –
Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin 1968)
 Property rights and collective action
• Elinor Ostrom’s 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic
Sciences – ordinary people of creating rules
and institutions for sustainable and equitable
management of shared resources
• Ruth Meinzen-Dick’s research - water and other
commons, gender issues, and impact of
agricultural development on poverty, drawing on
her field work in South Asia and East and
Southern Africa

11. Defining
Concepts
and Scope:
Common-
Pool
Resources
Governance
• System with mechanisms to control and operate
• People are held accountable
• Institutions
• - Accessibility, equitable, sustainable utilization of common-
pool resources – land, water
• - Expand benefits – women, marginalized groups
• - Conflict management
Collective
Action
• People acting/working together to accomplish a
specific goal
• Main purpose: to improve condition and sustainable
use of common-pool resources
• May have formal rules developed by communities
utilizing the resources
Property and
Tenure
Rights
• Conditions land and land-based
natural resources occupied,
accessed, used, stewarded, and
protected
• By whom, length of time, purpose,
in what way, and with what
responsibilities
• Certain expectations - rights of
person or group will be recognized
by others and protected

12. Role of Collective Action and Property Rights in Natural Resource
Management: Framework
Time
Short Long
S
p
a
c
e
Plot
Com-
munity
Nation
Global
Property Rights
C
o
o
r
d
i
n
a
t
i
o
n
Inter-
national
State
Collective
Action
Transboundary
River Basins
Forests
Reservoirs
Watershed
management
Dams
Terracing
New seeds
Carbon
Markets
Agroforestry
Soil Carbon
IPM
Irrigation
Seed
Systems
Source: Meinzen-Dick,
Markelova, and Moore 2010.

14. Property Rights and Tenure Security
 Land-based natural resources
• cultivated land, grassland, forests, water; landscapes, watersheds and ecosystems where they interact;
ecosystem and spiritual values that people associate with the land
 Land right holders
• individuals, defined groups (e.g. indigenous peoples), household living in defined geographical areas
• rights of an individual may be nested within rights of groups, and rights of families within groups
 Tenure insecurity causes
• contested claims by others
• ambiguities and conflicts between customary and statutory governance
• deliberate government policies
• failures of policy implementation
• changes causing new pressures

15. Drivers and Consequences of
Tenure Insecurity

16. Women’s Land Rights and Tenure Insecurity
 Laying the foundation of guiding research on women’s land rights
 Shortcomings and evidence gaps on links between women’s land rights
and poverty reduction
 Research on gender parity with respect to recognition of women’s land
rights, land policy and program implementation, accessibility and
sustainability of programs or interventions
• Uganda, Peru, and Indonesia: Mixed methods comparative case study on
community forest reforms
• Indonesia and Peru: Gender dimensions of forest tenure reforms
• Nepal: Women’s rights to personal and joint property + stage in their life cycle
+ nature of social relations within their household, affect their empowerment

17. Individual or Household Rights Holdings
• Carry out robust statistical analyses on disaggregated data to
improve understandings of inter and intra-household
differences in sources of tenure insecurity
Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique
• Comparative analysis of links between tenure rights, tenure
security, and rural transformation dynamics
Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria
• Consequences of tenure insecurity on individual or household
held land
Ethiopia, Kyrgyz Republic

18. Collective Rights
 Collective holdings either ownership or long-term use and/or
management rights have been recognized or devolved to communities
to some extent
 Peru, Uganda, Indonesia
• comparative case study of reforms that examined tenure insecurity on
collective holdings through the lens of conflict management and livelihoods
 Guatemala, Nepal, Mexico, Namibia
• issue of tenure insecurity and its consequences emerged as key area of
concern in case studies documenting the social, economic, and ecological
outcomes of community forest enterprise development

19. Institutional Arrangements and
Governance to Strengthen Tenure

20. Formalization of Collective Rights
Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia,
Kenya, Mexico, Namibia, Nepal,
Peru, Tanzania, Uganda
• Forest rights recognition/devolution
• Rights limited to use of the area where
communities sign a contract with the government
(Peru)
• Distribution of powers and responsibilities across
levels (national, regional, local) and sectors
(multiple land use) (forestry, agriculture)
Ethiopia, Tanzania
• Participatory Rangeland Management
• Recognizing role of communities in sharing
responsibilities and benefits with agreed-upon
management plan
• Putting severe penalties for those expanding
boundaries, not respecting the agreement, or
any harm being done to environment (intentional
fire, harm to endangered species, etc)

21. Individual or household land certification or titling programs:
Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria
 Land access and perceived tenure security across various market, ecological,
demographic, and cultural dynamics
 Positive policy reforms at the national level but weak and uneven
implementation at the local level
• Lack of financial and technical capacity
• Corruption
 As a result,
• Eroding land rights of most vulnerable groups (poor smallholders, women, and
migrants) due to growing population, commercialization of agriculture,
commodification of land
• Vulnerable group since their rights over land are often subsidiary and
undocumented

22. Land Banking in Nepal
 Government to provide landless
residents with access to land
• Nepal Agriculture Development Strategy
(2015) - land leasing corporation as an
institution provides intermediation between
owners of land and prospective renters of
land
Source: Larson 2017

23. Tools and Indicators on
Tenure Security

24. Tools and indicators for implementation
 Joint Land Use Planning in Tanzania and Ethiopia
 Bayesian Belief Network approach to enhance rangeland
governance in South Tunisia
 Games to strengthen water management
(e.g. for groundwater and surface water)

25. Identifying interests and knowledge of different actors sharing common aspirations
and reconciled to better secure livelihoods
Participatory land use planning
 Joint Land Use Planning (Tanzania and Ethiopia)
 Rulal game for participatory land use planning (Laos and Myanmar)
Tools for strengthening inclusion in Multistakeholder
Processes applied in 9 countries, e.g.
CIFOR. Tools for managing landscapes, inclusively
 Getting it right, a guide to improve inclusion in multi-stakeholder
forums.
 How are we doing?
 Worldfish From conflict to collaboration in natural resource
management.
 CoRe and FES. MAP Design Guide
Source:

26. Build trust by helping understand others’ perspectives and the
value of collaboration
 Game creates safe, creative space for
interacting, negotiating, and learning
 The game plays out scenarios and dilemmas
happening in real life
 Role play with various key stakeholders
 Experiential learning helps internalize
concepts and behaviors
 Facilitate future decision making across
scales
 Rulal board game
Resources:
Suhardiman, D. and N. Sindorf. 2018. Rulal: Wetlands and Land Use Planning Board Game; Rural land use planning game (in youtube)
Suhardminan, D. and M. Signs. 2018. Unraveling power-play in land use planning.
Sindorf, D. Suhardiman, and E. Anisimova. 2020. Game of unknows: Beyond the win-win, toward inclusive development

27. Conflict management
Conflict assessment: Diagnose key factors underlying conflict
Alternative conflict management approaches try to find
solutions producing gains for all stakeholders to create sustainable
cooperation: reconciliation, negotiation, facilitation and mediation
Participatory monitoring and evaluation emphasizes
stakeholders and their knowledge; M&E as a learning process
Toolkit:
• Analysis tools to assess problems, create common understanding;
• Dialogue and consensus-building tools to foster cooperation and overcome
obstacles
• Strategy development tools to identify, test and design strategies and solutions
• Support tools
More resources: Environmental Conflict and Cooperation platform
Source: CORE

28. Challenges of Multi-Stakeholder Forums and Processes (MSPs)
& how these tools address them
 Unequal power relations
 Marginalized groups lack effective voice
 Lack of mutual understanding/ no
common language/ too many
assumptions
 Both explicit and hidden differences of
interest
 Limits buy-in or breeds covert or overt
opposition and conflict
 Improve voice for marginalized groups
 Build trust by helping actors understand
others’ perspectives and the value of
collaboration
 Support conflict management
 Foster social learning through self-
assessment and reflection
 And thus improve outcomes
 Challenges  These tools help organizers and
participants of MSPs:
Source: Larson, A. 2021. Tools for strengthening social inclusion in multistakeholder forums and processes (MSPs). PIM Flagship 5
“Golden Egg” presentation, June 16, 2021

29. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: RESEARCH PARTNERS

30. Summary
 Application
 Country Case Study
Friday
 CG Policies, Institutions, and Markets: Flagship 5. Governance of Natural
Resources - Collective Action and Property Rights
• Concepts
• Drivers and Consequences
• Institutional Arrangements and Governance
• Tools and Indicators

31. Questions?