Formalization and Collective Appropriation of Space on Forest Frontiers: Comparing Communal and Individual Property Systems in the Peruvian and Ecuadoran Amazon

Formalization as Development in Land and Natural Resource Policy

“…In contrast, the cases on NTFPs in Southern Africa (Wynberg et al 2015), land titling in Western Amazonia (Cronkleton 2015), and inland fisheries in the Brazilian Amazon (McGrath et al 2015) illustrate very different patterns in the institutional context of formalization. These cases represent more ''organic'' responses of regulatory systems to norms (in the case of the NTFPs) and to local resource interests (in the Amazonian cases).…”

“…Sometimes these effects occur after a new policy is implemented but prior to enforcement, when resource users rush to stake claims on land and resources. In both the Peruvian and Ecuadorean Amazonia, rural people reported that occupying land and clearing it for use were key to establishing their claim to land, and forest clearing and actual cultivation were used by governments to assess the validity of their claims (Cronkleton 2015;Padoch et al 2014). Environmental damage can also occur when customary systems of management are disrupted by new rules and traditional authorities are sidelined, as was the case in Zimbabwe's baobab sector.…”

“…For example, after numerous attempts to reinforce and rewrite forestry laws to prevent informal logging, the Peruvian natural resource authority has been largely unable to enforce the formal regime (Sears and Pinedo-Vasquez 2004;Smith et al 2006;Putzel et al 2009; Environmental Investigation Agency [EIA] 2013), in part because it doesn't work in the favor of local people who manage the resource in other ways. Cronkleton (2015) illustrates how, even after major policy initiatives promoting land titling in the Peruvian and Ecuadorean Amazon, rural families continue to rely on social networks, kinship, and physical occupation of land to ensure secure access rights to resources. Wynberg et al (2012) describe the hopeless case of a small forest commission office tasked with enforcing the sustainable harvest of baobab in an area of more than 3000 square kilometers.…”

Trade-offs between conservation and development in community-based management initiatives

“…Fishermen are aware that joint CBM strategies are not an easy challenge to overcome, but collective understanding could be a first step. As Cronkleton and Larson (2015) observed, collective and individual property rights and behaviors are not inherently associated, and the allocation of individual rights can lead to collective behavior. However, CBM should not be considered as a transfer of power but, rather, as a collaborative process between resource users and government that fosters stewardship values and an enduring commitment to sustain natural resources (Zanetell and Knuth 2004).…”

Formalizing commons, registering rights: the making of the forest and pasture commons in the Romanian Carpathians from the 19th century to post-socialism

“…The literature has shown how formalization can cause opportunistic behavior, cementing existing inequalities, often deepening processes of social exclusion and paving the way for local and global land grabbing, by facilitating sales of land by smallholders in the wake of financial hardships (Ensminger 1997;Benjaminsen 2002;Peters 2004;Meinzen-Dick and Mwangi 2009;Toulmin 2009;Borras Jr and Franco 2012;Putzel et al 2015). Formalization programmes, through their processes of surveying and registering rights, can change the rights themselves, and it has been shown to be a cause of the privatization of communal lands (Benjaminsen et al 2009;Cronkleton and Larson 2015). Also, it has been shown that it does not necessarily settle disputes over common-pool resources, but conflicts continue, and moreover fuzzy boundaries might be important for accommodating the ever changing nature of lively customary institutions (Cox et al 2010;Laborda Pemán 2017).…”