Moral equality and success of common-pool water governance in Namibia

Schnegg, Michael; Bollig, Michael; Linke, Theresa

doi:10.1007/s13280-016-0766-9

Cited by 49 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Recently, Schnegg et al(2016) reported that equality in cost and benefit sharing among the members of the community also affects the effectiveness of the community management. Nonetheless, relatively little has been known about the role of resource dependence on the ability of individual members of the local communities to contribute to the management of the common pool resources.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Households’ dependence on community forest and their contribution to participatory forest management: evidence from rural Ethiopia

Gatiso

2017

Environ Dev Sustain

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In recent decades, there has been a major shift in natural resource conservation policies in developing countries, and community-based natural resource management has become the integral part of the policies. Nonetheless, the link between the local communities' dependence on forest resources for their livelihood and the likelihood of the success of community forest management has been understudied. Thus, this study investigates how forest dependence influences the contribution of local communities to the management of community forest, using the data collected from 190 households participating in community forest management in rural Ethiopia. It was found that the sample households derived almost 38% of their annual income from community forest. Moreover, results from mixed effects linear regression models show that forest dependence promotes contribution to collective action in the management of community forest. When households derive more income from the community forest relative to their total income, they contribute more to the management of the community forest. This suggests that the more the households depend on the community forest for their livelihood, the more they value the resource and the more they participate in the management of the forest. Thus, the results underline that the success of local communities in managing community forest may be significantly influenced by their level of dependence on the resources from the forest.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Households’ dependence on community forest and their contribution to participatory forest management: evidence from rural Ethiopia

Gatiso

2017

Environ Dev Sustain

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“…Often, this is justified by pointing out that the higher burden on the poor is balanced out through other exchanges (e.g., milk, transportation) in different situations. The nature of social ties is key to understanding why they often succeed (Schnegg 2016b ; Schnegg et al 2016 ; Schnegg and Linke 2015 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In all other cases, the social dynamics described above, favor numerical equality. As the correlation between the two variables—state interventions, and the existence of proportional equality—reveals, the involvement of the state can explain the institutional outcome to a significant degree (Schnegg 2016b ; Schnegg et al 2016 ). In contrast, in communities where the state is only weakly involved the first two dynamics analyzed above are dominant and numerical equality prevails.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During the community visits, we elicited rules of water management and the composition of community-based organizational structures for water governance. Focus group discussions took place in public and included both female and male informants, of whom some were active in the committee responsible for community-based water resource management (Schnegg 2016b ; Schnegg et al 2016 ).…”

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Institutional multiplexity: social networks and community-based natural resource management

Schnegg

2018

Sustain Sci

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Natural resource management has changed profoundly in recent decades emphasizing new legislation that transfers responsibilities to local user groups. In this article, I follow changing water policies to Namibia and show that the enactment of policy in local institutions deviates from community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) blueprints and design. To understand why, I examine the theoretical premises of CBNRM. CBNRM is informed by rational choice theory which isolates economic transactions (e.g., sharing water) and assumes that people design institutions for a specific good. However, in the communities I study ethnographically, people depend on sharing multiple resources. To better understand how the degree of sharing and institutional overlaps matter, I explore empirically the concept of institutional multiplexity. Institutional multiplexity describes the number of transactions between two households in a social network. The results reveal that almost all social networks are institutionally multiplex. Institutional multiplexity implies that people cannot separate the sharing of water from sharing in other domains. Institutional multiplexity hinders the implementation of design principles such as fixing boundaries, sharing costs proportional to use, and formal sanctioning. However, it also opens other means for governing nature through social control.

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“…However, the vignette above gives a hint that the implementation of CBM has led to a win–lose scenario at best in pastoral Namibian communities. While the government was freed from some financial responsibilities, hence a win, the new policy led to a loss when it turned water into an economic good and the most conflict‐ridden social field throughout rural Namibia (Falk, Bock, and Kirk ; Heyns ; Schnegg, Bollig, and Linke ).…”

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confidence: 99%

The economic value of water: The contradictions and consequences of a prominent development model in Namibia

Schnegg

Kiaka

2019

Economic Anthropology

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Since the 1990s, access to water has profoundly changed in rural Namibia. The institutional transformation was informed by the then dominant discourse in the global policy debate on water, most importantly the idea of community‐based management (CBM). While the supporters of the development regime promised that it would bring sustainability, economic development, and water for all, ethnographic research in pastoral communities reveals that quite the opposite is the case. The aim of this article is to explore why this is so. We use the concept of traveling models as a theoretical guide. We trace the emergence of CBM since the 1970s and reveal how competing meanings became attached to it. Tracing the model's path, we further show how specific aims and strategies became salient when the CBM model was applied in Namibia, most notably by treating water as an economic good. The final implementation of CBM water policies in Namibia reveals contradictions with which the model became infused over the years of its development and application. Our theoretical intervention is to show how, in addition to translations between actors and sites, the growth of the model led to tensions and contradictions in the model itself. A focus on these contradictions helps to explain why pricing water did not become an accelerator of economic development in northwestern Namibia but became instead a field of social conflict.

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Moral equality and success of common-pool water governance in Namibia

Cited by 49 publications

References 33 publications

Households’ dependence on community forest and their contribution to participatory forest management: evidence from rural Ethiopia

Households’ dependence on community forest and their contribution to participatory forest management: evidence from rural Ethiopia

Institutional multiplexity: social networks and community-based natural resource management

The economic value of water: The contradictions and consequences of a prominent development model in Namibia

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