What determines the success of joint forest management? Science-based lessons on sustainable governance of forests in India

Local Rules and Their Enforcement in the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest Reserve Co-Management Arrangement in Kenya

“…Local rules (boundary-making, conflict resolution), their enforcement (monitoring, sanctioning) and governmental attempts at co-management and decentralisation are key themes in the current literature on common-pool resources (Dietz et al, 2003;Gibson et al, 2005;Ostrom & Nagendra, 2006Nagendra & Gokhale, 2008Singh et al, 2011). Comparative evidence points to the fact that local rule-making and local enforcement, as opposed to external rule-making and enforcement by the government agencies (as had been proposed by Hardin in his treatise on the tragedy of the commons, 1968) is a key condition for success in the management of common-pool resources (Singh et al, 2011;Gibson et al, 2005).…”

“…Comparative evidence points to the fact that local rule-making and local enforcement, as opposed to external rule-making and enforcement by the government agencies (as had been proposed by Hardin in his treatise on the tragedy of the commons, 1968) is a key condition for success in the management of common-pool resources (Singh et al, 2011;Gibson et al, 2005). High levels of local rule enforcement and strong collective action have also been found to improve the quality of management of common pool resources.…”

“…High levels of local rule enforcement and strong collective action have also been found to improve the quality of management of common pool resources. 1 The key indicators of the existence of local enforcement are rule compliance, effective monitoring, guarding against unauthorised use, and graded sanctions for dealing with offenders (Singh et al, 2011). Without a proper monitoring system, it is difficult to enhance participatory engagement in rule-keeping where a large number (perhaps the majority) of stakeholders will take responsibility for monitoring the state of the resources and complex processes of resource extraction (Dietz et al, 2003).…”

“…open criticism, backbiting), is generally considered very important and can be useful in making the households or communities consider the costs of resource over-use and rule-breaking, and increase their compliance (Pomeroy et al, 2001). The sharing of responsibility and a mutual acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the management claims of governmental agencies and communities in guarding a common resource is considered likely to lead to high levels of enforcement of the co-management rules (Singh et al, 2011). When management is initiated and owned locally communities demonstrate their capacity for putting effective and adaptive forest management practices in place to address future forest governance (Pandey, 1993;Pandey, 2003;Ostrom & Nagendra, 2006;Singh et al, 2011).…”

“…The sharing of responsibility and a mutual acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the management claims of governmental agencies and communities in guarding a common resource is considered likely to lead to high levels of enforcement of the co-management rules (Singh et al, 2011). When management is initiated and owned locally communities demonstrate their capacity for putting effective and adaptive forest management practices in place to address future forest governance (Pandey, 1993;Pandey, 2003;Ostrom & Nagendra, 2006;Singh et al, 2011). Effective implementation of community-based forest management aims at significant improvements of livelihood outcomes (Singh et al, 2011;Ming'ate et al, 2014).…”