GOVERNANCE OF NATURAL RESOURCES

Ruth Meinzen-Dick discusses how games could be used to help people cooperate to sustainably manage water, a classic common pool resource - in the Science's "Tragedy revisited", a new paper to mark the 50th anniversary of the famous essay by Garrett Hardin.

There is a long history of common property, which we can define as resources held and managed collectively by a group. But what is their relevance for today … and for tomorrow? An Oct. 4 IFPRI policy seminar, held to mark the first World Commons Week, provided perspectives on past, present, and future challenges and opportunities.

Land tenure rights are widely recognized as being central to advancing sustainable development goals, but they are only one part of the picture. As it happens, tenure rights to trees are entangled with, but different from, those to land, meaning both must be acknowledged to incentivize stewardship of the landscape by local communities.

In the 1970s, Nepal began an ambitious nationwide forests rights devolution program, eventually seeing a significant range of forest uses and management taken out from the purview of the national government and put in the hands of Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs). PIM-supported research by CIFOR looks at the changes in ecosystem services following the shift to CFUGs, showing a host of improvements, particularly for women.

Land can have multiple uses with complicated, often contentious, overlapping boundaries. A forest can be the site of agricultural production, while a wetland can provide valuable nutrition in the form of aquatic protein. So what happens when multiple players are vying for land and its various uses, while continuously contesting the overlapping boundaries?

Why do property rights for land and other natural resources matter? How do they affect agricultural productivity, environment, gender relations? How do people coordinate with their neighbors, governments, and private sector so that natural resources are used sustainably? And what innovative approaches can researchers offer to help in the process? Dr. Ruth Meinzen-Dick explains.

Researchers have sought to understand what keeps women’s observed rates of agricultural technology adoption low. But what happens after a new technology is adopted by a household? Do women’s lives really become better? Are they more empowered? A new paper explores these questions using the example of adopting small-scale irrigation technologies in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania.