Decentralization of Natural Resource Governance Regimes

By A. Larson, F. Soto. 2008

451 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This chapter reviews the literature on natural resource decentralization with an emphasis on forests in developing countries. This literature can be located at the intersection between discussions of good governance and democracy, development, and poverty alleviation, on the one hand, and common property resources, community-based resource management, and local resource rights, on the other. Policies implemented in the name of decentralization, however, are often not applied in ways compatible with the democratic potential with which decentralization is conceived, and only rarely have they resulted in pro-poor outcomes or challenged underlying structures of inequity. Greater attention to who receives decentralized powers, the role of property rights, the notion of “the local,” and the meeting of expert and local knowledge provides insights into key issues and contradictions. Fundamental differences in conceptions of democracy, participation, and development lie behind these contradictions and shape strate...

Subfields: Building and Construction, Global and Planetary Change, Soil Science

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Citations in the corpus

Environmental governance and its implications for conservation practice (2012, background): “For conservation scientists and managers it is important to recognize the competing political ideologies underlying this transition (Larson & Soto 2008; Bäckstrand et al. 2010), and the roles that they may play in that process.”
Evaluation of biodiversity policy instruments: what works and what doesn't? (2012, background): “Type: In the case of PAs, Pfaff et al. (2011) find that federal parks are more successful at reducing deforestation in Brazil compared to state parks.”
Trade-offs and synergies between carbon storage and livelihood benefits from forest commons (2009, background): “Number of observations 80; likelihood ratio 2(15) 56.”
Beyond exclusion: alternative approaches to biodiversity conservation in the developing tropics (2010, unknown): “Core issues such as decentralization, connectivity across multilevel social–ecological systems, and democratization have been covered in previous reviews [55 ,56].”
The Melting Himalayas: Cascading Effects of Climate Change on Water, Biodiversity, and Livelihoods (2009, background): “For local adaptations, as in much of the less-developed world, rural people in the Greater Himalayas remain divorced from natural resource decision making (Ribot et al. 2006; Agrawal & Chhatre 2007; Larson & Soto 2008).”
Conservation policy in traditional farming landscapes (2012, background): “Globalization has now reached many traditional farming landscapes which were relatively isolated until fairly recently, in Europe but also in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Grau & Aide 2008; Perfecto & Vandermeer 2010).”
Ostrom, Hardin and the Commons: A Critical Appreciation and a Revisionist View (2014, unknown): “There are of course critique of the potentials and limitations of decentralization in natural resource governance, for instance Andersson and Ostrom (2008) and Larson and Soto (2008).”