"Payments for environmental services (PES) are increasingly discussed as appropriate mechanisms for matching the demand for environmental services with the incentives of land users whose actions modify the supply of those environmental services. While there has been considerable discussion of...

"Safe water is widely recognized as both a fundamental human need and a key input into economic activity. Across the developing world, the typical approach to addressing these needs is to segregate supplies of water for domestic use from water for large-scale agricultural production. In that...

"Collective action in agriculture and natural resource management is all too often perceived of in terms of the mere number of participants, with little consideration given to who participates, why, and the outcomes of inequitable participation. The literature is replete with cases of how...

"The maintenance of crop diversity on farmers' fields in hot spots of plant genetic diversity is considered a ”global life insurance policy“ in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 2001:1). This paper provides evidence of the importance of the contribution of poor women farmers to the...

"This project explored the possible role of collective action among small-scale farmers in managing and maintaining genetic resources in a center of crop diversity. It focused on the local institutions that ensure the supply of seed of diverse maize landraces to small-scale farmers in the...

"While much attention has been given to examining various aspects of poverty, a number of studies have shown that institutional environment in which the poor exist conditions welfare outcomes, thus highlighting the inherently crucial importance of institutions for poverty reduction. The...

Social capital is a resource, a propensity for mutually beneficial collective action that communities possess to different extents. Communities with high levels of social capital are able to act together collectively for achieving diverse common objectives. While the concept of social capital is...

"This paper discusses the case of the Self Employed Women's Association's (SEWA) Women, Water and Work Campaign which began in 1995 in the semi-arid regions of Gujarat. SEWA's women's groups, which are initiated through collective action, have been active in sustaining local water management...