In developing countries where access to and use of renewable natural resources essential to rural livelihoods are highly contested, improving cooperation in their management is increasingly seen as an important element in strategies for peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and longer-term...

The food security crisis, international “land grabs,†and new markets for environmental services have drawn renewed attention to the role of natural resource competition in the livelihoods of the rural poor. While significant empirical research has focused on diagnosing the links...

With renewed recognition of the importance of collective action in many aspects of agriculture, natural resource management, and rural development programs in developing countries, there is a need for research on the factors that affect its emergence, as well as its performance. Yet because of...

John W. Bruce.

John W. Bruce.

According to the authors, "watersheds define a terrain united by the flow of water, nutrients, pollutants, and sediment. Watersheds also link foresters, farmers, fishers, and urban dwellers in intricate social relationships. Both factors—the biophysical attributes and the policy and...

The authors describe property rights as "overlapping 'bundles' of rights", which can be grouped as "use rights" and "control or decisionmaking rights". The authors then explain the concept of legal pluralism or many sources of rights and the implications for property rights. from Text.

This brief defines property rights and collective action and discusses the links to sustainability of natural resource management and agricultural systems and to poverty reduction, as well as the implications for policy and practice.

"This paper presents a framework for investigating the intersection of collective action and gender; i.e. how gender-oriented analysis can foster more effective collective action in the context of agriculture and natural resource management and how collective action can be used as a vehicle for...