A sourcebook on property rights and collective action for sustainable development

Achieving participation in planning and collective action among various stakeholders, even those with different or conflicting interests, is not impossible.

Close to one billion people worldwide depend directly on drylands for their livelihoods.

The use of economic games in the field to explore how people’s decisions affect individual and collective well-being has increased over the last few years as a tool to study economic behavior (Table 1).

Working with communities or groups within communities and helping them to reach their goals is a challenge.

Although many of the poor in the developing world are landless, most of the rural poor have some access to land. The landed poor are a heterogeneous group who hold rights to their landed assets in diverse and complicated ways.

Community participation is recognized as an essential part of equitable and sustainable watershed management.

Participatory application of planning methods such as logical framework analysis empowers local stakeholders to make decisions.

Through collective action, forest users, fishers, irrigators, herders, and other rural producers improve and sustain resources vital for their lives.

Land and the institutions that govern its ownership and use greatly affect economic growth and poverty reduction.

Common properties refers to those lands which by tradition rural communities own collectively. They usually embrace lands like forests, woodlands, pastures and rangelands, which are not logically owned on an individual or family basis.

Africa’s rural populations depend heavily on natural resources, which have been continuously deteriorating due to rapid population growth, increasing market pressures, high rates of poverty, and inappropriate natural resource management (NRM) poli

From fishers in the Philippines to pastoralists in Morocco and rubber tappers in the Amazon, local communities have been actively participating in the management of natural resources.

There is renewed interest in land tenure reform policies in many countries as resources become more scarce and competition for land increases.

Collective action has intrinsic value. Being part of a group and participating in meeting common objectives provide direct benefits to individuals.

Two fundamental global economic tendencies have caused a shift in interest towards promoting rural agroenterprises and agroindustrialization to combat rural poverty. Increasing income levels and demographic changes, i.e.

Community-Driven Development (CDD) is an effective mechanism for poverty reduction, complementing market- and state-run activities by achieving immediate and lasting results at the grassroots level.

Decentralization is often part of a number of related policy reforms, in which central government agencies transfer rights and responsibilities to more localized institutions.

Belonging to a group is highly valued in Filipino society. Values supportive of harmonious relationships, and an individual’s personal network of selected relatives and other allies, affect how Filipinos function in organizations.

Command over property is arguably the most severe form of inequality between men and women today.