Holland, Dan

Over the last few decades, the diversity of governance solutions proposed by scientists and policymakers for addressing mounting environmental problems has increased substantially. The traditional trichotomy of state, market and community governance has been replaced by a new interest in hybrid regimes in recognition that no single governance mode possesses the capabilities to address all current environmental problems. This paper takes stock of experiences that combine community and market-based governance solutions, or as we call them community-based environmental markets (CBEMs), to address environmental issues in a variety of resource management contexts. We first propose a classification system based on the authority held by communities and the type of good being transacted to identify four general classes of CBEMs. These include communal resource markets, communal service markets, collective resource markets and collective service markets. We then illustrate the utility of this classification system with a review of studies from the water, forest, pastures, fishery, agriculture and wildlife conservation sectors. We conclude with some hypotheses regarding the relative effectiveness of different types of CBEMs with respect to a range of social and environmental objectives.