This panel of presentations will focus on how contemporary conservation actions draw on findings from the Commons to improve environmental, social, and economic outcomes. Despite decades of research on common-pool resources and their collective management, the integration of insights from the Commons literature into conservation action remains challenging. This is due, in part, to the difficulty and complexity of planning, implementing, and monitoring conservation. However, within the Commons there has been an historical emphasis on studying pre-existing collective arrangements in contrast to transitions to collective action or commoning. Thus, contemporary scholarship on the Commons that focuses on sustainable transitions and commoning movements hold particular relevance for conservation action.
This panel will reflect on the relevance and incorporation of insights from the Commons for establishing collective ownership, management, monitoring, and evaluation of natural resources. Barriers to incorporating insights from the Commons include the stickiness of traditional conservation models that are anathema to collective management; institutional inefficiencies and complexity that inhibit collective management; conflicts and barriers within groups that prohibit effective community management; and the difficulty of scaling collective governance while attending to temporal, spatial, and cultural context. Despite these challenges, there is growing empirical evidence that deliberative democracy, community-based conservation, indigenous management, and equitable conservation are gaining traction within conservation organizations and conservation movements more broadly. The presentations in this panel will synthesize these trends and how they relate to the Commons in retrospect and prospect.
In this paper, in view of the challenges facing existing integrated landscape approaches (ILAs) to balancing development and conservation, we interrogate the premises of the existing approaches, and suggest commoning as a means to drive mixed-use land development, tackle power imbalances in stakeholder engagement and foster community stewardship. We draw insights from three rural redevelopment cases in rural Hong Kong. Case analysis was performed using the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework to shed light on position rules, boundary rules, and payoff rules and how they affect who can enter what positions and have what rights and responsibilities. Through case comparisons, we find that distinct commoning models led to different levels of mixed-use land development and community stewardship. Both the collaborative governance model and the community land trust model were found to be more effective in safeguarding landscape multifunctionality. The former drove commoning of private lands and the balance of revitalization and conservation goals through policy interventions which provided not only institutional frameworks for public-private partnership but also financial incentives for bottom-up revitalisation and conservation activities. The ecovillage model dealt with a much more homogeneous group who used community land trust as the land tenure arrangement and who also shared similar priorities towards land uses, thus conducive to collective action and self-governance. However, for the agricultural cooperative model, agricultural production was still the primary land use. Moreover, the cases show that institutional innovations on position rules, boundary rules, and pay off rules were key to enabling mixed-use land development and incentivising different levels of community participation depending on the preferences and capacity of community members in landscape stewardship activities. Implications are drawn for further research and practices of integrated landscape approaches.
For area-based Community-based Conservation (CBC) projects to be effective in the long term, they need to have effective governance institutions and receive the support of the communities involved. Commons scholarship and the broader literature on collective action can help inform the design, implementation, and evaluation of CBC governance systems. In this paper, I present work we have been conducting with community-based pastoralist conservancies in northern Kenya. Conservancies are legally-recognized organizations that seek to benefit from managing non-state land for purposes of wildlife conservation and other compatible land uses. Under this model, sustainable management of the communally-owned rangelands has the potential to create win-win situations for pastoralist livelihoods and wildlife. However, conservancies face many challenges and there is variation in the extent to which conservancies appear to be working in meeting the needs of communities or protecting their environments. Using quantitative analyses of monitoring & evaluation data, here I illustrate the connections between governance concepts that have been identified in wider literature as being important aspects of the governance of socio-ecological systems, and different measures of conservancy success (Attitudinal, Ecological, and Economic), while also examining the potential synergies and trade-offs in these different forms of success. I also present quantitative and qualitative analyses of surveys and discussions with community members that link willingness to cooperate in conservancy actions with how strongly respondents identified with their conservancy, and the extent to which other people in the community were perceived to share cooperative norms. Our findings point to the need to consider the wider ecological and cultural landscape in which conservancies and pastoral communities are embedded, especially the importance of interactions between different conservancies and communities. I discuss how commons research and related fields can provide practical guidance for improving social and ecological outcomes in CBC projects, and the need to engage with issues of governance at different levels of organization in order to achieve collective action at larger scales.
Co-management is a crucial strategy for balancing local communities’ access to natural
resources with sustainable development and conservation goals. Despite widespread
recognition of co-management’s importance, understanding of its endurance remains limited,
constraining the design of initiatives that can be appropriately scaled and sustained over
time. This paper aims to advance theoretical and empirical work on co-management by
deepening the discussion on how different sets of social-ecological features or configurations
support co-management survival. We provide a national-scale empirical evaluation of
conditions for co-management survival, using Chile’s Territorial User Rights for Fishing (TURF)
policy as a learning platform. Guided by collective action theory within social-ecological
systems, we applied interpretable cluster analysis to 750 TURFs established over two decades,
identifying distinct configurations for collective action. We then employed survival analysis
to examine differences in TURF survival across these configurations. High survival rates
were observed in social-ecological configurations with high initial resource abundance.
However, configurations with lower initial abundance achieved similarly high survival rates
when characterized by high resource dependency, proximity to regional markets, and lower
surveillance costs. Our findings suggest that focusing on single determinants for assessing
co-management survival may not be a fruitful way forward. Instead, emphasis on different
social-ecologicalconfigurations, context-based interpretations, and the dynamic incentives
faced by participants can offer actionable insights for ensuring enduring co-management
outcomes.
Southwest Papua, Indonesia, encompasses ecologically rich and culturally significant landscapes where upland forests, mangroves, and coral reefs form interconnected ecosystems. These ecosystems, home to Indigenous groups such as the Moi people, face increasing pressures from resource extraction and development activities. Additionally, fragmented governance and limited funding hinder effective conservation strategies. This paper discusses how integrating Indigenous commons principles can strengthen conservation efforts in Southwest Papua using the “Ridge to Reef” (R2R) framework, which connects land and marine ecosystems management. Using stakeholder interviews, FGDs, and policy analysis we assess how culturally aligned, commons-inspired practices can address these challenges. Local indigenous beliefs emphasize the interconnectedness of ecosystems, viewing land and sea as unseparated. Traditional practices like “egek” and “sasi” emphasize collective stewardship, reinforcing sustainable resource use across land and sea ecosystems and aligning the R2R approach with community values. Our study finds that an integrated R2R model rooted in local traditions, supported by diverse and blended funding sources, can potentially increase community participation, enhance resilience, and provide financial stability for long-term conservation. These results underscore the importance of embedding conservation governance within cultural contexts, which boosts both the relevance and sustainability of initiatives. Unlike conventional conservation approaches, the R2R model promotes inclusive decision-making and fosters collaboration across sectors, thereby supporting biodiversity and community welfare. This study provides valuable insights for conservation practitioners and scholars by demonstrating how commons-based governance and sustainable financing can foster resilient, inclusive conservation strategies. As global conservation challenges intensify, Southwest Papua offers compelling lessons of culturally integrated, community-led conservation that balances ecological and social goals.
Small-scale fisheries (SSF) contribute 40% of global capture fisheries and involve over 90% of the world’s fishers, serving as essential sources of food security and livelihoods, especially in Asia and the Pacific. China, as the top global producer, makes up 15% of the world’s fishery output and leads in seafood processing, consumption, export, and import. Sustaining China’s fisheries and fishing communities is therefore both critical and complex.
Despite China’s significance in global fisheries, research has largely neglected the voices and expertise of its fishing communities, particularly those in small-scale fisheries, resulting in policy gaps and ineffective management strategies. My work addresses this gap through community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) with coastal communities in the Yellow Sea. This collaboration led to China’s first fisher-led environmental NGO, the Blue Bay Guardians, demonstrating the power of commons principles in fostering conservation.
Using a social-ecological systems (SES) framework, I examine the conditions that support self-governance in small-scale fishing villages and explore how these community-led initiatives manage resources sustainably. This research informs policy reform, promotes equitable resource management, and underscores the relevance of commons-based approaches to conservation. By focusing on self-governance and grassroots conservation, this study highlights the value of commons research in conservation action and ocean resource stewardship.
The success of climate action that protects biodiversity and advances human well-being depends on support from local communities. Despite overwhelming evidence from Commons literature on the importance of communication and how it is structured for prosocial outcomes, it remains unclear what strategies are most effective at informing and activating support for local climate mitigation and adaptation. We conducted a randomized control trial to test the impact of presenting locally relevant climate information and facilitating communication among Indonesian citizens (n=828) about local development spending using three strategies. In the first strategy, Indonesian citizens watched an educational video on climate change and a presentation on local climate vulnerabilities. In the second, citizens discussed and voted on spending priorities for local development funds after watching the educational materials. And in the third strategy, citizens deliberated to reach a consensus on group spending priorities after receiving the educational materials, discussion, and voting. We find that citizens who engaged in deliberation about the allocation of local funding demonstrated significantly greater support for climate adaptation and mitigation actions as compared to all other groups. In addition, citizens who engaged in deliberation showed a statistically significant increase in preferences for climate action because of their deliberation. Our findings demonstrate the importance of crafting accessible climate information and implementing deliberative approaches in fostering better understanding and local support for climate action.
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