Abstract
The emergence of ‘new commons’ poses theoretical challenges that require empirical efforts and in-depth case studies. Three years of ethnographic work at an Ecuadorian coastal community brings us to propose the emergence of a new commons, historically born from an unstructured group of inhabitants, and refunded as a community seemingly able to convert a degraded socio-ecological system into a more sustainable configuration. To understand this process, we study how institutions and rules developed for the environmental management of strategic common pool resources (CPRs), transforming human–environment relationships. This socio-ecosystem constitutes a co-managed multi-level system of governance, developed through a community building process and a particular community based tourism model. Its analysis suggests that the balanced development of different levels of management with a firm base at the community level bringing into play new CPRs, can be key factors for the emergence of new commons.
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Notes
The population is very young, with an average age of 27.3 years (2006) and with low education level (only 20 people have followed high school). They display a dense kinship network, a circumstance that does not translate into internal homogeneity. The “aguablanquenses” are differentiated in terms of income and participation in productive activities, as we will see later. Community life denotes both, deep conflicts of interests and a capacity to generate consensus and collective action (Ruiz-Ballesteros 2009). Age and gender are current basic criteria of socio-political segmentation.
Tagua is the fruit of a palm called cade—Phytelephas macrocarpa—located in the humid mountain forest. It is known as ‘vegetable ivory’ because of its similarity to animal ivory, with which it shares its appearance and extraordinary toughness. The harvesting and marketing of tagua are distinct characteristics of natural resource exploitation in the Manabi province.
Personal communication with Park Director.
1 Saca = about 60 l volume
In order to analyse governance configurations, Ostrom (1990) and Ostrom et al. (1994) proposed “a rules framework” as a method to unveil key socio-ecological interactions explaining the effects of different governance configurations. These rules are (Ostrom 2001): Boundary rules, Position rules, Authority rules, Scope rules, Aggregations rules, Information rules, and Payoff rules. In this paper, with the goal of focusing our discussion, we will speak of rules in a general sense without making explicit distinctions.
Migration has been one of the demographic key variables in Agua Blanca, particularly between 1980 and 2000, before the development of tourism. Migration was closely linked to cycles of drought and to resource scarcity in the face of a growing population. Thus, practically all domestic groups, or at least some of its members did experience at some point the harshness of city migration. However, this trend is changing as a result of the socio-ecological transformations we analyse here.
Ecological recovery has not been verified using ecological indicators, as there are no past records available, neither have we been able to use remote sensing technology. However is the unanimous perception of the Park administration (director and rangers, personal communication), and of the inhabitants of the community when they recall the “depredated forest of the 1980’s: with much less trees and only a few birds and squirrels”. It is also a consequence of the drastic reduction in charcoal production and in its territorial limitation (see Fig. 2).
The consolidation of multilevel governance has not been an easy process. In 1986, after a very troubled period of several years, there was the first meeting between the Park director and the community: the Administration accepted that the villagers could remain in the territory as long as they accepted to progressively change their resource extraction activities. At that time, a shared motivation emerged creating the base for a common understanding framework. Once there is a regular communication between Park and community (and the Community Assembly is consolidated) rules at different levels are created to give consistency to the institutional framework that governs today’s socio-ecosystem. Ultimately, multilevel governance is the result of a long-term settling process to fit interests, activities and rules linking institutions of a very different nature.
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Ruiz-Ballesteros, E., Gual, M.A. The Emergence of New Commons. Hum Ecol 40, 847–862 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-012-9540-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-012-9540-1