Irrigation and collective action: A study in method with reference to the Shiwalik Hills, Haryana

In recent years decentralized development approaches have gained prominence in the agricultural sector. A host of community based watershed management projects have been implemented that encourage community organizations to undertake management of previously government controlled irrigation systems and forests. Community organizations have been given the responsibility of managing water distribution, collection of irrigation service fees and undertaking routine maintenance of irrigation infrastructure. In this context, analysis of irrigation management has concluded that groups that are relatively homogeneous may fare better than heterogeneous groups in facilitating collective action. However, this article argues that analysis of the influence of group heterogeneity on collective action is complicated because of its multi‐dimensional nature and the presence of non‐monotonic effects in mechanisms linking heterogeneity and collective outcomes. The article discusses the importance of context specification in analysis of group heterogeneity through a discussion of elements of a joint management contract in Haryana (India), identification of key variables with a potential to explain collective action in irrigation management and construction of household endowment and water interest scores to account for the influence of group heterogeneity in facilitating collective action. In the process of applying household endowment and water interest scores, the authors highlight the role of local ecological variation and non‐farm employment in influencing collective action. Proper specification of local context enables the researchers to rely on household endowment and water interest scores to predict conflicts and potential for irrigation service provision and compliance with irrigation service rules.     

Collective action: an alternative institutional arrangement for reducing water pollution in an industrial estate in India

This study explores the possibility of collective action as an alternative option for reducing water pollution for a cluster of small-scale industries. A case study of the Nandesari Industrial Estate in Gujarat, India, demonstrates the roles played by different agents, such as affected parties, polluters, non-governmental organizations, regulators and the court. The study empirically estimates the 'benefits' and 'costs' of water pollution abatement for a cluster of 250 small-scale industries at Nandesari, and uses these estimates for a social cost-benefit analysis. Benefits are estimated using the contingent valuation method, with a 'willingness to accept' format for the rural areas, and a 'willingness to pay' format for the urban area of the nearby Vadodara city. The article considers costs of command and control, market-based solutions and the option of common effluent treatment as alternative scenarios. It discusses how collective action and joint abatement at a common effluent treatment plant (CETP) by the 250 industries efficiently comply with the State Pollution Control Board norms, which had not been possible for the factories acting individually over the last 20 years. Finally, a detailed social cost-benefit analysis has been undertaken to estimate the net present social benefits with and without CETP. The cost-benefit analysis shows the economic advantage and social desirability of 'collective action' (joint treatment with CETP institutional arrangement) for water pollution abatement with respect to all possible scenarios comprising shadow prices of investment, foreign exchange, unskilled labour and equity considerations.     

A role-playing game as a tool to facilitate social learning and collective action towards Climate Smart Agriculture: Lessons learned from Apuí, Brazil

Addressing the global challenges of climate change (CC), food security and poverty alleviation requires enhancing the adaptive capacity and mitigation potential of land use systems. To this end, Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) aims to identify land use practices that sustainably increase productivity, enhance climate change (CC) adaptation and contribute to CC mitigation. A transition towards CSA requires technical, but also socio-institutional changes, for improved smallholder agricultural systems. Such changes may be triggered by stakeholder participation processes that stimulate social learning and collective action. This article evaluates whether a role-playing game (RPG) is an effective participatory tool to encourage social learning and collective action among local stakeholders towards adoption of CSA strategies. We designed and implemented an RPG with three groups of farmers in Apuí (Southern Amazonas), evaluating the game’s impact on social learning by interviewing each farmer before and after the RPG. Our findings show that the RPG induced not only technical learning, but also socio-institutional learning and engagement for collective action, though outcomes varied between different RPG sessions and among farmer participants.     

Participation in devolved commons management: Multiscale socioeconomic factors related to individuals’ participation in community-based management of marine protected areas in Indonesia

Management of common-pool natural resources is commonly implemented under institutional models promoting devolved decision-making, such as co-management and community-based management. Although participation of local people is critical to the success of devolved commons management, few studies have empirically investigated how individuals’ participation is related to socioeconomic factors that operate at multiple scales. Here, we evaluated how individual- and community-scale factors were related to levels of individual participation in management of community-based marine protected areas in Indonesia. In addressing this aim, we drew on multiple bodies of literature on human behaviour from economics and social science, including the social-ecological systems framework from the literature on common-pool resources, the theory of planned behaviour from social psychology, and public goods games from behavioural economics. We found three key factors related to level of participation of local people: subjective norms, structural elements of social capital, and nested institutions. There was also suggestive evidence that participation was related to people’s cooperative behavioural disposition, which we elicited using a public goods game. These results point to the importance of considering socioeconomic factors that operate at multiple scales when examining individual behaviour. Further, our study highlights the need to consider multiscale mechanisms other than those designed to appeal to self-interested concerns, such as regulations and material incentives, which are typically employed in devolved commons management to encourage participation. Increased understanding of the factors related to participation could facilitate better targeting of investments aimed at encouraging cooperative management.     

Graduated stringency within collective incentives for group environmental compliance: Building coordination in field-lab experiments with artisanal gold miners in Colombia

Small-scale gold mining is important to rural livelihoods in the developing world but also a source of environmental externalities. Incentives for individual producers are the classic policy response for a socially efficient balance between livelihoods and the environment. Yet monitoring individual miners is ineffective, or it is very costly, especially on frontiers with scattered small-scale miners. We ask whether monitoring at a group level effectively incentivizes cleaner artisanal mining by combining lower-cost external monitoring with local collective action. We employ a mining-framed, threshold-public-goods experiment in Colombia's Pacific region, with 640 participants from frontier mining communities. To study compliance with collective environmental targets, we vary the target stringency, including to compare increases over time in the stringency versus decreases. We find that collective incentives can induce efficient equilibria, with group compliance – and even inefficient overcompliance – despite the existence of equilibria with zero contributions. Yet, for demanding targets in which the reward for compliance barely outweighs the cost, compliance can collapse. Those outcomes improve with past successes for easier targets, however, so our results suggest gain from building coordination via graduated stringency.