Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
pay for collective action. The level of the poorer users is so low that they
might not be able to participate in community-based management systems,
because they cannot meet the costs involved. For example, groups that
depend heavily on daily wage labour sometimes i nd it dii cult to contrib-
ute their share of resource management costs. As a result they are deemed
ineligible for the benei ts. McKean (2000) observes that common property
regimes do not always serve to equalize income within the user group.
Communities may vary enormously in how equally or unequally they
distribute the products of the commons to eligible users. Decision-making
rights tend to be egalitarian in the formal sense; however, richer house-
holds may actually have additional social inl uence on decisions due to the
relative strength of their socioeconomic position. Greater homogeneity,
on the other hand, promotes both equity and ei ciency by facilitating the
adoption of more coordination and cooperative arrangements at the local
level. In a similar vein, Guggenheim and Spears (1991) argue that in light
of likely scenarios of sociopolitical heterogeneity within spatially dei ned
community groupings, participation in community decision-making can
be skewed in favour of more powerful subgroups. Asymmetries among
participants facing CPR provision and appropriation problems, therefore,
can present substantial barriers to overcoming the disincentives associated
with collective action (Ostrom and Gardner, 1993).
The sources of heterogeneities are diverse and there are several possible
dei nitions of heterogeneity. A number of researchers seem to be much
focused on economic inequality as a major source of heterogeneity, that is,
inequality in wealth or income among the community members involved
in collective action. However, Bardhan and Dayton-Johnson (2000) also
noted other kinds of inequality within a resource-dependent community
such as ethnic and social heterogeneity, and environmental or state vari-
ables like low levels of trust or social cohesion. They noted a U-shaped
relationship between inequality and commons management: very high
and very low levels of inequality are associated with better commons
performance, while mid-range levels of inequality are associated with
poor outcomes. Social heterogeneity increases the cost of negotiation
and bargaining inherent in the process of crafting institutions. Economic
inequality, combined with other constraints, severely limits the possible
bargaining outcomes available to resource users. In this regard, inter-
related 'commons outcomes' that might be af ected by inequality include
resource conservation, maintenance of infrastructure, the supply of local
institutions, monitoring and enforcement of regulations and conl ict
resolution (Bardhan and Dayton-Johnson, 2000).
Economic opportunities available to resource users outside the local
commons are considered to be a complicated form of heterogeneity that
