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is commonly observed
across most parts of the world. Here, an indi-
vidual or business is assigned ownership of a
resource or property and controls access to it.
The individual has considerable leeway to use
resources on this property and may exclude
non-owners from use. However, it is not uncom-
mon to see certain constraints on use even for
private property. In the case of wetlands in the
United States, for instance, Section 404 of the
Clean Water Act requires a private property
owner to be granted a permit before any dredge-
and-i ll activity affecting a wetland site may be
undertaken on his/her private property.
Private property
and sell fuel wood and timber from the rapidly
expanding
Prosopis julil ora
(common name:
Vilayati babul
) invasive species that has spread
across the grasslands and drier pool areas of the
park. Here, by providing usufruct access we see
the state balancing environmental management
concerns with local needs for fuel wood by
adjusting rules of use within the boundaries of
the park (Boojh, Patry and Smart 2008).
comprises resources that
are held collectively by a group of people.
Members of this group reserve rights of access
and may exclude use by non-members. However,
the inadequate articulation of rules of use and
exclusion, or the insufi cient monitoring of non-
member use could lead to overuse and result in
Hardin's (1968) “tragedy of the commons” pre-
diction (see below). Common property regimes
are often observed in the case of coastal and
inland i sheries, which due to their dynamic
nature moving from one area to another can
pose signii cant management challenges. Under
the right conditions, however, common property
regimes may be quite effective institutions to
manage such resources sustainably (Crean
2000). Traditional societies may often control
and manage resources in common. Indigenous
groups in the Amazon or the Aborigines of Aus-
tralia provide examples of this.
The acequia (ah-say-kya) irrigation system
at San Luis, Colorado is another example of
common ownership and operation. Derived
from practices in Spain and northern Africa, the
acequias are long ditches that divert water from
the Culebra Creek into irrigated i elds (Fig. 11-
20). Each user shares in access to water and
responsibility for maintenance, and an elected
mayordomo (superintendent) enforces the rules.
The initial acequia was constructed by hand in
1851, and the system continues to function in a
traditional manner today (Fig. 11-21).
Common property
includes resources
that fall under the jurisdiction of the state, which
acts as caretaker and manages the resource
based on a set of socially accepted principles.
A little over 30 percent of the total land area of
the United States is public property, with man-
agement authority vested in a variety of federal
agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, the
Bureau of Land Management and the National
Park Service, among others (Platt 2004). Rules
that govern the use of resources on these lands
may be multifaceted. For instance, recreational
and other uses of the Everglades National Park
are governed by the rules set by the National
Park Service.
Rules are generally socially and environmen-
tally responsive in that they are formulated to
provide the community with access to this
resource, yet ensure that environmental con-
cerns for the wetland's health are not compro-
mised. Usufructuary rights are often observed
on state property and include only use (not
ownership) rights granted to a resource. As an
example, i shermen are allowed to extract i sh
from coastal waters, yet they do not own those
waters. Or, in the Great Plains region of the
United States, ranchers are permitted to graze
cattle and use prairie wetlands and watering
holes on state-owned public land, but they are
not assigned any ownership rights to those
lands.
Going back to our example from Keoladeo
National Park in India, the state which manages
the park primarily as bird habitat also provides
usufruct rights to local communities to collect
State/public property
refers to property regimes
without established rights or rules governing
their use. Often such instances lead to the
overuse of resources because of the lack of
constraints on use and the absence of monitor-
ing or enforcement measures (Fig. 11-22). More-
over, users have few incentives to engage in
sustainable resource-use practices, given that
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