Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The spatial distribution of biological productivity also may play an important
role in differentiation. Resource enclosures of all sorts have contributed to changes
in social relations of production and more uneven distributions of wealth and
power. In this way, the degree to which resources are suffi ciently aggregated to elicit
enclosure moves by the more powerful will affect the nature of resource control
within communities, districts and countries. Environmental change can lead to an
increase or decrease in the spatial aggregation of resource availability with impor-
tant social implications. Shifts in the relative importance of rainfed, fl oodplain, or
irrigated land as cropland or pastures have an important effect on the distribution
of power within agropastoral communities. Shifts in the spatial aggregation of the
extracted resource by those who hunt, gather, or log forests will infl uence the dis-
tribution of wealth. One can even think of transitions towards cash-cropping in this
way. Access to the resource is now determined not only by resource tenure but also
effective local access to chains supplying regional and international markets, which
are often monopsonistic and socially-embedded. Under such circumstances, the
ability to accumulate wealth from a widespread resource is limited to a few.
Environmental governance
Political ecologists see the distribution of power and wealth as a major factor
shaping natural resource politics. Another factor is the exercise of this power
through formal and informal governance structures. The effectiveness of different
institutional forms to monitor and regulate resource use will vary depending on the
characteristics of the resource. In short, different institutional forms, by creating
different spaces for confl ict and negotiation, will change the nature of environmental
politics. The properties of a resource and of the biophysical processes that affect
the resource, may require deviations from the requirements or assumptions embed-
ded within institutional forms. Such deviations can take the form of a social group
adopting a different institutional form
or
the less-than-effective functioning of the
ill-fi tted form. In both cases the nature of environmental politics will differ.
Examples come from two popular institutional forms: common property resource
management (CPRM) and market-based resource management. Many natural
resource management programmes in the developing world are applications of
highly infl uential work on common property institutions (e.g., Ostrom, 1990). This
work sees the management of resources held in common by a social group as a
collective action problem. Common property institutions should clarify the bound-
aries of the resource managed by the social group, which should in turn be clearly
circumscribed. Once a closed socio-ecological system is created in this way, the goal
is to establish a set of rules that provide the proper mix of incentives to individuals
so that they utilise the resource for the common good (along with the design of
monitoring and enforcement capabilities). Applications of this approach have often
sought to improve management of the CPR by creating territorial boundaries
around the resources in question - in many cases, representing the fi rst step in the
process of privatisation (Mansfi eld, 2004). In situations where resources are highly
mobile or ephemeral, such boundaries are unworkable - resource location is best
seen as a constantly shifting mosaic - laying claim to only a portion of this mosaic
would increase vulnerability of the social group.
3
Under these circumstances, more
socially-porous boundaries around resources may be preferable - replacing a politics
framed by rigid rules and boundaries with one associated with negotiation, favours,
