Sub-theme 10. Local institution building and radical futures for the commons
Panel 10.13.
What to (re)produce? Local institutions and their (transformative) roles within social (re)-production systems
This panel seeks to examine local institutions and their roles in production and reproduction systems, beyond the market economic sense of the terms. In a contemporary globalized world, changes induced by technological developments, the integration into world markets, demographic changes, among others, may alter the preconditions for local institutions. We invite others to reflect with us, if local institutions we are working with, in research and/or activism, operate in stabilizing existing rules and norms configurations, or if they perform in transforming existing institutional settings, including the wider political economy and political ecology in which the local institutions are embedded.
In searching for possible transformative roles of local institutions towards commoning and other forms of local welfare arrangements, we invite various theoretical approaches not necessarily limited to the following examples. For the panel’s purpose, one might mobilize Elinor Ostrom’s concept about different levels of social choice (rules) affecting action situations (the settings in which individual actors make decisions for local collective actions), to also understand the reverse processes: in what ways an action situation and its networks of related action situations would transform the rules; these levels of rules are operational, collective-choice and constitutional levels, with the latter would normally be harder to change. Another example would be the traditions of Critical Realism, namely Margaret Archer’s notion of Morphogenesis that provides an analytical foundation to examine the interplays across time among structural conditioning, agential (horizontal) interaction and structural elaboration.
1. The governance of communal forests in rural Zimbabwe
University of Kassel, Germany
Though several studies have proved a vast dependence on non-timber forest products (NTFPs) by rural households in developing countries and that NTFPs production and trade is a source of income, community participation in the governance of communal forests remains minimal. To understand the incentives for the governance of communal forests, this study assesses the incentive mechanisms embedded within governance instruments; and then identifies the governance challenges. Primary data was collected using a combination of semi-structured interviews, narrative interviews and focus group discussions in Chiredzi and Mwenezi districts in south-east lowveld of Zimbabwe. Secondary data included 14 NGO reports and 11 newspaper articles. Results from thematic content analysis show that moral mechanisms seem to be covering natives through customs, norms and traditional beliefs; and those involved in formal NTFPs trading through obligations and commitments of certification programs while leaving outsiders and hawkers with neither spiritual motivations for environmental conservation nor formal/informal sanctions for non-compliance with regulations. Financial and technological transfers have promoted the creation of new institutions for rural households and parallel power structures at the local level as the international standards, commitments and obligations are incorporated into legislative policies. However, this is creating discord between those sanctioned by the ancestors vs those elected by the people as the mandate is not always clear at the local level. Overall, the newly created structures are void of a shared value system, collective cohesiveness, shared history and legitimacy derived from kinship and descent which are the pillars of moral mechanism.
2. The potential of State-Commons interactions in building more sustainable land and food governance systems: The case of Leuven (Belgium)
1Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering Science, KU Leuven, Belgium, 2Università degli studi di Padova, Italy, 3KU Leuven, Belgium
Following questions on the upscaling of commons today, this paper examines the role of the state in hindering or supporting the proliferation of commoning practices. It takes as a case study a Call for Sustainable Agricultural Projects to be developed on state-owned lands, which was launched by the City of Leuven (Belgium). This Call constitutes an intervention by local authorities in the land management system, which intersects with the endeavours of emerging Alternative Food Practices (AFPs) to claim for more democratic and sustainable food governance. The analysis of the Call allows for the exploration of: (1) the AFPs’ potential to operate as ‘food commons’ creating urban and peri-urban ‘islands of decommodification’, the scaling up of which challenges the dominant agro-food industry, (2) the conditions under which local governments can facilitate the access of AFPs to land, and (3) the potential of commons-state partnership to co-shape and materialize a future of sustainable land access, use and governance. Our research reveals that although the City of Leuven is triggering a political shift in a long-standing system of access to land, state policies that frame the Call often equate sustainability to efficient and profitable agro-businesses. The latter affects the assessment of sustainable projects and hence restricts the potential of the City-Commons partnership to overcome issues of land commodification. The paper further finds that conflictual understandings of sustainability, insufficient acknowledgment of prevailing land access dynamics, and implicit paternalism regarding AFPs’ (socially) innovative potential, hamper the state’s capacity of embracing a commons ontology.
3. In Defence of Kampung. Socio-ecological narratives and practices of riparian communities in Jakarta
1University of Kassel, Germany, 2Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
This paper critically looks at neighbourhood institutions in Jakarta’s informal settlements (kampungs), in their transformations in facing incongruences of development at the neighbourhood scale. We refer ‘informal settlement’ to the diversity of informal economy embedded in the kampungs, rather than view the community practices as an opposed form of state-led (formal) spatial development. We show how flooding, commodified water services and lack of environmental sanitation influence community production and reproduction systems. We aim at situating their spatial practices (including scale making, not only place making) within the dynamic constellation of state-led water development sector. We see two infrastructural regimes (state-centred and community-fuelled) operate in concert but most of the time in chaos. Community everyday narratives disappear among development discourses attached to mega projects. ‘Normalisasi sungai’ or ‘river normalisation’ is one example of mega projects to focus on. The government believes that the banjir (floods) has to flow fast to the sea and river banks need to be free from slum communities. The modernity logic of development circulates abundantly in portraying the rivers ‘normal’ and in linking the Normalisasi with Relokasi (relocations), forcing the evicted communities to live in rusunawa, the commonly known abbreviation for the higher-rise rental housing blocks with modern sanitary facilities. In Rusunawa the consumption and production patterns are homogenized. This paper disentangles the highly contested narratives and practices within the two infrastructural regimes, informed by our conducted fieldworks in Bukit Duri (one of the kampungs destroyed by the Normalisasi) and Rusunawa Rawa Bebek, supposedly their relocation site.
4. Using net-map tool to analyze fisheries and Marine Protected Areas (MPA) governances interaction through the lens of the Network of Adjacent Action Situations
Leibniz ZMT, Germany
Fisheries and Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are subject to two different core institutional regimes in Senegal. Indeed, the management of marine ecosystems in Senegal falls under two organizations with distinct missions and policies. The Ministry of Environment focuses on protection and the Ministry of Fisheries is concerned with fisheries and aquaculture management. The decentralization policies and the efforts to promote communities’ participation in the management of their natural resources have led to the establishment of local governance bodies in maritime spaces. The local artisanal fisheries committee (CLPA) and the management committee (MPA-CM) of the marine protected areas. However, additionally, to this a diversity of fisheries actors’ organizations, gathered according to their activity and their locality has preceded these co-management bodies and continues to exist. These Economic Interest groups (EIG) and associations have, for the most part, a greater partnership dynamic than the (MPA-CM) and CLPAs. In addition, fishers and other stakeholders identify themselves more through these associations than the co-management bodies that struggle with a lack of ownership. This plurality of stakeholder groups leads to overlapping of actors without cooperation or effective collaboration between them. Thus, the aim of this study is to understand to what extent power is shaping the interaction between MPA and fisheries and its outcomes. The Network of Adjacent Action Situation will be applied. Net map method, which is an interview-based mapping tool is used to collect the data. It helps Identity, understand, and visualize, the action situations in fisheries and conservation in which many different actors influence outcomes.
5. Analysis of Barriers to Achieving Optimal Public Policy Outcomes in the Use of Commonly Shared Resources: An Institutional Approach to Community Development
1The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, USA, 2The University of Nairobi, Kenya
Community development can best be described from the concept of a free society where communities have freedom of choice and decision making. Forbes (1997) describes how free people can adapt to changes as well as their ability to collectively improve their lives as well as their economic and social circumstances using shared (common) resources. On one side of a free society are institutions, organizations and government, and on the other side are the people, also referred to as clients, all working to define their commons. Optimal policies are designed to ensure efficient, effective, and high-quality program initiatives designed with sustainable use tools in mind against the selfish individual selfish interest. However, when individuals or a community is marginalized or excluded from mainstream community activities because of politics, poverty, tribalism or race, freedom is curtailed leading to less-than-optimal policy outcomes. From an institutional perspective, this study identifies and examines vulnerable common resources and economic challenges faced by communities. Two communities, one living in resource abundant and another in resource scarce (arid or semi-arid) regions are analyzed. The study will explore and analyze the works and performance of public and private institutions working to bridge community needs and policy outcomes among rural communities in Kenya. The study will use the public participation spectrum tool developed by the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) and the systems model PESTLE (political, economic, social, technological and legal) used in computer science to examine policy response by all stakeholders to problems associated with natural resources management and sustainable use. Some of the expected findings show that although government leaders have a specific role to play in establishing the moral foundations of a free society such as sustainable use and equal access to resources, some elements of such freedoms like economic competition often leads to degradation of resources or marginalization of the less powerful in various communities. This study will document and analyze policy initiatives and the works of local institutions and national government agencies involved in addressing capacity issues, scarcity of resources, sustainable use of common resources, resilience and definition of the commons in ways that can serve humanity sustainably into the future. An evaluation of program performance, performance metrics, practices and tools to measure progress toward improving that use of common resources will be developed.
Keywords: Optimal Policy; Community; Institutions; Degradation; Sustainable Use, Tools.
