Message-ID: <199510100026.UAA166319@atlanta.american.edu> Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 08:07:00 -0700 From: mailto:khm1@AXE.HUMBOLDT.EDU> Subject: Re: SUSTAINABLE LAND AND WATER USE To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Abdul wahab Khan, I hope this review may help you. kerry=================== "THE COMMONS" IN THAILAND FOREST MANAGEMENT
Masaki Matsumura, 1994. "Coercive Conservation, Defensive Reaction, and the Commons Tragedy in Northeastern Thailand." Habitat International, volume 18, no. 3, pages 105-115.
Matsumura (Cornell University, Ithaca, U.S.A.) has studied access to forests in Northern Thailand, which has been restricted by military action. Thus he revisits Garrett Hardin's metaphor of "The Tragedy of the Commons" (Science, 162 [1968], page 1244), which attracted global attention by highlighting problems resulting in the degradation of open- access resources. Hardin had proposed a choice of two solutions in order to prevent "freedom in a commons [that] brings ruin to all:" privatiza- tion or government regulation (nationalization) of their use.
Matsumura concludes that "neither privatization nor nationalization can guarantee conservation, and that one alternative solution . . . is for local people to manage their own resources at the community level."
Many factors influence land use in Northern Thailand and they interact in complex ways. Among the factors is differing perceptions by farmers and the government of legal rights to land and of appropriate environ- mental strategems for its use. The author agrees that villagers may not now be competent to manage their own land, but he believes that they need to further both their knowledge of effective resource management and their organizational competence as communal land users. To carry out these proposals could involve entrusting villagers with communal title to open-access land.
-------- >From DevelopNet News, Volume 5, No. 2 (February 1995)