View/Open - Sokoine University of Agriculture

introduce new technologies such as a chainsaw impacting forests resources, due toimproved efficiency and decreased workload. It is here also worth mentioningtechnology in the form of recycling or the development of alternative technologies toreduce the demand and pressure on the resource. Resources can be renewable or nonrenewable,and with REDD, the forest if not fully depleted is a renewable resource,which can regenerate. However as opposed to water, which is more or less ahomogeneous resource, forests are hugely diverse where we can typically considerreproduction rate, its carbon sequestration abilities and its environmental services.With further analytical interests of the physical resource properties, we can followOstrom and Oakerson in determining three considerations:Subtractability, is the degree to which more than one user can make use of the sameresource (Oakerson 1992; Ostrom, Gardner et al. 1994).Excludability, refers to the ability for a seller to exclude a buyer of a product unless acertain price is paid (Oakerson 1992).Indivisibility, is whether physical characteristics of the resource boundaries limitcoordination between users (Oakerson 1992)2.1.2 InstitutionsThe term institution is today widely used across several disciplines within socialscience including economics, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, politics, andgeography. There is a range of different understandings of the concept across theliterature (Hodgson 2006). The dispute is rooted primarily in the definition itselfwhere some define institutions as organizations, others seeing it as rules (Vatn 2011).We will here stick to North‟s division between institutions and organizations to avoidconfusion between the two. By saying that “Organizations are made up of groups ofindividuals bound together by some common purpose to achieve certain objectives”(North 1994, p.361), we thereby see organizations as an actor rather than aninstitution, regulated by the rules - institutions.For those understanding institutions as rules there is also an important divide worthmentioning. From social theory we can divide institutions into two camps; theindividualist perspective, where institutions are seen as constraints, and do not22