the role of property rights in natural resource management, good ...

single-round exploitation strategies. Thus natural resource advocates will likely have strong incentives tosupport customary or long-enduring user groups.• New or increasing market incentives encourage a tendency toward individualization and increasedexclusivity of property rights. This is because transaction costs related to commodity production andmarketing can be reduced through concentration of the bundle of property rights and assigning it to aspecific individual or corporation. This is especially true where existing organizational capacity isinsufficient to ensure sustainable commodity production and marketing.A case from Cameroon illustrates both of the “potentialdevelopments” that arise when lucrative marketincentives become available which significantly deviatefrom the conventional uses, or scale of use of a naturalresource stock, or both. First, forest dwellingcommunities were not in a position to invest and benefitfrom the international market for timber. Given thepowerful incentives arising from sizeable potentialprofits, their property rights to forest resources werechallenged (or perhaps more accurately, ignored) by thosewith the means to fell trees and move them into lucrativedomestic and international timber markets. Second, rightsto trees exploited for marketable timber, and the incomefrom the trees, became the exclusive right of those whowere willing and able to make the necessary investments.In the process, the bundle of property rights wasconsolidated as a single strand within the bundle—that toharvest trees to supply the international market fortimber—came to dominate and diminished all otherrights. The example illustrates a striking disconnectbetween existing property rights of indigenous forestdwellers and the usurpation of those rights necessary torespond to market incentives arising from a nontraditionalmarket. Disregard for existing rights of forestdwelling populations, motivated by powerful marketincentives, has wrought damage both to livelihoods oflocal populations and to the environment.Box 5. Managing Market IncentivesIn Cameroon, forest-dwelling communities areamong the most marginalized groups in society,and massive timber exploitation has broughtthem few benefits. Sixty-six percent ofCameroon’s population in forest areas livesbelow the poverty line. One option forcommunities to gain greater benefit is tosubcontract commercial timber operators toexploit the forest but this exposes the enterpriseto elite capture, with negative environmentalconsequences (as logging operators may try torecoup their investments by rapidly creaming offall the trees with marketable value). Isolated casestudies suggest that communities could earnsubstantial incomes from forests if they tookcontrol of harvesting and processing themselves.This, however, requires organizational andtechnical skills far beyond the usual capacity oflocal communities, and might also requiregovernments to provide safety nets forcommunities which get into difficulties (ODI2002).The Cameroon case illustrates the challenge of managing and channeling market incentives that, leftunchecked, can aggravate unequal distributions of wealth and impair the capacity of some actors to gainlivelihoods, as well as cause environmental degradation (see Box 5). While this example features forestresources, similar examples of market incentives being allowed free rein have occurred in a variety of naturalresource settings ranging from fisheries to watersheds, pastures, and agricultural lands. Efforts to alleviate theadverse impacts of unmanaged market incentives have focused on recognizing and strengthening local actorsin relation to non-resident entrepreneurs who are considered to have less interest in addressing local welfareconcerns and maintaining resources over the long term. Closely allied sets of initiatives include those targetingincreased popular participation in natural resource governance and management, decentralization anddevolution of power and authority these resources, and reinforcement of the concept and practice ofcommonly held property.Although common property of natural resources is most often a prominent feature of customary tenuresystems, it has proven difficult to defend in the face of intense market incentives coupled with governmentpolicies that are not supportive of common property regimes. The leading tool in making existing rightsdefensible is to channel the market incentives to the resident populations. Complementary tools includeROLE OF PROPERTY RIGHTS IN NRM: GOOD GOVERNANCE AND EMPOWERMENT OF THE RURAL POOR 19