Case Studies of Social-Ecological Systems

Titlesort descending
Type

Kottapalle open-field husbandry and canal irrigation, Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh, South India

Case
Located in the Nowk valley in Kurnool district in the state of Andhra Pradesh in South India, Kottapalle has an area of 4,600 acres. The village is in the tail-end of a 20-mile irrigation canal. The original research was conducted from 1980 to 1982. The state Irrigation Department is responsible for regulating water allocation between each outlet between each village from the canal. The local council is responsible for distribution of water to fields in the village.  Also,...
09 Aug 2016

Kurnool-Cuddapah canal large-scale irrigation system in Andhra Pradesh, South India

Case
 The Kurnool-Cuddapah (KC) Canal Irrigation System draws water from Tungabhadra river through the Sunkesula Dam on flows through Cuddapah and Kurnool districts in state of Andhra Pradesh in South India providing water to around 120,000 hectares and servicing around 250,000 farm households (check). It was originally built by the Dutch for navigation purposes and later sold to the British and used for irrigation purposes. It was modernized somewhat around 1950s. The main canal is largely a "...
09 Aug 2016

La Campa Municipio Community Forests, Honduras

Case
The La Campa municipio community forests are located in the Department of Lempira, western Honduras.  The community forests encompass an unknown geographical area that is characterized by a mountainous landscape, steep slopes and poor soils.  The case study involves a snapshot in time from 1993 to 1998 and catalogues an action situation involving approximately 8,000 community members organized in an unknown number of households who depend on subsistence crops (maize, beans, banana),...
09 Aug 2016

Lakes Entrance Scallop Fishery

Case
The Lakes Entrance scallop fishery is located in Bass Strait outside the city of Lakes Entrance in eastern Victoria, Australia and as far south as Tasmania in depths of 10-30 fathoms . The original case, which was published in 1982, catalogs the management of both Lakes Entrance and nearby Port Phillip Bay fisheries following a decline in scallop stocks in the early 1970s. The shared resources relevant to the commons dilemma faced by the community include scallop stocks and their productivity (...
09 Aug 2016

Land-cover and Forest in Nepal (I)

Case
Between 1978 and 1992 dramatic forest conversion occurred in two adjacent sub-basins of the Kair Khola watershed in the Chitwan District of Nepal. However, the form of conversion differed significantly. In the Kair sub-basin dense forest was most often converted to maize-based agriculture, while in the Shakti sub-basin dense forest most often became degraded forest. This study undertook a village-level investigation of forest governance to determine whether community and institutional...
09 Aug 2016

Land-cover and Forest in Nepal (II)

Case
Between 1978 and 1992 dramatic forest conversion occurred in two adjacent sub-basins of the Kair Khola watershed in the Chitwan District of Nepal. However, the form of conversion differed significantly. In the Kair sub-basin dense forest was most often converted to maize-based agriculture, while in the Shakti sub-basin dense forest most often became degraded forest. This study undertook a village-level investigation of forest governance to determine whether community and institutional...
09 Aug 2016

Laoag-Vintar government irrigation system, Laoag City and Vintar municipality, Ilocos Norte, Philippines

Case
The Laoag-Vintar Irrigation System (LVIS), a government-owned system, serves the areas of Laoag City and the municipality of Vintar in Ilocos Norte, Philippiness. It is bounded by the Vintar-Bacarra River in the north, hills on the east, Laoag River on the south, and the China Sea on the west. The resource appropriated is water for irrigation serving about 2400 ha in the rainy season and 1200 ha during the dry season. There are 2501-5000 total appropriator teams. At the beginning of the period...
09 Aug 2016

Large N Comparative Studies of Ostrom's Design Principles

Case
There have been a number of studies that focus on testing whether and in what contexts Ostrom's institutional design principles may lead to successful governance of common-pool resources.  The study of Cox et al. (see sources) coded the presence or absence of each of 8 design principles and success in 62 cases and found that the likelihood of success and the presence of individual design principles is positively correlated.   However, because institutions are systems, it is...
13 Jul 2017

Las Cebollas protective forest, Quezaltepeque municipality, western Guatemala

Case
Las Cebollasforest community is located in the municipality of Quezaltepeque, in western Guatemala.  It encompasses a geographical area of 1850 ha of land much of it on slopes of about 1500m. The case study involves a snapshot in time in 1998 and catalogues an action situation involving 43 households which are dependent on the forest for three main purposes: 1) extraction of ocote, or resinous pine, for kindling, 2) extractions of firewood, oak varieties being preferred because they...
09 Aug 2016

Living in a network of scaling cities and finite resources

Case
Many urban phenomena exhibit remarkable regularity in the form of nonlinear scaling behaviors, but their implications on a system of networked cities has never been investigated. Such knowledge is crucial for our ability to harness the complexity of urban processes to further sustainability science. In this paper, Qubbaj et al. (2014) develop a dynamical modeling framework that embeds population–resource dynamics—a generalized Lotka–Volterra system with modifications to incorporate the urban...
30 Sep 2016

Loma Alta community forest, western Equador

Case
This paper provides an explanation for the lack of institutions regulating the Loma Alta Forest. The community has not yet created any rules regarding forest use. The members of the community with the biggest economic stake in the forest have no reason to limit their exploitative practices, and thus little demand exists for forest regulation at the local level. The Loma Alta Forest is in danger of being more severely degraded in the near future because of the lack of forestry institutions....
09 Aug 2016

Lothar farmer-managed irrigation system, Chitwan district, Nepal

Case
Lothar is a farmer-managed irrigation system in the Chitwan district, about 30 kilometres east of the city of Bharatpur in Nepal. The resource unit is water for irrigation. The system comprises of a main canal, an approach canal, six branch canals, and field channels. Individual farmers are responsible for maintaining field channels and tertiary canals. During the time of the original case, which spans from 1985 to 1986, there was no history of conflicts in the irrigation system. This case...
09 Aug 2016

Love River Restoration, Taiwan

Case
Love River Restoration case is part of the comparative urban river analysis developed between 2019 to 2020 by Herlin Chien at United Nations University, Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability in Japan. The common pool resource system is the Love River (12 km) located in a metropolitan city of Kaohsiung with 2.7 million inhabitants. This case is identified by the Executive Yuan - central government in Taiwan as one of eleven rivers with more than 50% of mediumly polluted section in...
21 Jul 2020

Lurin Sayoc Irrigation, Quinua District, Peru

Case
Lurin Sayoc is one of the two barrios of Quinua district of Ayacucho Province in the Peruvian highlands. The resource appropriated related to the social dilemma is water for irrigation distributed through a canal, diverted by stream. The original case was reported in 1976 and 1977 and catalogues an action situation involving 5,348 people. The author reported many fights around water use.This case study is part of the original Common-Pool Resource (CPR) database. A summary of the original CPR...
09 Aug 2016

Magar Kulo, Bhote Namlang Village Panchayat, Sindhupalchok District, Nepal

Case
This case is part of the original Nepal Irrigation Institutions and Systems (NIIS) database developed in the 1980's by a team of researchers under the direction of Dr. Elinor Ostrom at Indiana University. In addition, this case is also part of a longitudinal study that has repeatedly investigated 19 farmer-managed irrigation systems (FMIS) in the Indrawati River Basin that participated in an innovative intervention designed to improve irrigation performance not only by improving physical...
09 Aug 2016