- Resource System
- Watershed and associated topography
- Resource Units
- Forest products
The community forests discussed in this case study are called panchayat forests. They are managed by local institutions called van panchayats. The forests and van panchayats all lie in the middle Himalayan ranges in Almora district, India. Almora is one of the eight mountainous districts that together comprise the Uttarakhand in Uttar Pradesh. The analysis focuses on the effects of institutional rules on fodder and fuelwood use in community forests. Village 6 is one of six villages located in the Almora district.
(1) Boundary Rules: Success. Users fall into two categories: the residents of the village where the forest is located; the family of an individual who aided in creating the panchayat forest (p. 271).
(2) Appropriation Rules (Allocation Rules): Fail. Users are allocated spaces on the commons where they must harvest grass. Although this prevents disputes among the users by solving an assignment problem, users still attempt to harvest as much as they can from the area allocated to them (pp. 272-3). ….. the incentives to overextract are not necessarily countered by clear rules assigning individuals to a spatial location on the commons (p. 273).
(3) Monitoring: Fail. There were not even institutionalized mechanisms through which adequate information on rule breaking could be collected (p. 282). Panchayat officials did not emphasize monitoring (p. 276). The community forest was highly dispersed. The panchayat considered monitoring important but was unable to devise a system the dispersed panchayat forest compartments (p. 277).
(4) Sanctioning: Fail. In the absence of accurate information about rule breaking, sanctions could not be imposed in village 6 (p. 282).
(5) Arbitration: Fail. Arbitration, which is important to reinforce sanctions, was ineffective (p. 282). In the absence of accurate information about rule breaking, panchayat officials could not assert their authority as arbiters (p. 282). Village 6 spends a much smaller portion of their expenses on monitoring and legal expenses (p. 280).
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. 2016. Explaining success and failure in the commons: the configural nature of Ostrom’s institutional design principles. International Journal of the Commons. 10(2):417–439.