The author tells us that Collective action occurs when more than one individual is required to contribute to an effort in order to achieve an outcome. People living in rural areas and using natural resources engage in collective action on a daily basis when they plant or harvest food together; use a common facility for marketing their products; maintain a local irrigation system or patrol a local forest to see that users are following rules; and meet to decide on rules related to all of the above.

Millions of the rural poor now participate in collaborative forest management schemes under a variety of tenurial and organizational arrangements.We examine those arrangements and ask whether local people have indeed gained more access to benefits from and control over forests. Our findings suggest that most co-management projects actually maintain and even extend central government control. -- from Text.

Las instituciones de acción colectiva y los sistemas de derechos de propiedad moldean la forma en que la gente usa los recursos naturales.A su vez, estos patrones de uso afectan los resultados de los sistemas de producción agrícola de la gente. Juntos, los mecanismos de acción colectiva y los sistemas de derechos de propiedad definen los incentivos a los que la gente accede por llevar a cabo estrategias de gestión sostenible y productiva, y afectan el nivel y distribución de los beneficios de los recursos naturales.

In this brief, we explore the role that social institutions -specifically property rights and collective action - may play in the development of agroforestry.... In the future, property rights and collective action will play increasingly pivotal roles in defining rights and responsibilities over the externalities of tree management practices.

Agricultural growth will prove essential for improving the welfare of the vast majority of Africa’s poor. Roughly 80 percent of the continent’s poor live in rural areas, and even those who do not will depend heavily on increasing agricultural productivity to lift them out of poverty. Seventy percent of all Africans— and nearly 90 percent of the poor—work primarily in agriculture. As consumers, all of Africa’s poor—both urban and rural—count heavily on the efficiency of the continent’s farmers.

La agrosilvicultura trata sobre los sistemas agrícolas integrados, en que los árboles juegan un papel prominente. La agrosilvicultura puede proporcionar una variedad de funciones o beneficios para los agricultores y las comunidades. Los más fáciles de identificar son los productos forestales utilizados por los humanos: leña para fuego, madera, vigas, frutas, medicinas y resinas. Un segundo grupo de beneficios consiste en los servicios que proporcionan los árboles a otras actividades agrícolas de los agricultores: abono vegetal, sombra, conservación de los suelos y estacas.

The study was based on initial research during 2000 and 2002 in the districts of Kapuas, Central Kalimantan, supplemented with interviews with policy makers in Jakarta during July-August 2001. This paper considers how the decentralization process involves legal and institutional changes that encompass a wide arrary of actors, institutions and levels of government. It raises issues of coordination, negotiation and conflict across multiple levels and jurisdictions.

Governments around the world increasingly seek to manage their forests with the collaboration of the people living nearby. Ministries of forestry or their equivalents usually do this by offering local people access to selected forest products or forest land, income from forest resources, or opportunities for communicating with government forestry officials. In return, the agency obliges local people to cooperate in managing the forests around them by protecting existing forest or by planting trees.

1. Degradation of natural resources is a significant constraint to sustainable agricultural development in many developing countries. In particular, water scarcity is a major threat to achieving food security and reducing poverty. Better water management, therefore, is critical to reaching international targets to halve the proportion of people without access to drinking water by 2015.

The Communal Land Associations in Community Forests of Budongo Sub-county are the first pilots in Uganda, and are still in the process of formation. Given that this is a new method for group tenure interests in resource management, the process should be dynamic and invite close analysis for improvement.

The National Environmental Policy of Malawi is a cross-sectoral policy with the following objectives: Secure for all persons, now and in the future, an environment suitable for their health and well being; Promote sustainable utilization and management of the country's natural resources and encourage, where appropriate, long term self sufficiency in food, fuel wood and other energy requirements; Facilitate the restoration, maintenance and enhancement of the ecosystems and ecological processes essential for the functioning of the biosphere and prudent use of renewable resources; Promote the

La provincia del Chubut posee, en la zona andina, 1.000.000 de hectáreas de bosques nativos, de las cuales 133.000 hectáreas, mayoritariamente conformadas por bosques puros de Nothofagus pumilio "lenga" (90%) se consideran aptas para la producción de madera. De ellas, aproximadamente 10.000 hectáreas han sido o son objeto de algún régimen de aprovechamiento forestal. En 1992 se pusieron en vigencia unas normas específicas que básicamente exigen a quienes pretenden extraer madera del bosque nativo la presentación de planes de manejo forestal.