Babu, Pasumarthy Venkata Subhash Chandra.

2018-01-31T11:16:23Z

2018-01-31T11:16:23Z

1998

Common lands in Haryana State, India have suffered severe degradation, continuous erosion and are becoming transformed to open access regimes due to increasing population pressure. This has resulted in environmental damage on a wide scale and reduced welfare of the inhabitants of the region. Realising the enormity of the problem and the critical need to initiate action for greening the common lands, the government and the people came together to establish a participatory planning and development process at the village level.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effectiveness of participation in managing common property resources. This was undertaken in two phases, firstly through analysis of empirical social and biological data, and secondly through the development of a mathematical model. Specific hypotheses addressed were: i) it is possible to define specific circumstances wherein the common property protects the natural resource base effectively; ii) there exists a level of complimentarity between common property resources and private property resources in the case study area; iii) that socio-economic and cultural factors favour converting open-access regimes to common property rather than to private property.

People’s participation level was estimated after conducting a survey of 15 villages in Haryana. The survey results are used to examine institutional development and the government’s role as an enabler in establishing the common property regime. The results of the case study, show that clear benefits may be derived from common property regimes, are used to examine institutional development at the village level. A composite resource condition index is developed in order to measure the success of village institutions. The mechanisms and processes involved in assisting local people to establish common property regimes are also discussed. A mathematical programming model incorporating household dynamics and their interactions with both common property resources and private property resources is developed and scoping studies are conducted to analyse the impact of participation in the management of common property resources and the relative effectiveness of common property regimes.

http://hdl.handle.net/1842/26177

The University of Edinburgh

Annexe Thesis Digitisation Project 2017 Block 15

Common property resource management in Haryana state, India: analysis of the impact of participation in the management of common property resources and the relative effectiveness of common property regimes.

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

PhD Doctor of Philosophy