Common Resources Management and the "Dark Side" of Collective Action: an Impact Evaluation for Madagascar’s Forests

A sufficient level of collective action between community members is often presented as a strong pre-requisite to sustainably governing local common property resources(CPR). What if in some contexts instead, strong collective action led to short-term depletion of CPR instead of their sustainable use? This paper brings to light causal evidence on the environmental impact of establishing community-managed forests in Madagascar and highlights the complexities underlying collective action in their sustainable management. I compile fine-scale deforestation data over 15 years, use a unique spatial census of locally managed CPR and mobilize firsthand field data from four case studies to show that transferring management rights to local communities has failed to decrease deforestation. Instead, the policy has led to an increase in deforestation in some areas, often when collective action was strong, not when it was weak. This is what I call the possible "dark side" of collective action.