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The Complexities of Decentralization in a Globalizing World

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Author Info

  • Stefanie Engel

    () (IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich)

  • Charles Palmer

    () (Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, UK)

Abstract

In many developing countries, decentralization programmes for natural resource management aim to induce incentives for sustainable resource management at the local level. The effectiveness of such programmes has, however, suffered from weak property rights to the resource and by the presence of externalities. Growing economic integration among countries has exacerbated these problems by increasing the exposure of local user groups to commercial actors interested in resource extraction. In this paper, the interplay of decentralization and globalization in affecting environmental outcomes and community welfare is analysed through a game-theoretic model of community-firm interactions. The results highlight the complexities of policy design. First, by raising the extractive value of the resource, globalization may lead to communities negotiating resource extraction agreements with firms. Second, with a lack of effective state enforcement of community resource rights, communities may be unable to assume de facto ownership over the resource, while commercial actors succeed in exploiting resources without community consent. No single policy option provides a panacea to counteracting these negative effects. Instead, a mix of policies, combining incentive payments along with the provision of more secure property rights and poverty alleviation is shown to have the potential to improve both environmental outcomes and community welfare.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich in its series IED Working paper with number 09-08.

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Length: 22 pages
Date of creation: Sep 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ied:wpsied:09-08

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Related research

Keywords: Bargaining; decentralization; globalization; natural resources; poverty; property rights; self-enforcement;

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Cited by:
  1. Thomas Bernauer & Lena Maria Schaffer, 2010. "Climate Change Governance," IED Working paper 10-12, IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich.
  2. Salvatore Di Falco & Marcella Veronesi, 2011. "On Adaptation to Climate Change and Risk Exposure in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia," IED Working paper 11-15, IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich.
  3. Ines Kapphan & Pierluigi Calanca & Annelie Holzkaemper, 2011. "Climate Change, Weather Insurance Design and Hedging Effectiveness," IED Working paper 11-17, IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich.
  4. Markus Ohndorf, 2010. "Optimal Monitoring for project-based Emissions Trading Systems under incomplete Enforcement," IED Working paper 10-13, IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich.
  5. Michele Baggio, 2012. "The Optimal Management of a Natural Resource with Switching Dynamics," IED Working paper 12-19, IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich.
  6. Moritz Rohling & Markus Ohndorf, 2010. "Prices vs. Quantities with Fiscal Cushioning," IED Working paper 10-11, IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich.
  7. Thomas Epper & Helga Fehr-Duda & Renate Schubert, 2011. "Energy-Using Durables: The Role of Time Discounting in Investment Decisions," IED Working paper 11-16, IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich.
  8. Justin Caron & Markus Ohndorf, 2010. "Irreversibility and Optimal Timing of Climate Policy," IED Working paper 10-14, IED Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich.

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