Transforming Institutions for Sustainable Development of Natural Resources Programmes

In India, the natural resources development programmes are manages under different property regimes, viz, state, common property or private property regimes. The failures of purely community and solely government controlled natural resources management has led to the distributed or shared governance. In this paper, the outcome of the renewable common property resources (CPRs) development programmes has been presented under different property regimes for the upliftment of rural poor with examples from the newly created state of Chhattisgarh. The role of the institutional arrangement, types of property rights regimes and authority systems in managing the renewable CPRs development programmes has been analysed based on the studies conducted by the author during the last 15 years in this region of Chhattisgarh. The sites of the case studies were visited by the author during the initial stages of the programme implementation and were revisited in May/June 2004. Through these case studies, the efficacy of alternative management systems or alternative governance structures in managing CPRs-based development programmes has been assessed in a dynamic framework. The case studies discussed are: (i) Micro-Minor Irrigation Tanks, (ii) Village Woodlots, (iii) Community Fish Ponds, (iv) Non-Timber Forest Products, and (v) Participatory Irrigation Management. The outcomes of these case studies have suggested that the policy designers of institutional arrangements for CPRs development programmes in the rural areas should have in-depth understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the alternative property rights regimes. Distributed governance though seems to be the most appropriate for designing CPRs management programmes, serious theoretical and empirical studies are needed for testing the efficacy of the alternative models.