In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

393 This book began by proposing that institutions of collective action and property rights can play a valuable role in facilitating poverty reduction. As discussed in Chapter 1, there is a disconnect between the natural resource management (NRM) and non-NRM poverty research: each has its own strengths, but to date, there have not been many attempts to cross-fertilize the two with lessons learned from each for poverty reduction. This volume bridges this gap by connecting institutional research, which is strong in the NRM literature, with the poverty analysis better covered by other poverty studies to apply the knowledge on institutions to poverty reduction research across sectors, countries, and methods . Four of the five main themes that are spotlighted in this volume (risk and vulnerability to shocks, market access for smallholders, natural resource governance and access to resources, and conflict and postconflict development) serve as venues for this cross-pollination, each focusing on a particular poverty area to show how institutions, especially those of collective action and property rights, can enable the poor to improve their condition. The fifth theme, power, is woven through the whole volume as relevant across all themes and settings when dealing with poverty. Our case studies have highlighted how collective action and property rights enhance the abilities of the poor to increase their stock of assets, mitigate the harmful impact of shocks, negotiate equitable resource governance rules, effectively deal with market imperfections, interact with government authorities and local elites, and negotiate access to land, water, and forests. They also show the limitations of these institutions to overcome poverty in the context of certain forms of asset disparities, risks, and governance or power relations. Findings were obtained from commonalities drawn across somewhat disparate sociopolitical and historical contexts and sectors from among a set of countries whose annual gross national incomes per capita (which vary from US$110 in Ethiopia to US$1,170 in the Philippines) place them in the mostly lower-income category.1 The power of these findings derives from their application across 13 Conclusions and Implications for Policy, Practice, and Research ESTHER MWANGI, HELEN MARKELOVA, AND RUTH MEINZEN-DICK 1. See the World Bank’s Little Green Data Book (World Bank 2006). 394 Esther Mwangi, Helen Markelova, and Ruth Meinzen-Dick sectors, especially among NRM, risk and vulnerability, conflict management, and market access. Recognizing that each situation must be sufficiently contextualized , what are the policy actions and practices that can help strengthen the roles of collective organizing and property rights in improving the well-being of the poor? How can policy and practice be improved so as to encourage, strengthen, and not undermine the self-organizing efforts of the poor and their rights and access to diverse assets? In this concluding chapter we turn from a detailed analysis of the findings from the studies collected here to the contributions they make to the literature on their respective themes in terms of the way that collective action and property rights can facilitate poverty reduction. Recognizing that conducting these nine studies was just one step in this task, we also consider the open questions that the studies have brought forth for future research and propose the implications that these findings can have for policy and practice. We first discuss the findings in terms of the five themes of the volume and then highlight some contributions that the studies make to the broader literature on collective action and property rights, then end with broader implications for policy, practice, and research. Revisiting the Themes of the Volume Risk and Vulnerability to Shocks The literature on risk mitigation by the poor has shown that in the face of imperfect credit and insurance markets, the poor rely on various types of assets, including social capital, mostly in the form of mutual assistance groups and credit and savings associations (Dercon 2002). The Ethiopia–iddir (burial societies ) and Philippines studies show that other forms of collective action, such as burial societies and familial networks, are now being used as risk-mitigating mechanismsbythepoor.Thesestudiesdescribehowtheseinnovativeapproaches to insurance deal with the traditional problems of informational asymmetries and how their composition contributes to their effectiveness and sustainability. The Ethiopia–Afar study makes a contribution to the existing work on the vulnerability of pastoral groups (see Little et al. 2001) by examining the collective action–based responses to climatic and sociopolitical shocks, as well as the negative impact that collective shock mitigation has on customary property rights institutions. Even though the breakdown in the traditional...

Share