Factors Of Success In Community Forest Conservation

Drawing on structured interviews of 29 conservation practitioners with first-hand experience working with successful community forest conservation projects in eight countries around the world, this article explores how context influences the importance of Mancur Olson's five requisites for collective action, and Elinor Ostrom's eight design principles for effective common-pool resource management. Results suggest that Olson was correct that social cohesion is a common attribute of successful community forest management efforts. But the survey also suggests that it is shared identity that is most the important contributor to cohesion and that this can occur largely absent of regular, positive face-to-face interactions as Olson suggests. Interviews also show that all eight of Ostrom's design principles are manifest by successful community forest conservation efforts. Although recognition of a community rights to self-determination was reported to be essential, it was also considered insufficient without the timely and competent support of national authorities to help communities effectively exercise their rights when faced with threats from more economically and politically powerful external actors.