CAREER: Analyzing the Emergence of a Complex Land Management System

Ohio State University, The, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Can local communities effectively manage public lands, or are more distant government or non-governmental agencies necessary to protect our natural resources? For many years, researchers argued that providing individuals and communities with open access to natural resources would inevitably lead to overuse and ultimately to destruction through deforestation, overfishing, overgrazing, and other environmentally detrimental activities. However, subsequent research by political scientist and Nobel laureate Dr. Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues found that this "tragedy of the commons" scenario is not universal. Instead, some small communities do effectively manage local lands without external oversight. This appears to occur most often when communities have enduring, well-developed social norms for maintaining the natural environment and for sanctioning individuals who violate community standards. But these findings raise another question: If some communities can do it, why not all? Why are some communities effective at preserving their natural resources while others are not? The research supported by this award seeks to answer that question. Anthropologist Dr. Sean S. Downey (University of Maryland) will test the theory effective land management rests on more than just having the right social norms; in addition, he suggests, the social norms, the particular characteristics of the local environment, and the ecosystem services the environment provides to local users must work together to produce ecological sustainability. Few communities in the United States are both free of external oversight and also dependent primarily on the local natural environment for subsistence. Therefore, Dr. Downey and his team will travel to two forest-based villages located in a remote area in southern Belize to test the theory. The communities have a demonstrated history of local ecological knowledge and environmental stewardship but there has historically been little top-down environmental management: an ideal location for understanding how local community norms and natural ecosystem dynamics interact and create a sustainable forestry system. The researchers will collect data through multiple methods: household surveys; farmer land use interviews; and close monitoring of how the communities affect their forests. The monitoring will be accomplished through piecing together high-resolution photographs of the usage areas around each village using a GPS-linked multi-spectral camera mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle. These photos will subsequently be stitched together into geo-referenced two-dimensional photo-mosaics, ground-truthed through farm plots surveys, and analyzed to understand how these environments provide for the local communities, how they are affected by human farming activity, and also how these forests recover to sustain future generations. The research team will also conduct behavioral economics experiments to assess how cooperation and punishment in the communities relate to natural resource use, and use computational analysis to determine the most important social and natural factors for effective long-term natural resource management. The project also has several integrated educational goals, including training the next generation of American scientists, educators, and policy-makers in the science of complexity; developing coursework and facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration at the University of Maryland; and offering a service learning project for American students in Belize. Ultimately, findings from this research will provide insight into the factors that promote effective local management of natural resources and this could lead to better and more efficient management of public lands at a significant cost savings. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.