Ecology

Biology

Collective action

Economic system

Public relations

Resource mobilization

Democratization

Computer security

Economics

Computer science

Business

Commons

Computer network

Natural resource management

Common-pool resource

Politics

Political science

Democracy

Environmental resource management

Political economy

Social movement

Natural resource

Resource (disambiguation)

Key (lock)

Global Environmental Change

The international research on the benefits of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) regimes for sustainable development has raised concerns about the vulnerability of said regimes to globalization, shortsighted government regulations, marginalization, and other global political economy threats. This paper addresses the question of whether and how social movements contribute to the organization and robustness of CBNRM in the advent of those threats. To accomplish this, we carry out a qualitative meta-analysis of 81 cases worldwide. Our evidence shows that one of the most important effects of movements on CBNRM is the promotion and defense of community use and management rights against certain government decisions or actions by global corporations. We also find that movements can generate positive effects beyond the reaction to specific threats. Those effects include the democratization of communities’ collective choice processes, the reinvigoration of identity ties and local ecological knowledge, the promotion of economic development and autonomy, and the creation of nested user organizations. Exploring such potentially longer-term effects is a promising next step towards further connecting the social movement and CBNRM scholarships and better understanding the robustness of local management regimes in the context of global change.

Social movements as key actors in governing the commons: Evidence from community-based resource management cases across the world