InstitutionClaim Cited
Community organizations in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve formed ACOFOP because a concession contract alone could not defend territory, satisfy technical rules, reach markets, or survive political challenge. The federation helped turn temporary rights on state land into collective operating capacity, while failed concessions and renewal disputes exposed the limits of that achievement.
What had to be organized beyond each community so that a twenty-five-year forest right became a defensible future rather than a temporary harvest license?
InstitutionClaim Cited
Madagascar's 1996 GELOSE law lets the state, a commune, and a legally recognized local association negotiate management of forests, wildlife, water, fisheries, or grazing. The association can govern access, use, conservation, and sanctions through a contract and a locally grounded dina, but the state retains ownership, approval, evaluation, and withdrawal powers. Field evidence shows that recognition and exclusion rights can matter even when direct income does not; national forest and household studies find heterogeneous outcomes rather than an automatic conservation or livelihood gain.
Can a negotiated legal contract make customary resource governance publicly enforceable without turning community autonomy into unpaid implementation of an externally chosen conservation plan?
InstitutionClaim Cited
Federal officials translated Diné land, animals, and households into sheep-unit carrying-capacity targets, then used purchases, slaughter, districts, permits, and enforcement to reduce herds. Range deterioration was real and multicausal, but the program displaced Diné authority and knowledge, especially women's ownership, while leaving a permit system that Navajo institutions and land users still have to govern.
What happens when an outside conservation bureaucracy can count a people's animals but cannot be governed by the relationships those animals sustain?