There's an interesting amiguity that I struggled with when reading this report and it turns on the phrase "Collective Action."

This report was released by the International Land Coalition (ILC) in partnership with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)'s System-wide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRI) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). While I can't find anything amiss about the ILC -- in fact, their principles, mandate, and members are impressive -- the CGIAR and FAO leave something to be desired in terms of their ties to transnational agribusiness, and in the case of the former, in terms of its place at the WB as well as its historical agenda of promoting the Green Revolution in the Global South.

So I read the report a bit suspiciously. I was looking for signs of Elinor Ostrom's "common property resource management" discourse and instead I kept bumping up against one major aspect of this discourse that in fact is more correctly attributable to Mancur Olson: the language of collective action.

In economic theory, collective action is concerned with the provision of public goods through social collaboration. Olson's seminal book, "The Logic of Collective Action" challenges the claim that individual rational choice within a free-market society always leads to the most efficient delivery of the public good, proposing instead that collective action may at times be more effective. However, this challenge provides the incentive for a re-thinking, not of market relations, but rather of those hard-to-integrate communities in the global economy.

So when this phrase kept popping up throughout the document (summarized below), I was understandably concerned. And there still may be reason for concern, depending on the nature of this alliance between ILC, CGIAR, and the FAO, but I have found another, more general, sociological definition for collective action that may help to explain its use here. This other definition is simply a way of understanding social movements, including factors of integration, conflict, and deviance, and also emphasizes the effects of social institutions on social behaviour.

I would also have been interested to see more discussion in this report about the reasons for resource insecurity in common property arrangements that deal with global capital, WB policy, and state violence and coersion...

From the Introduction: 

"Common property regimes remain a significant property arrangement in many parts of the developing world. Resources held under such regimes continue to play a major role in sustaining the livelihoods and socio-cultural practices of many communities, particularly of the poor and marginalized sections of such communities. This paper provides a broad synthesis of the status of common property regimes, from a community perspective, from a total of 20 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, covering a diversity of resources including forests, trees, rangelands, and fisheries.

"While privatization for large scale commercial development and the expansion of small-holder agriculture are significant threats to CPRs, other threats include the appropriation of CPRs for conservation under various arrangements and obligations, legal ambiguities and a non recognition of customary law. Communities together with their partners have devised strategies for securing their common property regimes in particular and access to resources from the commons more broadly. We outline these efforts as well.

"We argue that those elements that pertain to the orthodox security of private, individual property such as state recognition and backing are also relevant and fundamental to securing CPRs (the private property for a recognized group) primarily from external threats. We also suggest that securing the rights and entitlements of individuals and sub- groups to resources held under common property arrangements is crucial. Strengthening internal governance structures and arrangements (such as conflict resolution, rule making and enforcement), and making them more equitable and accountable may ensure more equitable decision making and benefit distribution, both of which are crucial for securing against internal threats."

http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/archive/00001898/ 

Source: Fuys, Andrew, Mwangi, Esther, and Stephan Dohrn. 2006. "Securing Common Property Regimes in a 'Modernizing' World: Synthesis of 41 Case Studies on Common Property Regimes from Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America." Presented at "Survival of the Commons: Mounting Challenges and New Realities," the Eleventh Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bali, Indonesia, June 19-23, 2006.