The Politics of Decentralized Natural Resource Governance

Abstract

As human populations and their demands on natural resources continue to grow, citizens and officials from around the world search ever more intensely for effective solutions to environmental problems. Various factors conspire to make natural resources difficult to govern well. First, since many larger scale natural resources can be common pool resources, they pose different—and arguably more difficult—challenges to governance than private or public goods. Second, the use of natural resources can produce significant externalities. Third, the complex spatial and temporal boundaries of natural resources along with their potential externalities rarely conform to existing political institutions. Environmental problems often take decades or even centuries to emerge; their solutions may take equally long.