Experiences from harvest-driven conservation: Management of Amazonian river turtles as a common-pool resource.

Understanding what causes variability in the outcomes of common-pool resources management and governance has important policy implications for biodiversity conservation, in particular for the conservation of wild plants and animals subject to harvest. We report an exploratory study focusing on Amazonian river turtles as a common-pool resource under harvest-driven conservation and management efforts in Peru. Based on document analysis, literature review and a series of interviews, we describe the management program as a social process and identify the most important governance and management outcomes achieved (increased turtle abundance and benefits for harvesters, harvester formalization), factors hindering and facilitating the program implementation (four natural and three societal factors), and key governance actions behind the program outcomes (awareness and capacity building, crafting and enforcing rules). We then highlight the existing knowledge gaps and the needs and possible means to address particular risks related to turtle management on a harvest-driven setting.

Changing and partially successful local institutions for harvest of thatch palm leaves.

In some cases, users of common-pool resources (CPR) successfully govern and manage these for collective benefit but in other cases they fail to do so. When evaluating the success of local institutions for CPR management, however, researchers have not always clearly distinguished between success in terms of compliance and endurance, and success in terms of the socio-economic and environmental outcomes of the management. This study focused on the governance and management of wayuri palms (Pholidostachys synanthera robusta), whose leaves are harvested for roof thatch, in Ecuadorian Amazonia. Combining ethnographic methods with field botanic inventory, it was shown that although local institutions regulating leaf harvest had existed for longer than living memory, and the degree of compliance was high, they did not prevent exhaustion of the resource base, only delayed it.