- Forest associations are successfully managing urban green space in a sustainable manner.
- They provide an anchor for the planning, design, and governance of societal needs.
- This self-regulatory organizational form does not generate direct governance costs for the public administrations.
- Training could help stakeholders and administrative personnel to improve their performance.
- Collaborative governance arrangements are needed to spread ideas and innovative practices that meet sustainability challenges.
Green space in, or close to, metropolitan areas is increasingly recognized as an asset that provides a wide range of sustainability and health benefits to the urban population (Reed, 2007; Forster and Getz Escudero, 2014). Besides municipal parks, urban green space includes land used for agricultural and forestry production (Jongerden et al., 2014). These are “places that not only shelter species, but also carry knowledge and experiences about [the] practical management of biodiversity and ecosystem services” (Barthel et al., 2013). Such management can include the recovery of old wheat varieties (Wiskerke and Oerlemans, 2004), vegetables produced in allotment gardens (Barthel et al., 2010, 2013) or the provision of high quality compost and, thus, improved soil fertility (Foran et al., 2014).
In this paper we examine the position and strategies of self-governing forest associations as niche regimes that bring about viable transitions toward sustainability (Walker et al., 2004; Olsson et al., 2014; Westley et al., 2011; Seyfang and Haxeltine, 2012). The approach these associations adopt to reorganizing agro-food and agro-forestry systems can be explained by Williamson's causal model, in which political incentives (the organizational-institutional environment that generates the rules of the game) shape behavioral change (the institutions of governance, which influence how the game is played) and vice versa (Williamson, 1994). When this model is applied to natural resource management, the ‘rules of the game’ include both the physical and institutional factors which can make ‘playing the game’ easier or harder (Ostrom, 2005). The analysis and interpretation of the case study research on which this paper is based were developed within the EU-FP7 research project SUPURBFOOD (
In Galicia, an autonomous region in northwestern Spain, a large part of the natural environment is in hands of comuneiros (commoners): inhabitants of parishes who collectively own, decide about, and manage the common land. The small-scale character of this type of grassroots organization holds the potential for effective and sustainable co-production of multiple ecosystem services and the social services they provide, which are described in the next section. This is followed by a description of the research area and how the commoners are organized and the types of forest management that they adopt. We then analyze the community-based, innovative production of resource functionalities in terms of the provision of ecosystem services, sustainability and health benefits to the urban population, and discuss the somewhat blurred institutional boundaries of this type of natural resource management. Finally, we draw conclusions on how alternative modes of governance can sustain local agro-food and agroforestry systems.
THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF MULTIPLE ENVIRONMENTAL AND HEALTH BENEFITSStrategies to transform resource management to more sustainable pathways involve developing productive systems that are not solely orientated toward food production, but which also include other ecosystem services (ES), the direct and indirect contributions that the natural environment makes to human wellbeing and its own regeneration (TEEB, 2010). In addition to provisioning services (the production of food and fibers), these ESs include supporting services (the dispersal of nutrients and seeds and the maintenance of biodiversity), regulating services (erosion prevention, air quality regulation, climate control, and waste decomposition), and socio-cultural services (non-material benefits enjoyed by humans: recreational values, community building, and aesthetic qualities) (Bolund and Hunhammar, 1999; Sandhu et al., 2010). ESs are considered to contribute to climate mitigation and adaption, maintain or enhance biodiversity, increase environmental learning, and increase people's sense of place and stewardship (Andersson et al., 2007; Barthel et al., 2010; TEEB, 2010).
Until recently urban policies and practices have given little consideration to ecosystem services (Folke, 2006). To change this the UN-supported Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) urged the scientific community to work more closely with local decision-makers and engage the wider public in a drive to enhance the sustainability of present and future development, with a focus on urban settings. The MEA specifically focused on the need for collaborative governance that connects scientific assessment with public policies and grassroots involvement to more sustainably produce and maintain green (peri-) urban areas that provide multiple ecosystem services.
Williamson's model on the mutual interdependence of political incentives and behavioral change is characterized by an attempt to move beyond the conceptualizations of early sociologists on the dialectical and dualistic nature of relationships between structure (including societal rules, legislation) and people's agency (Berger and Luckmann, 1967; Giddens, 1984). It employs interface analysis (see also Long, 2001, 2015) to describe how individual behavior (endogenous preferences) and the rules and regulations in the institutional environment mutually influence and develop each other. When development is neo-endogenous, the institutions of governance (the ‘play of the game’) generate institutional changes, which affect (or require changes in) the governance structure in which exchanges take place (the ‘rules of the game’). This understanding shifts our emphasis away from focusing on the resource itself to focus instead on the actors involved, their capabilities to collectively manage communal resources and share the benefits, and to develop projects and activities that they expect to be of benefit to themselves, as a local community.
Roep and Wiskerke (2012) have documented mechanisms employed, in the private and public domains, for fostering reconnections between the natural environment and food consumption. Some of these have been interpreted in terms of common-pool resource management (Sandström, 2008; Colding and Barthel, 2013), which can usefully be understood through institutional theory (German and Keeler, 2010). This is especially true in cases where it is hard to exclude beneficiaries and the over-use of a resource system can diminish its value to everyone (Berkes et al., 1989; Ostrom, 2005). Understanding and describing common-pool resource management involves combining perspectives from anthropology and political economy, and recognizing that actors are embedded and situated “in numerous relations of interests and reciprocal commitments at different scales” (Saunders, 2014).
Forestry Resource Management in GaliciaIn Galicia, about 670,000 ha (out of a total of 2.9 million ha of land) are registered as common property (Fernández Leiceaga et al., 2006). Most of this area, which historically is mostly a part of the traditional agro-ecosystem (Bouhier, 1979; Balboa López, 1990; Soto, 2016), however, is underutilized or abandoned, i.e., there is no or hardly any extraction of any value from the commons (Cabana Iglesias et al., 2013). In non-coastal, rural areas with an aging and declining population, there is hardly any collective governance of the common land (Caballero, 2015). When this common land is used, it often provides limited returns on investments and the commoners extract little value, so there are limited incentives for collective action (Cabana Iglesias et al., 2013; Soto, 2016). Management options for the Galician commons are the use and/or transfer of land to a group of commoners (the community), to individual commoners, or to third parties to whom (although with limitations) the use of (part of the) land is transferred (Caballero, 2015). Legislation related to electricity plants based on biomass (e.g., Royal Decree 661/2007, Decree 149/2008 and adaptation to the laws on Monte 7/2012) indicate that future commons policy is likely to support further mono-forestation and industrialization of remote, rural, monte areas (areas between 200 and 700 m of altitude). The establishment of biomass plants or wind parks in these areas is legally and practically restricted to professional, entrepreneurial structures that have the knowledge to develop such industries and can access the necessary financial support to start these new businesses. Establishing such enterprises is, in most cases, beyond the capacity of communal landowners (Simón and Copena, 2012; Dominguez Garcia et al., 2014).
While many communal forestry resources are managed by formal public entities rather than the local community (Balboa López et al., 2013), Cabana Iglesias et al. (2013) and Soto (2016) have recently been studying communities that successfully self-govern their forest resources. They note that these communities are more usually located in coastal, more populated areas, and that their practical management and approaches to land use is oriented toward preserving biodiversity and other ecosystem services rather than toward industrial forestry production. They found examples where communities were diversifying forest activities (e.g., producing mushrooms, honey, or resin), recovering and preserving autochthonous forests (containing chestnut trees [Castanea sativa], oaks [Quercus robur], local cherry species, birch, willow, laurel, holly trees, and European rowan), and conserving the biodiverse fauna (e.g., autochthonous horse, cow, pig, and goat breeds). They also found that these types of land use provide other benefits to local residents and urban dwellers and, when successful implemented, provide an inspiration to others to take up ‘alternative’ natural resource management. This observation follows on from the suggestion of Barrett (2014), of the need to examine how collective societal modes of regulation can result in more local cohesion and a better integration of the functions and activities that sustain the socio-ecological system (see also Ostrom, 2009; Marshall, 2015).
Self-Governed Forest ResourcesFrom a social-constructivist perspective, the design of formal rules (belonging to the institutional environment) and the institutions of governance (locally implemented organizational forms and endogenous preferences) co-evolve (Williamson, 1994). This leads us to adopt a neo-institutional economic perspective to identify and interpret the ‘empirical’ functionalities of self-governed forest resources in Galicia.
This type of natural resource management relies on collaborative governance, which brings public and private stakeholders together (Ansell and Gash, 2007) and through which the exchange of production factors as well as the production of common-pool resources, public, private, and club (or toll) goods are efficiently allocated (Franks, 2010). These governance structures largely avoid free-rider issues since the users of the forest resources tend to use the natural environment more sustainably when they are responsible for designing and enforcing their own rules (Ostrom, 2000). Ostrom (2010) proposes that common-pool resources (in which she includes forests, water systems, fisheries, and the global atmosphere as they are resources that are of importance for human survival) share the attribute of subtractability (meaning that the use of a good or service by one individual will reduce its availability to others) with private goods, and share the difficulty of excludability with public goods (Table 1). Ostrom's four types of goods can have many subtypes. For example, common-pool resources might differ regarding the time scale for their regeneration, the number of users, etc. In other words common-pool resources can have different levels of excludability and subtractability. These levels can be modified when, for example, commoners decide to diversify the management of their communal forestry resources.
Table 1 Classification scheme of the different type of goods (with examples provided by the authors) (Ostrom, 2005).
Subtractability of use | Difficulty of excluding potential beneficiaries | Examples from the literature | |
Common-pool resources | high | high | irrigation systems, fishing grounds, pastures, forests |
Public goods | low | high | street lighting, national defense systems, fire protection, fresh air |
Private goods | high | low | food and fibers, biomass for energy production |
Toll goods | low | low | toll roads, cable TV, day care centers, private parks |
In Galicia, legal governance frameworks based on century-long traditions still provide the operational context for collective and community-based resource management. The Galician Montes Veciñais en Man Común (the common land) is formally privately owned (as opposed to under public state ownership), but in practice is owned and managed collectively by ‘comuneiros’ (commoners). These commoners are the inhabitants of a parish who have the right to be a member of the forest association, which owns and manages the common land located in the parish. The commoners are organized in a ‘Comunidade de Montes Veciñais en Man Común’ (CMVMC: Neighborhood Community for the Common Management of the Monte, hereafter referred to as an Association of the Commons). About 25% (670,000 ha) of the Galician territory (total of 2.9 million ha) consists of common land, and is owned and managed by a total of 2800 Associations of the Commons. These organizational entities meet the condition of “the control and management rights to resources [being] in the hands of an identifiable community or group of users that may craft their own institutions in resource management” (Colding and Barthel, 2013). Therefore these associations are (at least potentially) “systems of social arrangements that regulate the maintenance and consumption of natural resources” (ibid). These associations have the right to take decisions, which are made in assemblies that must comply with the statutes of the Associations of the Commons, the organizational rules and regulations defined by Law 13/1989 (Grupo de estudio de la propiedad comunal, 2004). This Law declares that commoners cannot sell the land, that it cannot be confiscated, and that it shall remain a commonly managed unit. These managerial units decide on the use of monte, traditionally a multifunctional mountainous zone covered by trees, bushes and scrub (Soto, 2014). Following Ostrom's framework (see Table 1) we can see that different activities imply different levels of excludability and subtractability. For example, while access to the common land could be limited to people from within the parish, people from outside the parish are usually also allowed access (for leisure purposes) as such use of monte by one individual does not substantially reduce its availability to others. Wood is more of a private good (whether for timber or a resource for energy production) and, although it has historically been cropped and reproduced rather than just extracted, is more subtractable and more excludable than leisure. Wood production tends to primarily benefit the inhabitants of the parish, rather than non-inhabitants. But since the return on investments (a percentage of the profit made through selling the wood produced in communal forestry resources) has to be reinvested in the common land, and the decisions on land use management are taken collectively, wood does not entirely meet the characteristics of a private good.
This shows that the functions of monte range from (largely) private goods such as forestry (timber and biomass production) and food production (land in use as pastures, for cereal or crop production and cattle breeding) to public goods (or goods in the public interest) such as biodiversity, aesthetic (landscape), and leisure. Yet these two strategically different types of assets are managed (van der Ploeg et al., 2012) through the same common mechanism: a shared set of rules which produces joint benefits. From this standpoint ‘sustainable land stewardship’ involves the provision, use, and management of ‘common goods’ (and services) that are useful to the inhabitants of the parish and to outsiders. The land use strategy that delivers this mixed bag of values is democratically decided on by the associations. In other words: the benefits improve the livelihoods and quality of life of the parishioners but produce co-benefits for non-locals.
‘Reinventing’ the CommonsThe phenomenon of citizens jointly deciding on the use of local green space is widespread in significant parts of the mountainous areas within the city-region of Vigo (Figure 1). Vigo city is the largest city in Galicia with around 300,000 inhabitants. The city-region has 14 municipalities and a total of about 480,000 inhabitants. While the urban food system is now dominated by large scale retail chains, there are still many smallholders producing vegetables and/or rearing small livestock in their kitchen gardens. Vigo is a relatively young and industrial city, and surrounded by ancient, rooted and traditional land ownership and management structures. There are approximately 100 Associations of the Commons in the city-region, managing in total 24,400 ha of common land. This represents around one third (32.5%) of the surface area of the city-region (Dominguez Garcia et al., 2015b).
This paper focuses on three of these Associations of the Commons, examining their management and production activities: those in Teis (with 43 members, 50 ha of common land, and 3 km from central Vigo), Coruxo (with 92 members, 342 ha of common land, and 5 km from central Vigo) and Vincios (with 162 members, 678 ha of common land, and 11 km from central Vigo). These associations were selected from a range of innovative grassroots initiatives in the city-region (Dominguez Garcia et al., 2013), and chosen because they are involved in ‘reinventing’ the commons and revalorizing monte, the value of which had been neglected for quite some time. The case study research follows a story-based approach (Kurtz, 2009), using formative evaluation of situations where there is a lack of empirical indicators, baseline measurements, or previously-identified programs. Such projects and activities often occur in complex and/or changing environments and in a context of long lag times (Vanclay, 2012).
The research included collecting data on the associations’ historical dynamics as well as their recent activities. Our primary data collection consisted of reviewing the internal reports and statistical sources relating to the three associations; carrying out five semi-structured interviews with prominent members (mainly presidents, secretaries, and technicians). The analysis was informed by lessons learned from two regional focus group meetings and two international seminars organized around the theme of closing nutrient and water cycles for the SUPURBFOOD research project (Dominguez Garcia et al., 2013; Dominguez Garcia et al., 2015a; Schmid et al., 2015; Swagemakers et al., 2015). In addition to the analysis of in-depth interviews, the opinions and perspectives of a wider range of actors from different realms of society (practitioners, small-scale entrepreneurs, local administration representatives, and NGO members) improved our understanding of the dynamics in the case study area. These interviewees were consulted in an early stage of the research project (Dominguez Garcia et al., 2013). The analysis of the data on the dynamics in the associations (their organizational structure, decision-making processes, and their concrete projects and activities) show that grassroots initiatives can be viable ‘shadow alternatives’, leading us to contest the notion of what Soto (2014), in clear allusion to Garret Harding's Tragedy of the Commons, refers to as the “inefficiency of commons in ensuring the sustainability of natural resources” (1968).
FINDINGSThe innovative management and production activities of the Associations of the Commons in Teis, Coruxo, and Vincios are grounded in the coordinating capacities of dynamic actors who are looking to use the common land for more than just wood production. In Galicia, wood production mostly consists of Pinus pinaster and Eucalyptus globulus tree plantations (Caballero, 2015). During Franco's dictatorship common land was expropriated but from the 1980s onward it was returned to its former owners (see Dominguez Garcia and Soto, 2012; Soto, 2014; Caballero, 2015). The three Associations of the Commons in the city-region of Vigo were all re-established in the 1990s. The three associations manage the land under the Galician Law of Monte and the precepts of the Associations of the Commons, which stipulate that annual assemblies take the decisions about land use management and how the benefits derived from projects and activities are to be reinvested and distributed. By law, at least 40% of the annual turnover has to be reinvested in land management and improvement. In the case of the three associations, the money earned from forestry activities (including eucalyptus plantations) and additional income sources are used to launch projects and activities that contribute to providing multiple sustainability and health benefits to the parishioners and society at large. This provision of goods and services goes well beyond the minimum requirements set by the Law. The main characteristics of the three associations are summarized in Table 2. The associations share a common and firm commitment toward advancing toward a more resilient agroforestry system, in which water and nutrient cycles are optimized and the returns on investments (the benefits of land use) go to local dwellers.
Table 2 Characteristics of the three Associations of the Commons†.
Source: Data derived from own field research.
Comunidade de Montes Veciñais en Man Común or ‘Association of the Commons’.
Social-Ecological FunctionsSince the beginning of this millennium, the Association of the Commons in Vincios has committed itself to promoting and improving the natural environment as a pre-condition for maintaining economic and social profits. In response to the negative effects of mono-forestry (Montalvo and Casaleiro, 2008) it is developing projects and activities that encourage the multi-functionality of the common land, projects and activities that combine forestry, agriculture, stockbreeding, hunting, and leisure functions, and preserve the common land's natural, cultural, and historical functions (Dominguez Garcia et al., 2014). The provision of quality (food) products, the production of biodiversity, and leisure functions all go hand in hand. The association also promotes projects that foster social development in the area such as the creation of a meeting room and a website (CMVMC Vincios, 2013). These platforms are used to explain the history and (natural and archeological) features of the common land, which further contributes to establishing sustainable land stewardship. It is also seeking to improve soil fertility, while reducing the risk of forest fires and keeping the land productive. A pilot project on closing nutrient cycles through removing scrubland as well as clearing up plantations, and thinning and pruning trees which, when turned into compost will improve the soil fertility of the marginal, mountainous land. This has the potential to enhance the sustainability of food and forestry production in the city-region. In addition to being used to improve the monte, it is hoped that, if the biomass plant would be working at full capacity in the future, it will be able to supply compost to the inhabitants of the parish as a payment in kind and possibly even to supply regional markets. The plan for this quality compost scheme could also benefit many traditional kitchen gardens, the recently established community gardens in the city of Vigo, and commercial horticultural production in Vigo's urban fringe.
The Association of the Commons in Teis designs and develops projects and activities aimed at promoting biodiversity and giving city dwellers access to a newly planted autochthonous forest. Since 1998 the association has been replanting endogenous species and (re)creating natural habitats for (rare) species. With hard work from its members, employees, and volunteers, much of the Black Acacia (Acacia melanoxylum) has been removed from the association's terrain. Over 25 ha have been reforested with local tree varieties, which provide forest fruits and harbor mushrooms and the old trails through the communal forest have been cleared and reopened. The fight against invasive non-native tree species demands a continual effort: without human intervention the acacia and eucalyptus trees would outcompete the newly planted trees, which are far more resistant to, and slow the spread of, forest fires, which are common in eucalyptus plantations in Galicia. They also make for a more attractive landscape than eucalyptus monocultures. Wild pigs and also genets (Genetta genetta), the latter of which disappeared over the past 70 yr, have gradually returned to the area. Silted up creeks in the area have been cleaned out, improving water availability, leading to the rediscovery of a rare salamander species (Píntega rabilonga), which had not been recorded in this area for many years.
These environmental improvements go hand in hand with the association's social components. To achieve its objectives, the Association of the Commons in Teis has collaborated with Greenpeace and has an ongoing collaboration with the local ecological group ‘Fontaiña’. Occasionally, the Association of the Commons receives groups; schools, other regional Associations of the Commons, and people facing social exclusion are included in its daily activities. For example, 20 to 25 drug addicts and alcoholics guided by ‘Alborada’ (civil association combatting drug addiction and organizing social incorporation of drug addicts) plant trees, and maintain forest tracks and learn how to prune and to use machinery. They, other volunteers, and the few (currently two) contracted, seasonal workers contribute to maintaining and managing an urban green infrastructure, protecting and improving it for the present and especially coming generations living within the parish and around.
Socioeconomic FunctionsAround 3 ha of the common land managed by Teis were expropriated to construct a highway (the AP-9) around the city and they were financially compensated for this loss, which provided them with a useful source of working capital. The association has received occasional financial support from other donors (La Caixa Bank paid to recover the creek in a hilly, ecologically sensitive area, Greenpeace for replanting the first 1.5 ha of land and 5–6 yr of maintenance) and some funding from public institutions (the Galician regional government has contributed significantly to its recovery projects, paying for replanting 3 ha below high tension cables, and for replanting 10 ha with oak, cherry, and birch trees). Additionally, the Association of the Commons rents out land, and plans to cut and sell the remaining pine trees (which currently occupy about 30% of the forest) in the future. The association reinvests 75% of its annual turnover in land use management (especially in new tree plantations but also in forest fruit and honey production), an expression of its commitment to ecological land management and the recovery of ethnographic patrimony. The forest renovation occasionally generates employment, with Teis, the smallest association, reinvesting relatively more in environmental management, mostly in machines and forestry personnel, than the other two associations.
In Vincios, a large part of the budget for projects and activities is derived from renting out land the Association of the Commons owns in the valley, which is connected to an excellent road infrastructure, to industries. The association reinvests around 65% of its annual income into its different land use projects, and (as in the other communities) the remainder is distributed among the inhabitants of the parish.
The association in Coruxo has an agreement with Vigo's public administration to run facilities to process the city's green waste. They have acquired a bio-shredder which recycles 4000 tons of green waste per annum. This arrangement is in the mutual interest of the community and the municipality. It provides an income source for the association, and allows the municipality of Vigo to meet EU regulations on recycling green waste, as it did not have a site available for recycling green waste from municipality gardens, professional gardeners and private households. The material is collected and brought to the ‘Punto Verde’ (green waste facility) of the community, where it is chopped and then sold as biomass fuel to Ence, Spain's largest producer of forest and agrarian biomass-based renewable energy.
The association in Coruxo plans to combine cuttings and thinnings from its own 342 ha of common forestry land and the stream of municipal green waste to produce pressed sawdust. They hope to be able to work with other communities to produce a viable quantity for heating public buildings (swimming pools, cultural centers, hospitals, jails, etc.). This will allow it to keep its monte area clean, while enhancing the productivity of the bio-shredder. It has been estimated that the scheme, which will produce pellets and compost, could result in a “quite profitable income source that would create 8 direct jobs, and between 10 and 15 indirect jobs related to the transportation of the wood and management of the installation” (personal comment, president of the association).
For the moment there are two obstacles that need overcoming: acquiring permission from the municipality to expand the site and, more importantly and difficultly, attracting sufficient financing, estimated to be in the region of 400,000 Euro. They are currently looking for investors (entrepreneurs) and institutional support from the ICO (Official Credit Institute) and the Xunta de Galicia (the regional government). At present the future of the project remains uncertain, and could take years to enlarge.
Relations with Governmental AuthoritiesIn general the local and regional administrations are not very supportive of the associations and offer little structural support for their attempts to develop local projects and activities. Although the association in Coruxo received support for developing its bio-shredder, its proposals to expand the installation have not been supported as there are competing proposals from other business interests who want to build larger infrastructure and to take over the association's task of collecting green urban waste, and the local government is reluctant to support this small-scale initiative. The association in Teis received compensation for the area that it lost for highway construction but is having to fight against other ongoing land use claims (for football fields and the expansion of Vigo's zoological garden) and the prospect of high-tension power lines being installed across the common land. Apart from financial support for projects the association does not receive financial support for maintaining and improving the diversity of the native forest that surrounds the zoo and enhances its setting. Similarly it has not received financial support for organizing environmental education at local schools except for a single magazine on the quality of the natural habitats in its communal forest.
There are plans to build a wind farm on the common land at Vincios and this is a constraint on the commoners’ own plans for developing the area, the more so since landowners in Galicia hardly see any of the monetary benefits of wind farms (Simón and Copena, 2012). The association has protested strongly against this project, the benefits of which will flow elsewhere, and organizes an annual protest march to highlight the situation.
Increased Sense of Place and StewardshipIn Teis, the maintenance and management of urban green infrastructure and the desire to protect and improve these spaces for the current and coming generations has lead the association to collaborate with local schools. The association provides educational excursions and lectures for both elementary and secondary schools to stimulate local children's appreciation and understanding of their local natural environment. These activities (catalyzed by ‘Plan Comunitario de Teis’: a social organization whose mission includes providing environmental education within school curricula) try to instill a sense of place, and teach the pupils about past and present land stewardship practices. Such educational activities, also pursued to a lesser extent and differently in Vincios, aim to increase awareness among future generations about the importance of sustainably managing green spaces.
DISCUSSIONThese case studies exhibit how the commoners use rules and regulations to manage their common-pool resources (‘the rules of the game’, including physical and institutional factors), and find ways to engage with, or circumvent, local and regional administrations when organizing resource use (‘the play of the game’: the strategy of shadow alternatives). In this interplay sustainable resource management is achieved by endogenous organizational forms: locally created rules, local knowledge, and preferences (Agrawal, 2007). The common land provides wood, but more importantly, a wide range of other food and non-food products: including the range of ecosystem and social services described in the ‘Findings’ section of this article. The story-based evaluations of the three cases show community actors can, given the opportunity, effectively govern their resource base (Ostrom, 2010; Agrawal, 2007).
While markets are appropriate for determining the supply and demand of private goods such as food, fibers, and timber, they generally fail to provide public goods, such as aesthetic landscape features, or ecological habitats. The public character of these non-subtractable and non-excludable kinds of services means that the market has little interest in providing them. Where markets fail, public policies have a role to play, sometimes in combination with private mechanisms. The case study research exhibits how the provisioning of non-subtractable goods and services is being sustained and enhanced in Galicia's self-governed communal forests, by associations that are employing a form of governance that allows the local citizenry to collectively use and benefit from the surrounding natural resources.
This type of common-pool resource management is a cost-effective way of provisioning ecosystem services. Policy support could further enhance these efforts. The ideas and practices of these associations could be more widely spread if governmental representatives were to consider the projects and activities as a starting point for further revalorizing common natural assets.
The Grassroots Development of Urban Green SpacesThe case study research illustrates how the joint provisioning of ecosystem services and the production of food, fiber, and forestry is anchored in collective self-governance (collective decision making and action) of communal forest resources. Although such common-pool resources are characterized by the difficulty of excluding potential beneficiaries and a high subtractability, the free-rider problem and, beyond thinking in terms of extraction solely, also underinvestment in the resource base are largely avoided through the parishioners’ involvement in the management of the resource. In addition the generation of local knowledge on sustainable resource management, through the implementation of concrete projects and activities, translates into environmental learning, and an increased sense of place and stewardship among parishioners as well as urban dwellers.
In Vincios some local entrepreneurs are beginning to make a living from the communal forest resource through small-scale activities such as cattle breeding and forest fruit production. One of the (trial) projects in Vincios involves producing compost. While this project is currently feasible it has proved difficult to up-scale it, so its full potential has not yet been realized (Dominguez Garcia et al., 2014). In Teis, replanting activities, income from rentals, and the selling of wood from forest maintenance provides some temporary jobs but the association does not prioritize generating income, as its investments are limited to enhancing the autochthonous character of the forest, which brings a wide range of ‘intangible’ benefits to the commoners and urban dwellers in terms of improving ecosystem services, wildlife habitat, and the landscape.
In Coruxo, the commoners combine the maintenance of the communal forest resource with running a green waste facility, which, as in Vincios, they would like to expand. However, they lack the knowledge and resources to expand this project so it could have a broader impact.
While this paper has focused on Associations of the Commons, there are also other organizational forms, (such as neighborhood associations, citizen platforms, and consumer and producer cooperatives) that can become involved in the sustainable management of agro-food and agroforestry systems. Rural depopulation, resource abandonment, and the loss of traditional and context-specific knowledge all provide good reasons for local and regional governmental institutions to support local citizens and groups working to combat these challenges and enhance the natural resource base. Urban, peri-urban and local food production, the closing of ecological cycles, and enhancing environmental services should all be on the urban political agenda. Policies to support grassroots development of urban green spaces need to focus on helping citizen's groups that are engaged in sustainably managing the natural environment in and around cities to develop innovative entrepreneurial strategies and provide them with the resources to experiment with ideas and develop the successful ones. The active engagement of local actors in environmental management not only enhances environmental quality, ecological cohesion, and recreational opportunities, but also, potentially, generates new business opportunities.
CONCLUDING REMARKSIn this paper we have envisioned and analyzed the use and management of common land in Galicia as a form of common-pool resource management. It is a practice in which local rural dwellers, comuneiros (commoners) in the city-region of Vigo collectively manage urban green spaces. They build agroforestry systems, restore or replant native forests, improve accessibility, generate resources from otherwise wasted biomass, and reintroduce small-scale animal husbandry and other forest-resource based activities (honey, forest fruits, mushrooms, etc.). These projects and activities benefit the local natural environment and community, and provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including social benefits. They also have the potential to be part of a more sustainable agro-food system. Our research illustrates that forest associations hold the potential to revitalize the monte, introducing new products and services and revalorizing existing ones, to contribute to a revitalization of urban food systems and improve the delivery of multiple sustainability and health benefits.
We have focused here on the organizational and institutional aspects of commoners developing their communal forest resources and their diverse objectives and activities. Future research could focus on why commoners revalorize the common land in certain ways, how collective decision-making works in practice, the factors that encourage and inhibit stakeholder involvement, the vertical and horizontal linkages between stakeholders, as well as the potential business opportunities for such Associations, together with the constraints they encounter.
AcknowledgmentsThe writing of this paper and much of the data collection was made possible by financial support provided by the ‘Plan Galego de Investigación, innovación e crecemento 2011–2015’ and the project ‘POS-B/2016/028’ of the Xunta de Galicia. The case study research has been carried out in the context of the research project ‘SUPURBFOOD’, which has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development, and demonstration under grant agreement no 312126. The authors would like to thank those who participated in regional meetings, stakeholder interviews, and international seminars for providing comments and suggestions about the direction this research should take. We thank our colleagues for providing comments on earlier drafts of this paper, the anonymous referees for their comments that helped us to further improve this, and Nicholas Parrott (TextualHealing.eu) for English language editing and editorial advice in the final stage of writing. Responsibility for the views and the argumentation provided in this paper remains with the authors.
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Abstract
Continuing urbanization means that city regions face challenges of development, governance, and sustainability. One of these challenges relates to the management of urban green space, whether municipal parks, forests, or productive land (animal husbandry, vegetable or fruit production). This paper draws on case study research of forestry associations in Galicia. We pay specific attention to the role of comuneiros (commoners): parishioners, who collectively own and manage often‐neglected green spaces: planting or rejuvenating forests of native species to enhance ecological services (water retention, fire prevention, biodiversity) while also including productive functions such as forest fruit production and small‐scale animal husbandry. At the same time these activities create social benefits. With the aim of examining the position and strategies of self‐governing forest organizations, we explore the organizational‐institutional environment of the commons and how this facilitates (and/or obstructs) the objective of providing multiple sustainable and health benefits within the parishes, between them, and to nearby urban residents. We conclude that this particular type of management of urban green space provides products (food and non‐food) and services which are not only of private interest in that they create potential new business opportunities but also of high public value.
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1 Dep. of Applied Economics IV, Complutense Univ. of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
2 Dep. of Applied Economics, Univ. of Vigo, Campus Universitario As Lagoas, Ourense, Spain
3 Dep. of Socio‐Economic Sciences, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Frick, Switzerland