Beyond commoning: building nested institutions for rural sustainability

Abstract

Prevailing trends of industrialization and urbanization pose grave threats to rural resources. They give rise to multifaceted management challenges which neither self-governance institutions nor government policies are able to solve. We apply the institutional perspective to examine how these approaches have failed while the characteristics of rural resources have evolved. Our analysis is based upon a longitudinal study on the dynamics and changes experienced by a village in Hong Kong over the past seven decades. Major sources of data include secondary records on contextual developments, and empirical evidence consisting of indepth interviews with indigenous villagers, participant and non-participant observations, and archival documents. Traditionally, the village’s natural resources were managed as a commons. A commons, developed by Elinor Ostrom from studying how common-pool resources are managed in localised contexts, is a working order constituting a resource, a community and a management arrangement. Focusing on the village’s water and land as the two critical natural resources, we find that while the commons approach used to be largely effective, contemporary circumstances have rendered them null. Meanwhile, state efforts made to fill this void have been rigid and failed to recognize local needs. Revitalization efforts targeted at the village have crafted an array of institutions by reinventing previous approaches, and structuring them in a nested fashion. The efforts were made as part of a revitalization programme that is recognized by the UNDP as a successful example of local, nature-based solutions to sustainable development. We argue that since village resources have become more intertwined with broader social and economic development, conflicting interests and goals inevitably occur at different scales and levels between an expanding range of stakeholders. The building of a coherent set of institutions to match the scope of issues emerging at different administrative or operational levels, therefore, becomes crucial. Whilst social and economic boundaries that used to surround villages are disintegrating, we urge researchers to apply the institutional lens to the study of rural sustainability issues. Practitioners are also encouraged to consider the applicability of nested institutional structure in the management of resources in other rural contexts.