Cooperative watershed management in Haiti: common property and collective action

The first objective of the research described in this article was to gain a greater understanding of the factors associated with a person's choice to cooperate or defect in the collective watershed management activity. The second objective was to investigate the effect of resource scale and variable heterogeneity on the emergence of the collective watershed management institutions. Why was there a high degree of cooperation in some watersheds and not in others? It is shown individuals within and beyond the watersheds flocked to cooperate in the new collective activity. The cooperative watershed management effort represented an opportunity for wealth and reciprocated labour investments. Short-term land tenure arrangements and others characterized as "insecure' by outsiders did not hinder the installation of either the soil conservation practices or the adoption of the watershed management activity. Different levels of net gain, watershed and landholder heterogeneity will result in different institutional formations. Resource management can be achieved despite watershed and landholder diversity. -from Authors