ABSTRACT
Introduction A central component of local resource management is finding sustainable ways of sharing natural resources. Most rural communities in the developing world depend to a higher or lesser extent on common resources: the entire livelihood of many pastoral communities, for example, is contingent on jointly used pastures (Lane, 1998); other groups obtain their income from private plots of land or from salaried work, but nevertheless share essential resources such as water and firewood (Dasgupta, 1996). Occasionally, the destruction of common resources might be beneficial for its users, but in the large majority of cases, rural communities suffer dramatic losses when this happens. Yet, the conservation of common resources can be very problematic.
