Resource Tenure and Sustainable Land Management — Case Studies from Northern Vietnam and Northern Thailand

Property rights regimes can have a significant impact on the use of natural resources, especially land, forests, pastures and water. The literature identifies many environmental problems such as soil degradation and forest depletion as a result of incomplete, inconsistent or poorly enforced property rights (Bromley and Cernea, 1989; Feder and Feeny, 1991; Kirk, 1999). Gordon (1954) and Hardin (1968) claimed that under common property regimes, natural resources would be prone to overexploitation because the costs of negative externalities like pollution of water or overgrazing of pastures are borne by the community as a whole, whereas the potential benefits accrue to the individual. The general interpretation of these theorems in many Southeast Asian countries was that collective ownership was the culprit for forest destruction, land degradation and water pollution and that private property or control by state authority was crucial to sustain natural resources (Chalamwong and Feder, 1985; Narkwiboonwong et al., 1994). However, a growing amount of empirical evidence suggests that sustaining environmental resources does not primarily depend on whether the property rights regimes are based on states, communities or individuals, but rather on a well-specified property rights regime that is congruent with its ecological and social context (Ostrom, 1990 and 2001; Bromley, 1991).