We examine the efficiency, distributional, and environmental consequences of assigning spatial property rights to part of a spatially-connected natural resource, a situation which we refer to as partial enclosure of the commons. The model reflects on a large class of institutions and natural resources for which complete enclosure by a sole owner may be desirable, but is often institutionally impractical.

This themed issue of Land Use Policy builds on the papers presented at an international symposium entitled Social Dimensions of Market-based Instruments, convened by the Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia, in November 2010. The symposium set out to review the extent to which market-based instruments were being employed as social policy tools in various contexts, what challenges achieving relevant social policy objectives posed, what trade-offs arose between environmental, social and economic objectives, and whether and how tensions could be resolved.

Mangroves are an imperilled biome whose protection and restoration through payments for ecosystem services (PES) can contribute to improved livelihoods, climate mitigation and adaptation. Interviews with resource users in three Solomon Islands villages suggest a strong reliance upon mangrove goods for subsistence and cash, particularly for firewood, food and building materials. Village-derived economic data indicates a minimum annual subsistence value from mangroves of US$ 345–1501 per household.

The Sundarbans Mangrove Forest (SMF) is the world's largest mangrove forest and it provides livelihoods to 3.5 million forest-dependent people in coastal Bangladesh. The first study aim was to analyse the efficacy of the state property regime in managing the forest through a close examination of the relationship between property rights and mangrove conservation practices. The second study aim was to explore forest-dependent communities' (FDCs) perceptions about their participation in management and conservation practices.

This paper uses three-generation retrospective data from the rural Philippines toexamine the role of the extended family, proxied by alternative measures ofgrandparent coresidence, on investments in children. An extension of the wealthmodel of intergenerational transfers shows that extended family resources may affecttransfers to children if parents are credit constrained. Family-level unobservables areimportant in determining the allocation of education and land between sons anddaughters. Both parent and grandparent pre-marriage wealth affect children’scompleted schooling levels.

Local governance based on institutions for collective action can help overcome social dilemmas in natural and agricultural resource management. A common path towards local governance is decentralisation, and within this context, a transfer of property rights from central government to local resource users. Yet, despite the successes of many decentralisation policies, the phenomenon of elite capture remains a risk. Our paper investigates elite capture in Albania’s Lake Ohrid fishing region. We aim to contribute to the state of knowledge by identifying determinants for elite capture.

The paper looks at the institutional and policy reforms in the context of sources and uses of water. Although the reform measures have been specific about surface water, there still is ambiguity on the groundwater situation in India. The reforms have failed to de-link the conventional linkages between right to land and right to (ground) water. Most policy reforms have been in response to the emerging crisis of water allocation, use and management.

Co‐management (Co‐M), defined as the sharing of management tasks and responsibilities between governments and local users, is emerging as a powerful institutional arrangement to redress fisheries paradigm failures, yet long‐term assessments of its performance are lacking. A comparative analysis of five small‐scale Latin American shellfisheries was conducted to identify factors suggesting success and failure.

In many developing countries, people rely on natural resources for subsistence and cash income. The trade ban on species listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List may be counter-productive, as increasing the rarity and thus price of these species acts as a stimulus to illegal markets rather than a deterrent. Since illegal markets cannot have legal property rights, there is no basis for any form of sustainable harvesting based on property rights.

Several Southeast Asian states have been working feverishly to design and implement REDD policy frameworks to fulfil their commitment to global climate change mitigation. In doing so, state agencies will be challenged to design REDD plus policies that value and conserve forest carbon in ways that align with national policies and local priorities for managing forest landscapes defined by complex property rights regimes.

Decentralizing property rights from state control to user communities has encouraged people’s participation in forest management. Relatively few studies, however, examine the forest regulations required for exercising such property rights. To address this issue, Schlager and Ostrom’s ‘bundle of rights’ framework was used to examine various forms of property rights and regulations in three systems of community-based forest management.