Title:
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Structural social capital and local-level forest governance: do they inter-relate? A mushroom permit case in Catalonia
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Author:
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Górriz Mifsud, Elena; Secco, Laura; Da Re, Riccardo; Pisani, Elena; Bonet Lledos, José Antonio
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Notes:
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In diffuse forest uses, like non-timber forest products' harvesting, the behavioural alignment of pickers is
crucial for avoiding a “tragedy of the commons”. Moreover, the introduction of policy tools such as a
harvest permit system may help in keeping the activity under control. Besides the official enforcement,
pickers' engagement may also derive from the perceived legitimate decision of forest managers and the
community pressure to behave according to the shared values.
Framed within the social capital theory, this paper examines three types of relations of rural communities
in a protected area in Catalonia (Spain) where a system of mushroom picking permits was
recently introduced. Through social network analysis, we explore structural changes in relations within
the policy network across the policy conception, design and implementation phases. We then test
whether social links of the pickers' community relate to influential members of the policy network.
Lastly, we assess whether pickers' bonding and bridging structures affect the rate of permit uptake.
Our results show that the high degree of acceptance could be explained by an adequate consideration
of pickers' preferences within the decision-making group: local pickers show proximity to members of
the policy network with medium-high influence during the three policy phases. The policy network also
evolves, with some members emerging as key actors during certain phases. Significant differences are
found in pickers' relations among and across the involved municipalities following an urban-rural
gradient. A preliminary relation is found between social structures and differential pickers' engagement.
These results illustrate a case of positive social capital backing policy design and, probably, also
implementation. This calls for a meticulous design of forest policy networks with respect to communities
of affected forest users.
This study has been conducted within the EU FP7 project StarTree (grant agreement No. 311919), with a visit covered by COST Action FP1203 (Non-Wood Forest Products). Funding acknowledgement also to CERCA programme (CTFC) and Serra-Hunter fellowship (J.A. Bonet) of the Catalonian government. |
Subject(s):
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-Social capital -Non-wood forest product -Forest policy -Networked governance |
Rights:
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(c) Elsevier Ltd, 2016
info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
Document type:
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article publishedVersion |
Published by:
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Elsevier
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