UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Does Privatization Protect Natural Resources? Property Rights and Forests in Guatemala

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.1111/1540-6237.00079

Authors

Clark C. Gibson · Fabrice Lehoucq · John T. Williams

Reported year

2002

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:11:06.530112+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-09T19:11:06.530112+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas · University of California San Diego · University of California, Riverside

Documentary abstract — original language

Objectives. Property rights are central to debates about natural resource policy. Governments traditionally have been seen as the appropriate custodians of natural resources for their citizens. More recently, many argue the privatization of property rights will ensure that users have incentives to manage their resources well. Common property, to the extent it is discussed at all, is seen as leading to the tragedy of the commons. We evaluate these claims by assessing property rights and forest conditions in two private and three communal forests in Guatemala. Methods. Data on biological and social phenomena from five forests (151 plots) and their associated communities were collected using the International Forestry Resources and Institutions Research Program protocols. Ordinary least squares regression was used to analyze four models. We examined t‐scores for differences in coefficients for the different models. Results. The models demonstrate that de jure property rights are not a powerful predictor of variations among the sampled forests. Conclusions. We argue that de facto institutions and their enforcement are much more important than de jure property rights to forest management. Communities holding a forest in common can, under certain circumstances, create institutions to manage their resources as successfully as—or more successfully than—private owners.

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W2149109484

DOI

10.1111/1540-6237.00079

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

article

Jurisdictions studied — explicit sources

GT

Natural entities mentioned

Forest

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6237.00079
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W2149109484

Documented bibliographic relations

Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.

• openalex:w1502333371 · CITES
• openalex:w1518863864 · CITES
• openalex:w1534690736 · CITES
• openalex:w1586539437 · CITES
• openalex:w1591973477 · CITES
• openalex:w1600429647 · CITES
• openalex:w1989449066 · CITES
• In pursuit of comparable concepts and data about collective action · CITES
• openalex:w2037627831 · CITES
• openalex:w2058160626 · CITES
• openalex:w2093690680 · CITES
• openalex:w2121969052 · CITES
• openalex:w2126334589 · CITES
• openalex:w2175723801 · CITES
• openalex:w2226396244 · CITES
• openalex:w2322954663 · CITES
• openalex:w2324656367 · CITES
• openalex:w2797479941 · CITES
• openalex:w2797953464 · CITES
• openalex:w3020988452 · CITES

21 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

This identity is not yet included in the Legal Library.