Enhancing Resource Management in Socio-Ecological Systems: Modeling Collective Conditionality in Rural Policies

The collective approach toward natural resource management in agriculture is increasingly gaining attention, by both the literature and policy makers. In the thesis I analyse the implementation of collective approaches in rural policies aimed at natural resource management. More specifically, I analyse how two design elements of this type of policies, collective conditionality constraints and subsidy levels, affect the 1) emergence of cooperation among farmers and 2) the distribution of the benefits. In the analyses I address the effect of these policies in a range of situations, namely in case the action subsidized by policy is a public good, a club good, or only a private cost (and thus cooperation is purely linked to the implementation of the policy). The distributional effect is addressed only in the club good case. The results show that indeed the proper use of collective conditionality constraints associated to subsidies can improve the cooperation of farmers and thus leading to more effective agri-environmental policies. It seems that the collective approach for natural resource management is a strategy that deserves higher attention and policy effort. However, it should not be taken lightly or naively implemented, as the "sophistication" of mechanisms also increases the scope for unexpected policy outcomes. A more aware implementation of such strategy also requires a greater, inter-disciplinary, effort for research, towards a proper understanding of actual effects of real life policy options and coordination mechanisms.