Challenges to proponents of common property recource systems: Despairing voices from the social forests of Zimbabwe

There is a fair degree of misplaced optimism about common property resource (CPR) management. In investigating common property issues for woodlands in communal areas in Zimbabwe, we are struck by the numerous case studies sho wing a breakdown of local institutions for CPR management, and the lack of any emerging alternative institutions for such management. There are a numb er of contributing economic, social and ecological factors to this phenomen on. We argue that the formal rule-based systems that form the cornerstones of the proposed CPR systems are far removed from the current institutional systems, rooted in norm-based controls. We suggest that advocacy of CPR sys tems has to be tempered with critical analysis. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science L td. All rights reserved.