272-284 Aswani.p65

INTRODUCTION The relationship between growth in population and consumption and common-pool resources, particularly those that are governed under common-property institutions, has been the subject of lively academic debate. Researchers have long dwelled upon the global demographic transition and its effect on land-tenure and inheritance practices in different regions of the world. Boserup postulated in 1965 (1) that as population increases, and as peasants intensify agricultural production, land holdings are transformed from communal to private forms of tenure. Resource economists and demographers routinely argue that growth in population, and increases in migration and consumption, hasten the collapse of traditional common-property institutions and result in resource degradation (2–4). This proposition has met with numerous critics who argue that, under certain conditions, common-property institutions can be robust enough to withstand demographic, economic, and political changes, and mitigate collective action problems (5–7). " Common property, " as understood by these authors, entails a bounded set of resources that are claimed, used, and/or owned by an identifiable community of resource users. Entitlement holders have either formal or informal rights to resources and maintain regulations that translate their property rights into practice (8). Of course, each common-property regime is historically situated and unique. These regimes contrast with the " open-access commons, " by which we mean property that no one owns, or situations in which people cannot be excluded from access-ing and harvesting resources, even to the point of exhausting