Property rights specify the different types of claims one has to a resource by specifying what one can and cannot do and what one is entitled to. They determine long-term incentives to invest in, sustain, and improve resources. Certain types of property rights can serve as collateral for facilitating credit transactions. Depending on their distribution, property rights shape patterns of equality and inequality with respect to resource access. The spatial scale of many natural resources and their accompanying technologies often mean that resources can be managed more effectively by groups of people.
Examples are forests, rangelands, extensive waterways and irrigation systems.
Aside from productivity considerations, collective action by multiple resource users can also enable a more equitable distribution of resource benefits. However, collective action also requires voluntary adherence to a common set of rules and coordinated contributions by its participants. The success of collective action will therefore depend on the incentives in place to evoke and sustain it. The collaborative effort aims to produce coherent frameworks, research methodologies, and rigorous, cross-comparable case studies that enable the development of locally relevant policies and institutions, as well as internationally generalizable lessons. The overarching goal of CAPRi is to contribute to policies and practices that alleviate rural poverty by analyzing and disseminating knowledge on the ways collective action and property rights institutions influence the efficiency, equity, and sustainability of natural resource use.