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Abstract:The sharp increase in the price and production of quinoa between 1990 and 2014 has had important impacts in Bolivia's southern Altiplano region, previously considered one of the poorest regions in the country. The socio-economic status of most inhabitants improved significantly as a result of the "quinoa boom". However, it also caused severe disturbances in socio-ecological systems and posed challenges to resource governance by traditional indigenous institutions. This article focuses on the role of farmer cooperatives, in particular, and examines how their production rules may have mitigated some of the challenges associated with the quinoa boom. We assess the activities of cooperatives with the help of Elinor Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and analytic tools such as the ADICO grammar (Attribute, Deontic, aIm, Condition, Or else) and the eight design principles. The key production rules of cooperatives are examined and compliance with these rules is estimated based on semi-structured interviews and a survey conducted with quinoa producers How are cooperatives contributing to governance of natural resources? 403 (n=305). We argue that the cooperatives successfully contributed to alleviate pressures on resources in a context where traditional authorities were challenged by new tasks associated with land grabbing and the crowding out of diversified agricultural activities. In conclusion, we argue that collaboration between traditional authorities and farmer cooperatives holds great potential for improving the governance and sustainability of socio-ecological systems in the region.

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The Argentinian Dry Chaco has suffered from very high deforestation rates in the last decades, and forest degradation remains an important issue. This study examines the adoption of sustainable silvopastoral practices by smallholder households in the Chaco. Data for the study were collected from 393 families in two municipalities of the Province of Salta. We used multivariate probit (MVP) models to assess land users' decision to adopt three management practices. We show that socio-economic factors (household assets, number of animals), human and social capital (literacy, affiliation with a producer organization), as well as access to financial resources (credit) determine adoption. Secured land tenure also increases the likelihood of adoption, but not as much as we initially hypothesized. We discuss how certain specificities of the area, including difficulties accessing land titles and pressure from the agro-industry, as well as the characteristics of the resource itself -forest grazing areas, some shared by multiple families -might explain this unexpectedly low influence of land tenure on the adoption of sustainable silvopastoral practices.

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