The Emergence of New Commons Community and Multi-Level Governance in the Ecuadorian Coast

The emergence of 'new commons' poses theoretical challenges that require empirical efforts and in-depth case studies. Three years of ethnographic work at an Ecuadorian coastal community brings us to propose the emergence of a new commons, historically born from an unstructured group of inhabitants, and refunded as a community seemingly able to convert a degraded socio-ecological system into a more sustainable configuration. To understand this process, we study how institutions and rules developed for the environmental management of strategic common pool resources (CPRs), transforming human-environment relationships. This socio-ecosystem constitutes a co-managed multi-level system of governance, developed through a community building process and a particular community based tourism model. Its analysis suggests that the balanced development of different levels of management with a firm base at the community level bringing into play new CPRs, can be key factors for the emergence of new commons.