Question

state and explain the characteristics of resources​

Answer 1

Answer:

Two characteristics of outputs are important in creating incentives for how a resource is managed. The first characteristic is the feasibility of exclusion and the second characteristic is the nature of consumption.

Explanation:

Forest resources and their outputs: Goods and services

First it is important to distinguish between the resource itself and the outputs of the resource. Trees and bushes, whether in a forest, on fields, in hedgerows or in gardens, are resources. These resources may be thought of as 'production plants' or factories that can generate various goods and services. The goods produced by a tree or forest resource can include such diverse items as fuelwood, construction materials, food for humans and animals, and raw materials for rope or medicines. Tree and forest resources can also produce services such as providing shade, protecting against soil and water erosion, producing green manure and nutrient pumping, storing water and providing habitats for wildlife and fish.

It is often not useful to speak generally of the characteristics of the resource. This is because each of its outputs will have different characteristics in terms of the analytic categories suggested below. It makes better sense to identify the output in question (fruit, fuelwood, shade) and then to consider its characteristics and the incentives that they create for managing the output in one way or another.

Resource characteristics

Two characteristics of outputs are important in creating incentives for how a resource is managed. The first characteristic is the feasibility of exclusion and the second characteristic is the nature of consumption.

Feasibility of exclusion is a term used to indicate whether it is easy or difficult to control access to a good or service. For any good or service it will be easier (higher feasibility of exclusion) or harder (lower feasibility of exclusion) for someone to keep other users from gaining access to the output. It may be relatively easy for individual farmers to keep strangers away from a single valuable mango tree in their compound. They and the members of their family can watch it and, if necessary, build a thorn fence around it. Maman found it considerably harder to control access to his gawo trees. The trees were not in sight of his compound and it would have been prohibitively expensive to fence the entire field. The problem of controlling access is often very difficult in the case of community forests or woodlots that are on the periphery of village lands and are sometimes shared by several villages. In cases such as these one would say that the feasibility of exclusion is low.

Determining the Feasibility of Exclusion

In determining the feasibility of exclusion it is useful to consider certain factors:

· Can the resource be seen and easily monitored (at low cost, with little or no extra effort) by the owner (s)?

· How far away is the resource?

· Can unauthorized users easily gain access to the output or do they need special tools or knowledge?

· Can the resource be fenced at a cost people can afford?

The feasibility of exclusion will vary according to the output and may change seasonally. It may be easier to control access to honey, which requires specialized skills to harvest, than to fruits, which can be collected from the ground by any passerby. It may be easier to control wood cutting in a community forest during the hunting season when many people are in the forest and can watch out for illegal cutting than during the rainy season when people are occupied in their fields.

The feasibility of exclusion has an important impact on people's incentives to care for a resource. In general, the more feasible it is to control access, the more the rights-holders feel that they have tenure security. That is, people believe that they will be able to gain the benefits of their property. When people feel that their tenure rights are secure, they are generally more willing to invest in improvements in the resource. In many cases, then, a higher feasibility of exclusion is associated with stronger incentives to nurture, protect and invest in a particular resource. In Maman's case, during the time that he felt that he was secure in his tenure and believed that he would gain the benefits of the gawo trees he had planted, he was willing to invest a lot of time and energy in the trees. Once he realized that he could not keep other people out of his field and therefore risked losing the benefits of the trees, he gave up, deciding that it was no longer worth the effort.

A second important characteristic of the resource is called the nature of consumption. The nature of consumption refers to whether the consumption of the good is subtractive or joint.