infonet-economy

Since the 2000s, facing the increasing globalization and commodification of common-pool resources, community-based organizations managing water and forests at the local scale started to create transnational networks. Their main goal is to get a direct representation in international decision-making arenas, as to promote their model of community-based governance and transform existing norms. Two main strategies to impact the norm-building process are the reframing of the resources essence (from market goods to human rights or commons…) and the claim on appropriate scales of governance for these resources (local, regional, global…). In this global context, to what extent the reframing of water and forests essence by transnational community-based networks impacts their respective scales of governance? The paper aims to answer this interrogation using transnational political sociology and discourse analysis. The analysis relies on two case studies: the Latin-American Confederation of Community Organizations for Water Services and Sanitation (CLOCSAS), and the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests (AMPB). From one side, CLOCSAS is framing water as a global common and a universal human right, in order to become an alternative international expert on water issues. Distinctively, AMPB is framing forests as collective territorial rights, in order to differentiate from technical international experts, such as UN-REDD. Finally, the objective of this paper is to highlight the influence of framing strategies, used by transnational community-based networks, on the definition of what are the appropriate scales of governance for common-pool resources.