Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Global Environmental Change journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gloenvcha Research paper The influence of community-based resource management institutions on adaptation capacity: A large-n study of farmer responses to climate and global market disturbances Sergio Villamayor-Tomas a,c, ⁎ , Gustavo García-López b,c a Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Building Z Campus UAB 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola), Barcelona, Spain b Escuela Graduada de Planificación, Universidad de Puerto Rico, San Juan, 00925, Puerto Rico c Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, 513 N. Park Ave., 47408, Bloomington, IN, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Adaptation capacity Community-based natural resource management Institutional analysis Ejido Water user associations Mexico ABSTRACT An underlying understanding among adaptation and community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) scholars is the existence of important feedbacks between local resource management institutions and individual adaptive capacity. The relationship between CBNRM and individual adaptive capacity is of global concern given the ubiquity of CBNRM worldwide, the patent impacts of global changes at local levels, and the recent calls for the integration of climate and rural development policies. So far, however, there have not been formal, large-n studies of that relationship. This study aims to fill that gap by testing whether the performance of community- based water management institutions and communal land regimes have an impact on the effectiveness of farmers’ adaptation responses to climatic and global market disturbances. For this purpose, the study relies on a unique dataset of individual and collective features obtained from water user associations (WUAs) and ejidos in Mexico. According to the regression results, well-functioning community-based water management institutions have a positive and significant impact on individual farmers’ self-reported response effectiveness. The impact of communal land property is also significant but negative. These effects, which hold only in the context of climate disturbances but not market disturbances, can be explained by looking at the support given by the associations to farmers, and issues of communal land marginalization, respectively. Policies that strengthen the autonomy and capacity for cooperation of WUAs and ameliorate structural deficits in communal land regimes shall not only guarantee a long-advocated path for rural development but also help farmers deal with some of the climatic uncertainties that increasingly threaten agriculture. 1. Introduction Agriculture worldwide is increasingly exposed to a wide range of climatic and socio-economic pressures, including droughts, floods and plagues, input and crop price volatility and competition over land and water resources (Feola et al., 2015). This has raised concerns about meeting human demands for water and food (Godfray et al., 2010), and given rise to a substantial scholarship on farmer adaptation. A good number of adaptation scholars have focused on the factors that explain the willingness and capacity of individual farmers’ to respond to cli- mate change and variability (Feola et al., 2015; Eakin et al., 2006, 2014; Pradhan et al., 2015). Community-based natural resource man- agement (CBNRM) scholars, on the other hand, have focused on un- derstanding the capacity of local resource-dependent communities to manage their shared resources cooperatively, and on how socio-ecolo- gical disturbances impact that capacity and shape collective adapta- tions (Anderies et al., 2004; Fleischman et al., 2010; Cox, 2014; Villamayor-Tomas, 2014). An underlying understanding among authors from both traditions is the existence of important feedbacks between CBNRM and individual adaptive capacity (Adger, 2003; Murtinho and Hayes, 2011; Armitage, 2005; Tompkins and Adger, 2004; Adger et al., 2005). The relationship between CBNRM and individual adaptive ca- pacity is of global concern given the ubiquity of CBNRM worldwide, the patent impacts of global changes at local levels, and the recent calls for the integration of climate and rural development policies (Eakin et al., 2014; Klein et al., 2005). So far, however, there have not been formal, large-n tests of that relationship. This paper aims to address that gap by looking at farmers’ responses http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.10.002 Received 10 May 2017; Received in revised form 29 August 2017; Accepted 12 October 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Building Z Campus UAB 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola), Barcelona, Spain. E-mail address: villamayortomas@gmail.com (S. Villamayor-Tomas). Global Environmental Change 47 (2017) 153–166 0959-3780/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK