Abstract In southern India, tens of thousands of village-level irrigation systems (‘tanks’ and feeder channels) are in disrepair. This paper analyses the results of a local NGO effort that focused on awareness-raising and advice to bring about self-sus- tained community action for irrigation system restoration. After designing a model structure that contains both motivational and capacity (social capital) factors, it is found that (pre-existing) collective social capital, as measured through five simple indicators, strongly correlates with success of the NGO strategy. The intensity of the NGO’s effort shows a negative correlation with success, however. The discussion focuses on issues of social capital definition and measurement and the practical implications of the concept for environmental action, especially the difference be- tween using existing social capital for environmental management versus the con- struction of social capital as a basis for later self-sustained environmental work. Keywords Collective action Æ Common property resource Æ Environmental restoration Æ India Æ Irrigation Æ Social capital 1 Introduction Even though Adam Smith recognized that capital comprises all the ‘‘productive abilities’’ of human groups, it is not until recent that the term capital may refer to more than financial and physical stocks (Inkeles, 2000). At present, the concept of Readers should send their comments on this paper to BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue. W. T. De Groot Æ H. Tadepally Centre for the Sustainable Management of Resources, Faculty of Science, Radboud University, P.O. Box 9010, 6500 Nijmegen, The Netherlands W. T. De Groot (&) Æ H. Tadepally Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9518, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: degroot@cml.leidenuniv.nl 123 Environ Dev Sustain (2008) 10:519–536 DOI 10.1007/s10668-006-9078-8 ORIGINAL PAPER Community action for environmental restoration: a case study on collective social capital in India Wouter T. De Groot Æ Haranath Tadepally Received: 19 April 2006 / Accepted: 4 September 2006 / Published online: 29 December 2006 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006