Institutions and Common Property Resource Management

Common Property Resources

Common Property Resources are natural resources collectively managed by a community or society, not individuals.

The Fishing Game Simulation

A fishing game simulation involves small groups representing fishing villages dependent on a shared lake containing an initial population of 20 fish. Each fisher can catch between 1 and 4 fish per round without communicating with others. The remaining fish reproduce at a rate of 50% per round (rounding down). The goal is to maximize personal gain (number of fish collected). The number of remaining fish is counted after each round.

The Collapse of Atlantic Cod Stocks

The collapse of Atlantic cod stocks off the East Coast of Newfoundland in 1992 illustrates the consequences of overfishing.

Gordon's Argument (1954)

Gordon (1954) argued that resources left unused today might not be available tomorrow, implying that individuals will exploit resources if they are not assured of future access.

Key Topics

• Definition of common property resources.

• Critique of the 'Tragedy of the Commons'.

• Elinor Ostrom's empirical evidence for collective resource management.

Tragedy of the Commons

Garret Hardin (1968) used a hypothetical example of common grazing land to illustrate the concept of the 'Tragedy of the Commons'. He proposed that users acting in their self-interest would overuse resources to their own benefit, leading to depletion.

The Problem with Metaphors

The Tragedy of the Commons is often used as a metaphor. It suggests that unregulated shared resources, like an open pasture, will inevitably be overgrazed when each owner increases their herd to maximize individual benefit. This concept is applicable to environmental, economic, and social phenomena, like greenhouse gas regulation related to global warming.

Hardin's Proposed Solutions

• Privatization: Converting common property into non-common property.

• Strict Top-Down Rules: Enforcement by an environmental super-police state.

Alternative Perspectives

Smith (1981) argued for privatization of resources to avoid the tragedy of the commons. Ophuls (1973) argued for strong state control with coercive power for environmental protection.

However, the question arises: How do you privatize resources like fish? And have all common-property regimes led to tragedy? No.

Open Access vs. Common Property

• Open Access (Res nullius): A resource anyone can use without restriction, lacking clear ownership rights or management rules.

• Common Property Regimes (Res communes): Resources are collectively held and managed.

Open access often leads to overuse and depletion. Common property regimes can devolve into open access if local institutions are dismantled.

Complex Ecological Systems

Fisheries, forests, rangelands, and irrigation systems are complex ecological systems difficult to divide into individual units of ownership. Anthropologists, geographers, and historians have documented successful collective management of such systems worldwide.

Collective Resource Management

Empirical examples demonstrate successful long-term collectively managed resources. Common pool resources are commonly held properties (res communes), not unowned (res nullius). Failure of collective management indicates failures in the specific rules governing collective property.

Examples of Successful Communal Resource Management (Ostrom, 1990)

• Communal tenure in high mountain meadows and forests (Switzerland).

• Irrigation communities (Philippines).

Communal Tenure in High Mountain Meadows in Vispertal, Switzerland

• Documented by Netting (1972).

• Private resources: gardens and cropping land.

• Communal resources: summer grazing lands, forests, paths, and roads.

• Boundaries established since 1224, with grazing regulations since 1507 via the 'wintering law' or 'cow right': 'no farmer can send more cows to the alp than they can feed during the winter'.

• Cheese production on the alp determines the amount each family gets at the end of summer.

• The village votes on the alp association (local legal entity managing the alp).

• The alp association hires staff, imposes fines for misuse, and organizes annual maintenance work.

Zanjera Irrigation Communities in the Philippines

• Earliest documentations range back to 1630.

• Small-scale communities of irrigators determine their own rules, choose officials, and maintain canals.

• Farmers construct new canals for a share of the produce from the newly irrigated land while landowners retain ownership.

• Each participant gets one atar (use-right associated with labor to maintain canals).

• Productive and less productive land is shared equally.

• In scarcity, the zanjera association re-allocates irrigation water and redistributes shares of productive parcels.

• More stable and better maintained than expert-built systems.

Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012)

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work on institutions to collectively govern the commons, challenging the conventional wisdom by demonstrating how local property can be successfully managed by local commons without central authority regulation or privatization.

Ostrom argued for crafting new and better rules rather than dividing the commons into private segments or imposing strong central authority (Ostrom 1990, 1992, Ostrom et al. 1993).

Institutions

Rules and norms governing collective action, especially regarding common property environmental resources such as rivers, oceans, or the atmosphere.

Ostrom’s 8 Principles

1. Clearly Defined Boundaries: Define who has access to the resource.

2. Congruence Between Rules and Local Conditions: Rules should fit local needs and ecology.

3. Collective-Choice Arrangements: Users participate in rule-making.

4. Monitoring: Users or designated monitors track resource use.

5. Graduated Sanctions: Penalties for rule-breaking increase progressively.

6. Conflict Resolution Mechanisms: Accessible ways to resolve disputes.

7. Minimal Recognition of Rights to Organize: Governments must respect local management.

8. Nested Enterprises: Larger commons require multi-level governance.

Institutional Challenges

Examples include fisheries management in Zambia and rainforest use in Bolivia.

Fisheries Management in Zambia

• Colonial/national state power shifted fish from common property to state property.

• Erosion of local fishery management replaced by dysfunctional state management due to lack of funding.

• Powerful actors fish for urban markets, leading to fisheries collapse.

• Protected areas exclude local fishing, exacerbating food insecurity.

Crafting Local Rules and Institutions

• New bylaws, sanctions, and locally legitimised resource managers.

• Empowering local actors to have a sense of ownership in the institution-building process.

• Dealing with asymmetric power relations (women without formal education, autochthonous minorities) to avoid local elite governance.

• Broadening focus on health and gender issues.

• Alternative to apolitical approach to conservation.

Institutions for Resource Management in the Bolivian Amazon

• Forced evictions of indigenous families for protected areas.

• Confiscation of subsistence hunting and fishing, heavy fines, and prison sentences.

Institutional Shopping

Indigenous users strategically employ arguments of conservation, indigeneity, or long-term occupation to legitimize their claims based on the chosen institution. Results highlight the importance of ideologies and bargaining power in shaping the interaction of individuals and institutions. Strengths of different frameworks may be combined to build robust institutions from the bottom up, adapted to the local context.

Factors for Success and Failure of Commons Management

Failures

• Socio-economic change.

• Powerful actors/uneven power relations.

• State control dismantling local institutions without replacing them with adequate new institutions.

Successes

• Clearly defined boundaries.

• Proportionality: costs should match benefits.

• Rules are made collectively by users.

• Monitoring systems are in place.

• Sanctions must be in place to punish violators.

• There must be conflict resolution mechanisms.

• The system must have autonomy.

Global Commons

Vexing environmental problems where costs are borne collectively, and individual sacrifices/costs lead to collective benefits.

While local common pool resources have successfully been managed, global common pool resources remain challenging.

Solutions

Instead of a single global authority, Ostrom proposed