Information sharing for natural resources management

Renewable natural resources shared by competitive actors who have a common interest in the preservation of the resource undergo strong pressure that can undermine the resilience of the resource and the social-ecological system as a whole. These classical social dilemmas can take the form of pollution, free-riding etc. In this preliminary work we study a little considered approach so far in this context: information, and more specifically argument, sharing among actors. We investigate this possible approach with multi-agent simulation. First, we model the system as it is and second, we introduce an information sharing system. In parallel, we study its implementation in an actual socio-ecological system: the Thau basin in the South of France. Information being a somewhat abstract concept, we investigate the use of argumentation theory in multi-agent settings to help actors express a collective viewpoint, fostering dialogue and mutual understanding that would trickle into their daily management, participating in the resilience of the system. 1 A social dilemma in a social-ecological system The Thau basin in the South of France is the center of two economic activities: oyster and wine farming. Wine growers and oyster farmers have different (and sometimes conflicting) interests. These two categories of actors are geographically organized in a downstream / upstream manner, the actions of the wine producers having an effect on the oysters production. The practices of the wine growers, notably the use of fertilizers, are noxious for the oyster production. Indeed, depending on the climate and complex hydrological processes, the fertilizers can flow into the water which is the working area of the downstream actors. The oyster farmers have to bear the cost of what can be considered as an externality for the upstream actors. Moreover there is a feedback effect: pollution damages the global image of the region. Consumers are thus less prone to buy products from the area. A possible consequence is that the prices of the products (both oyster and wine) drop, affecting all producers. This situation produces a social dilemma where some actors that try to maximize their short term interests produce effects at the macro scale that are contrary to their own interest. Such feedback effect may not be known by the wine growers. Some classical problems of common good management are here present: free-riding (actors 2 Nicolas Paget, Gabriella Pigozzi, and Olivier Barreteau that use too much fertilizers without bearing the cost of the externalities) and pollution leading to a tragedy of the commons [6]. Free-riding occurs when it is not possible to exclude an agent from taking advantage of the improvements in a system even though she has not beared the costs of such improvements, or when an agent can act in a way that is profitable for her but damageable for the rest of the group. Local regulatory institutes control the pollution in the area, check that farmers respect the levels of fertilizers allowed, and can sanction agents that do not respect the norms. This situation fits in the framework developed by Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom, the social-ecological system (SES) framework [10]. She showed that the analysis developed in [6] refers to a specific situation where agents are completely independent from each other, and their interaction limited to the use of the same resource. For tragedies to be avoided it is necessary (but not sufficient) to fulfill some conditions [9], which consist partly in strengthening the links between actors. It has been argued that information sharing could represent a solution to the problem. 2 Information sharing The implementation of a participative information sharing system may strengthen the links between agents that depend on the same resource, rise their awareness about the state of the resource which, in turn, is supposed to increase their sense of responsibility. However, one of the main risen questions is the possibility that the information sharing system itself may be subject to a second order dilemma: free riding problems again, as often highlighted in the knowledge management literature. Indeed, actors could be tempted to take advantage of information given by others (which is time-consuming and costly) without bothering to participate. Even worse, they may participate, but provide false or inaccurate information. However, proposing information sharing tools to stakeholders is considered as an avenue to ease social dilemmas, with stakeholders providing and using this information in their own actions regarding the common good: knowledge sharing is supposed to make explicit tacit knowledge [8], repeated interactions build trust and increase cooperation [10].