The Maturation of Common‐Pool Resources Management (2002)

Protecting the Commons: a Framework for Resource Management in the Americas. Burger, J., Ostrom, E., Norgaard, R. B., Policansky, D., and Goldstein, B. D. , editors . 2001 . Island Press , Covelo, California, and Washington, D.C . 360 pp. $60.00 (hardcover) . ISBN 1-55963-737-4 . $30.00 (paperback). ISBN 1-55963-738-2 For the better part of 30 years, theories underlying policies governing the use and conservation of common-pool resources (CPRs), such as forests, watersheds, rangelands, and fisheries, have been based on the “tragedy of the commons” parable, popularized by Garrett Hardin ( 1968). Hardin used the example of a pasture to which cattle herders have open access—a common pasture. Each herder receives a direct benefit from placing an animal on the pasture, whereas the costs for degrading the pasture are shared by all the herders. Due to this skewed benefit-cost ratio, all herders have the incentive to put as many cattle on the pasture as they can. Herders who use self-restraint and reduce their herd size will only lose out to other herders who will correspondingly increase their herd. Putting more animals on the pasture is the rational choice, yet the impending result is the degradation of the common pasture. For Hardin, “therein lies the tragedy.” By rationally seeking their own benefits, each herder inadvertently contributes to the demise of all—hardly a rational outcome. The tragedy of the commons has become a metaphor applied to all problems relating to natural-resource degradation. Like Hardin, many voices call for “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon,” which has been taken to mean creating a third-party authority whose primary role is to control access to the CPR, monitor rules of individual behavior, and punish those who violate those rules. An alternative interpretation is put forward by those who wish to minimize government regulation: assign and enforce private property rights over the commons. In this view, each individual property-right owner will have the incentive to protect from abuse her or his share of the common resource because it is solely her or his to use. If the share is depleted, the individual must purchase access rights to others' shares. The edited volume Protecting the Commons: a Framework for Resource Management in the Americas is another addition to a growing CPR literature which looks beyond government control or private property rights as the only ways to protect CPRs. This increasingly crowded bookshelf prompted me to consider whether the book adds value to the existing literature. The answer is a qualified “yes,” depending upon one's familiarity with the CPR literature and one's sophistication in deliberating about the protection of natural resources held in common. Elinor Ostrom, one of the leading CPR scholars in the world, leads things off by describing the tragedy of the commons and how its lessons have led advocates to turn control of CPRs over to either the government or private property rights. Ostrom has made a career of studying common-pool resource problems and is widely regarded as one of the seminal scholars in the field. Given that Ostrom has had ample practice, it is not surprising that the chapter provides both a good primer on CPR governance, including variables, consistent across CPR field-study findings and a summary of “design principles” for long-enduring, self-governing CPRs. For Ostrom and other longtime CPR scholars, self-governance of CPRs is an alternative that recurs in field case studies throughout the world. In such case studies, resource users have been able to avert the tragedy so direly predicted by Hardin by crafting self-governing rules, monitoring mechanisms, and punishments that rely neither on government control nor individually assigned property rights. The key variables and design principles of self-governing CPR conservation institutions amount to the foundations of an empirically based general theory of CPR governance—in contrast to conventional theories that draw heavily upon the assumptions, axioms, and predictions from the tragedy-of-the-commons parable. However, this general theory still leaves unanswered two major theoretical puzzles that relate both to the common-pool resources themselves and CPR users: size and heterogeneity. Many of the case studies on long-enduring, self-governing CPR arrangements focus on single resources that are small in spatial scale and relatively predictable over time. Further, these case studies also tend to involve a small number of homogeneous resource users. Protecting the Commons explores the development and endurance of self-governing CPR arrangements across local, regional or cross-boundary, and global common-pool resources. As the spatial scale of the CPR increases, the heterogeneity of resources and resource users increases, whereas the predictability of those resources and users decreases over time. The cases presented in each section—appropriately titled local commons, regional commons, and global commons—caution against the optimistic findings of small-scale CPRs involving a small number of homogeneous users. In this way, by raising tough questions, the book provides a necessary progress check on the development of a general theory of CPR governance. The four case studies presented in the local-commons section vary from CPR institutions in rural Mexico and forest resource management in Guatemala to elk-herd management in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and artisanal fisheries issues in Brazil. The cases from Mexico ( Jose Sarukhan and Jorge Larson), Guatemala (Clark C. Gibson ), and Brazil (Alpina Begossi ) highlight kinship relationships and other local community connections as central to crafting and enforcing self-governing rules among CPR users, thereby forestalling the tragedy of the commons. In all of these cases, however, external forces may eventually compromise the sustainability of these self-governing rules. External forces include efforts by state and national governments to impose resource-management policies, free-trade agreements, and an increasing rate of immigration from urban areas. By contrast, author Tim W. Clark contends that the involvement of state and national governments in elk management in Jackson Hole has confounded efforts of local interests and communities to arrive at enduring rules of governance. The absence of community-based efforts to deal with elk-management issues ensures continued conflict between state and national authorities, and among interest groups aligned with each authority. As CPRs span legal and administrative boundaries, CPR governance arrangements become more complicated. The four cases presented in the section on regional and cross-boundary commons describe how CPR governance tends to involve a mix between local institutional arrangements and government intervention. Intervention is necessary to enforce limits on access and use quotas among users who are more dispersed and therefore do not communicate or develop relationships of trust. In addition, the resources themselves become more variable and subject to change by forces beyond human control. For example, Edella Schlager and William Blomquist describe how governance of water-resource allocation and management in the southwestern United States involves multiple local water users and state governments. Sustaining the flow of the Colorado River from Colorado to California has necessitated numerous interstate compacts and coordinated management agreements to ensure adequate surface flow and groundwater resources. Similar local user-government arrangements are necessary to avoid depletion of commercial and recreational fisheries. As David Policansky writes, fisheries are perhaps the most challenging CPRs to manage because of the mobile and therefore unpredictable nature of the resource. For commercial fishers who may cross several jurisdictional boundaries, quotas are necessary and are enforced by government authorities. Recreational fisheries are managed through a combination of licensing fees, permits to control access, and designated fishing seasons, all of which rely on government authority. Bonnie J. McCoy provides a different perspective on fisheries management, maintaining that government control needs to be balanced by community-based and cooperative arrangements. Such arrangements are most effective for “stay-put” resource users who can monitor one another's behavior and develop shared values. This mixed approach is also examined by Joanna Burger in the context of protecting coastal resources from the effects of multiple uses, especially personal watercraft. In a case focusing on New Jersey's coast, several institutional mechanisms have been developed to control access, limit use, and enforce violators. Laws and regulations provide the bottom-line enforcement, whereas community-based education and consensus building among multiple users and interests work toward forestalling regulatory action. As in all cases involving regional or cross-boundary commons, the presence of a large number of CPR users and interests adds complexity to the issue. The effectiveness of local, self-governing arrangements to prevent “free-riders”—users not party to any local governance agreements—requires government intervention. Protecting global CPRs poses cooperation and enforcement problems with which local and regional commons do not have to grapple, namely, the lack of a superordinate authority that can enforce rules and punish violators. Any efforts to protect global CPRs such as the earth's atmosphere depend solely on cooperation among national governments. The atmospheric commons is examined by John Harrison and Pamela Matson, who describe the relative progress made through international agreements such as reductions in chlorofluorocarbons and in long-range, transboundary air pollution in the 1980s. Recent efforts to limit and reduce greenhouse gases are more challenging. The 1998 Buenos Aires Conference of Parties and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol do not contain binding targets for greenhouse-gas emissions. Even if participating nations ratify the treaties, there are no guarantees of compliance because there are no mechanisms for enforcement. Moreover, reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions comes down to individual behavior. This is where major problems arise because the general public's lack of knowledge, coupled with the lack of immediate consequences for everyday behavior, compromise international emissions-reduction efforts. No one entity regulates the atmosphere, so no one entity can enforce rules of behavior. Scientific uncertainty at the global scale perpetuates the lack of coordinated, enforceable action. This is especially the case when atmospheric contaminants result in threats to human health, as John P. Middaugh contends is occurring in the Arctic. Inconclusive and often conflicting scientific studies have delayed public health efforts. Furthermore, the science that is available is not easily digested by indigenous communities in the Arctic. Much of the atmospheric research focuses on effects on the ozone layer, not necessarily effects on human health. Compensating for inadequate and inappropriate feedback mechanisms to assist indigenous Arctic communities requires the scientific community to expand its efforts to account for human health. Protecting the commons, then, has consequences for future ecological sustainability and human health. But how well will human health be provided for in the twenty-first century? Michael Gochfeld and colleagues investigate medical care as a commons, not unlike a fishery resource. Medical care in the United States fits the provisional definitions of a CPR because of issues related to access and subtractability of the resource (use of the resource diminishes the quality and opportunities for subsequent users). The current system of managed-care plans, primary-care providers, employers, patients, and government regulators has evolved over time to address problems of access and quality of care. At the core of the system are incentives that are inequitable and limit quality treatments. The supply of medical care—unlike the supply of a fishery—is not an immediate issue because there will always be medical schools and medical-school graduates. But the future of the medical-care commons relies on distributing more power to patients, taking power away from managed-care plans, and creating financial and regulatory incentives for managed-care providers to improve access and quality. Unfortunately, the government is itself a purchaser and provider of medical care. Alternatives do exist, but they may require new institutional arrangements to ration access and install oversight over quality. Such arrangements rest on the formation of equitable partnerships between managed-care providers and government regulators. The final section of Protecting the Commons emphasizes decision-support tools. Two are highlighted, one analytical in nature and the other related to social justice. Computer-assisted geographic information systems (GIS) have amplified the analytical power of scientists, managers, and users of CPRs. Multiple influences can be modeled and critically examined in order to determine possible futures. Jeffrey E. Richey uses the example of a large-scale watershed analysis in which various GIS tools and models were used to forecast potential effects of land and resource development in the Puget Sound region of western Washington state. As anyone knows who has worked with GIS (or any computer-assisted analytical model ), predictive power depends on high-quality data. On a completely different note, Michel Gelobter elaborates on social justice as a decision-support tool, the key notion being that sustaining common-pool resources requires attention to inequitable distribution of access, resources, wealth, and power at all scales. In most parts of the globe, unsustainable resource use is driven by persistent poverty, which in turn is perpetuated by existing inequities of power and wealth. Interventions to protect CPRs often maintain these inequities. The decision-making processes that develop these interventions are themselves common-pool resources—what Gelobter calls “social pool resources”—that face familiar problems of access, subtractability, abuse, and degradation. More important, intergenerational equity issues are rarely adequately addressed because of the incentive for current generations to discount primarily short-term costs and benefits. Gelobter goes on to examine social-justice issues related to air pollution at local, national, and global scales, pointing out that communities and regions with the highest levels of atmospheric pollutants happen to be those of low- income and ethnic minorities. The author also describes how efforts to mitigate global warming are skewed by wealthy developed nations, there- by shifting burdens onto lesser-developed countries. A lengthy summary of this book is necessary because the theory and methods underlying research into common-pool resources is quickly gaining prominence in natural-resource policy studies. Analyzing CPRs is an inherently interdisciplinary task, requiring analysts to be well-versed in environmental as well as social and policy sciences. But marketing Protecting the Commons as “a framework for resource management in the Americas” seems a bit misleading. The goal of the book is to explore the theoretical puzzles left unanswered by earlier CPR research, size and heterogeneity. As strong as this book is on description, it falls short on insights into the most interesting theme cutting across the case studies, that of scale. The scale problem is common to both the natural and the social sciences, but the social sciences have not openly and concertedly confronted scale as diligently as have biologists and ecologists. Protecting the Commons could have been the perfect opportunity to set the direction for future inquiry, thereby fulfilling its promise of a “framework for resource management.” Instead, the reader is left with a few simple messages. One is that protecting CPRs through local, self-governing institutions needs to be mixed with government regulation at regional, national, and international scales. A second is that CPR protection requires more attention at larger scales of the resource. Although these are important observations, they are a bit ungratifying. The book's lead authors could have brought some focus to the overarching intent of CPR scholars, which is to develop a more general theory of CPR governance. Pointing out that “scale matters” is a first step. How scale matters in the study and design of collective-action institutions in CPR management is a logical next step. Even brief reference to emerging perspectives could spark the imagination of the enterprising reader, such as the explorations on “polycentricity” in which Ostrom, among others, has taken part ( McGinnis 1999, 2000 ). Briefly, polycentricity refers to the idea that many public-policy domains lie at the intersection of diverse authorities and organizations—many centers of action and authority. No one entity can completely encompass the scale and complexity of any one of these domains, but through coordination and development of intermediary institutions, the efforts of each entity can contribute to solving the problem. Linking polycentricity to CPR protection and management can be a productive means of further exploring the scale problem. A secondary quibble I have with the book is with the quality of the writing and the resulting flow of the book. Edited volumes tend to be disjointed, leaving the burden of keeping things straight to the reader. Protecting the Commons is no exception. Some case studies were populated with figures, tables, and maps, reading more like a journal manuscript or thesis chapter. Others were purely descriptive. The lack of a common format made for challenging reading. Several chapters were disorganized and needed more thorough editing. Finally, all contributing authors are responsible for tying their chapter in with the broader themes of the edited volume; in this case, few did. Summary chapters at the end of each section would have been most useful. Protecting the Commons is a good primer on the concepts underlying CPR analysis and an adequate description of how broadly it can be applied. For this reason, the book could be used in a first-year graduate seminar. The book should not, however, be read as a stand-alone piece for students interested in exploring CPR problems in depth. For these students, Protecting the Commons should be preceded by more seminal works such as Governing the Commons (Ostrom 1990 ), Making the Commons Work ( Bromley 1992 ), and Common Property and Management ( ). Protecting the Commons in theoretical is made for in these The of CPR and action is the over self-governing CPRs is a more approach to more such as and Protecting the Commons is and in the social and of protecting and common-pool resources and biologists seeking to protect natural resources solely through government regulation could a from the social in CPR research because degradation of natural systems a degradation in social For this reason, government control and regulation is to protect or resources. efforts must be coupled with efforts to social institutions across local, regional, national, and international scales. This will require further of the natural and social sciences the has been