Individual Principles for Long Enduring Common Pool Resources
An Introduction
It has been over a decade since I finalized my thesis as part of a Master of Natural Resource Management and Ecological Engineering (MNRMEE) program at Lincoln University outside of Christchurch, New Zealand. My qualitative thesis research focused on something called common pool resources (CPRs) through the lens of the late researcher, Dr. Elinor Ostrom. CPRs might be familiar to those of us who have read or are aware of the classic 1968 paper in Science by Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons. Although there is little agreement between Hardin and I on a variety of his conclusions, he highlighted a good question in regard to our incentives for extracting or using natural resources.
Imagine for a moment there is one large field which farmers might use to graze their cattle, but it is owned collectively (or perhaps not at all). In the absence of any rules or agreements, what might stop each farmer with access to the field from overgrazing to suit their own herds? After all, if they don’t graze their herds, another farmer will.
“Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit – in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.” - Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons
This concept might be seen more readily in commercial fisheries where multiple countries and rogue actors harvest fish from areas beyond any political boundaries. Ever heard of the Grand Banks? Another example, perhaps more relevant to the audience of Afield Notes, would be unregulated (market) hunting. What would happen if the North American Wildlife Conservation Model collapsed? How many deer would you take during the year? Would you keep counting the amount of drake mallards you shot?
Where Hardin poses a question, Ostrom’s research offers solutions beyond the poles of full privatization or coercive regulation. In other words, how can we maintain our shared natural resources without our government coercing us and without billionaires buying up the all the land and keeping it all for themselves? Ostrom gathered together what she found to be the primary characteristics of well-managed natural resources, from fisheries to forestry, from West to East, into eight “Design principles for long-enduring CPR institutions.” A disclaimer: I do not have the capacity to make this new exploration of these principles anything near the academic level of a thesis. I say this because I’ve done it before and I’m not doing it again. So, let’s call it an exploration… with Elinor Ostrom as the inspiration. If you’d like to learn more about Ostrom’s research and dive into the published literature and updated principles, I suggest starting here.
Where Ostrom looked into collective action, policy, rule making, and other higher levels of community involvement, my intent with this new series of perspectival writing is to use Ostrom’s rules as inspiration for how I, you, we, as individuals, can think about interacting with our natural resources. But what about that fertilized carpet of a golf course my neighbor calls a lawn? What about my hunting tags on Public Land? We’ll get there… but we can’t stay there. It’s true we ought to think deeply about the way our institutions are designed and run, but more pressing in today’s world, and perhaps more pressing in all worlds, is what we as individuals do and how we think and behave, no matter what the current legal framework says. I’ve worked in conservation for years, there are more laws and rules than you can imagine. We need something else, we need a relationship with our natural resources that relies less on external forces to maintain it. Our world is our responsibility, each individual at a time. Regulators aren’t coming to save us, neither is Wall Street. Our social, political, and spiritual lives are nested within one another and we cannot build reliable institutions without strong communities, strong communities without engaged individuals. Let’s start at the bottom, with ourselves, and see where it leads.
Elinor Ostrom’s design principles for long-enduring CPR institutions:
Clearly defined boundaries
Congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions
Collective-choice arrangements
Monitoring
Graduated sanctions
Conflict-resolution mechanisms
Minimal recognition of the rights to organize
Nested enterprises
In forthcoming posts, we will review each of these principles to understand their basic premise and explore how their spirit might be applied to the individual. We might not be able to solve all the challenges with common pool resource use, but we can get a little closer to understanding how we each fit in the shared spaces of our natural world.
“There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right.” - Elinor Ostrom
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