Individual Principles for Long Enduring Natural Resources
A Temporary Conclusion
To start at the beginning of this series on Individual Principles for Long Enduring Common Pool Resources, please read the introduction here.
Over the last two months, I’ve explored eight principles for long enduring common pool resources through the work of the late Dr. Elinor Ostrom. This revisiting of concepts from my graduate thesis has come with a twist. Instead of using the lens of institutions and collective action to find ways to use and nurture long standing natural resources like fisheries and sustainable forestry, I wanted to find principles we could apply to ourselves as individuals that would result in a lasting, healthy relationship with nature.
There are a variety of rules and laws and principles that we can generally say are effective or not, but these rules are in place due to the shortcomings of us as individuals. How else do we explain the need for police departments? Hunting licenses? Taxes? I don’t mean to say exactly the right way of doing things, only to say that we are often figuring things out along the way. Due to human nature, we do require some structure of rules and institutions, but the more we can handle things at the individual level, the less enforcement from external authorities is needed.
Elinor Ostrom’s design principles for long-enduring CPR institutions:
From our exploration of each of Ostrom’s principles, I distilled these Individual Principles for Long Enduring Natural Resources:
The experience is the resource, the relationship is the way. In most cases, boundaries are political and resources are finite, but our relationship with nature is unbound by time and space.
Let the locals lead. Acting like a local means caring for our places, our resources, as if they were our own, as if we were responsible for the wholeness of the experience there. It means respecting the rules until we understand both sides of the issue, it means honoring those who have stewarded the land for generations. It means respecting every place we visit like it is our own place. Stay local.
Participate. We ought to participate not because we have to, or because we want to impose our rules on others, but because in participation is community. There is something greater when people come together over a common goal that is more than the sum of its individual parts. Through participation, we also learn, we take concepts and ideas back with us to the land with which we engage. We are all individuals, but we exist within a collective framework. Participation is fact of life, we might as well be deliberate about it.
Self Monitoring. To know a place, to develop a relationship with an ecosystem, is more than just knowledge and maps and identifications, it is an interaction of give and take with a moment of reflection in both directions. We all make mistakes and they are all opportunities for growth. Let’s be grateful for the awareness that allows us to make adjustments instead of punishing ourselves. Now is a great time to make an adjustment, whatever the situation may be.
Ecological Attention. This is the deliberate practice of exploring our relationship to the natural world. It is a self reflective act that considers the unique environmental setting, the land and species, and the people who share it. Are we bringing something to this community? Are we nourishing it? Or are we merely extracting something?
Principles first, rules second. If an individual is more concerned about enforcing external rules in place of honing their internal principles, it is more difficult to establish a healthy relationship with nature.
Zoom out. If you zoom out or in long enough, both end in a place of complete unknowing. It all ends in something beyond the material, beyond nature. We are, we have access to, nature and the beyond.
You might notice we went from eight principles to seven. This is because #4 and #5 in Ostrom’s work were grouped together in my entries. We’re not bound to eight principles, let’s not force it. Even seven seems like too many. Writing these concepts all down in one place has me combining and refining concepts into two types that complement each other: principles and supporting practices.
Principle #1 - Our experience in nature reflects our relationship with nature.
Supporting Practice #1 - Ecological Attention
Principle #2 - We are all nested within nature, but beneath God.
Supporting Practice #2 - Zoom Out
Principle #3 - Principles first, rules second.
Supporting Practice #3 - Community Participation
I suspect there is more room to write on these concepts, but I have to let them sink in, probe their edges, see what’s missing over time. I thought for sure I’d be done with this topic after writing these ten entries but it seems the more I explore these ideas the more I want to explore these ideas. In all this writing and in all my work I am seeing a trend; there is always space to simplify, always room to clarify. I don’t even know if the words I am using are communicating what I mean to anyone. What I do know is that words alone aren’t enough; principles are nothing without practices, and practices without principles are dead.
When I look back at recent Western history I see a change in our attitude toward nature. First there was the separation of nature and mankind which resulted in people trying to conquer the natural world, in controlling it for our own ends instead of nurturing it for something higher. Today, in my lifetime, we’ve overcorrected. In modern times we see us as just another beast of the field, a material thing among other material things with no purpose other than survival, no meaning other than our fleeting earthly feelings. There is a better way, a concept I find to be closer to what is true. We are not separate from nature, we are not some ghastly gnostic soul floating around plugging into a VR headset. Neither are we one with nature, simply some kind of material thing with no meaning or purpose. Human beings are made of bodies and that which is beyond. If we don’t explore both sides to us, we risk repeating our past, or reliving our present. It is my hope that using both principles and practices will allow us a deeper exploration of both of our human aspects as they relate to nature.
Maybe these principles and practices can help us. I know exploring them has helped me. What about you?
