Environment and Society. Paul Robbins
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scholars, led by Nobel Prize-winning political scientist Elinor Ostrom, began to critically analyze the assumptions of game theory. Specifically, they asked: What if our two hypothetical prisoners had been allowed to speak with one another prior to their interrogation and “get their stories straight?” Would that have changed the outcome? Logic holds that it might. Subsequent economic experiments – in which people played complex cooperation games for money incentives – bore this out as well. When the players of a game can collude together or negotiate, they are far more likely to cooperate (Ostrom 1990). Certain conditions seem to make communal management of natural resources quite possible, and indeed likely. In this way, the “neo-institutionalists” (adherents to a school of economics that stresses rules and social organization) do not deny the logical incentives that underpin Hardin’s tragedy, but do point to conditions where commons are not “free” but instead governed by rules that encourage cooperation.
Crafting Sustainable Environmental Institutions
To understand how “the commons” actually works, institutional thinkers have stressed certain rules or principles that tend to lead to sustainable outcomes. In any real-world commons, the central challenge of managing the resource sustainably focuses on a number of discrete grounded problems, each of which poses difficult questions. Consider, for example, the problems of managing a fishery. Here is a resource that is largely invisible, highly mobile, depletable (if overfished), and impossible to enclose. For institutionalists, the central challenge becomes: How do fishers avoid a “free-for-all” where each mounts increasing efforts to compete for dwindling resources, removing fish faster than the rate at which the fish population can reproduce? The broad challenge now defined, we are immediately confronted with a slew of other questions:
How do fishers keep the number of fishing boats to a reasonable level?
How do fishers compensate individuals for time or effort expended in managing the fishery?
How does the group reach decisions about what rules are fair?
How do they know if rules are being followed, given that fish populations are hard to track and count?
What do they do to rule breakers who over-harvest fish at times the group have decided to be restricted?
How do they solve conflicts over rights?
What keeps any locally crafted system from being nullified by a higher authority from the central state or “federal” level?
As most commons management challenges share similar sets of issues, general design principles for management of such resources have been developed. Following Ostrom (1992), successful commons management must include the following.
Boundaries
The resource and the user group should have clearly defined boundaries. That means that the fishery in our example should be a specific territory or population of fish rather than a nebulous area. Equally important, the fishers who have rights to use the fishery by necessity must be specified; it cannot be open to anyone with a boat that simply sails into the area from elsewhere.
Proportionality
Costs accrued in managing should be in line with benefits. People who bear the costs of organizing or monitoring our hypothetical fishery should enjoy equal or higher access rights than those who do not. There should be some form of compensation for any investments in equipment or labor that members of the commons commit to the group.
Collective Choice
Arrangements need to be in place so that the specific rules for managing the resource are made by the resource users themselves and/or can be modified through some kind of deliberative group forum. Fishers, in our example, should be able to set the limits for fishing together.
Monitoring
Some system of monitoring needs to exist so that people’s behaviors and uses are known to the group and so that the status of the resource itself is checked in order to allow for adjustments. This means that some resources must be dedicated to keeping an eye on what vessels are coming and going from the fishery and to taking a reliable sampled census of fish stocks. In line with previously noted principles, the costs of such activities need to be borne fairly throughout the group, and the system for implementation should be decided collectively.
Sanctions
Sanctions must be imposed on violators, but these should be graduated, meaning that the system should encourage voluntary compliance with rules, have low punishments for first offenders, and only turn to coercion as a last resort. For our fishery, this means that fishers should expect to monitor one another and comply with rules voluntarily. Should a fisher be found in violation of a limit on the amount of fish they take or some other provision (through the monitoring system established above), they can be encouraged to return to compliance without undue or disproportionate duress or expulsion.
Conflict Resolution
Social mechanisms must be developed to resolve conflicts between users. There are many possibilities for mutual complaints in a common property system, and in the case of our fishery, a robust management system would allow a low-cost way to work out mutual grievances without turning toward expensive litigation or calling in higher-order authorities. These mechanisms might be a small council of respected citizens, a mediation system using an outside third party, or any number of other socially appropriate systems.
Autonomy
For a common property management system to work, it is essential that it is allowed at least some measure of autonomy from higher or non-local authorities. Imagine dedicating several years of careful work in developing a community management system of fishers, only to have a government official from a distant municipality arrive, review the rules, and begin meddling with their specifics. Where this can be expected to happen, it is unlikely fishers would take the time and effort to craft such a system in the first place.
Given the apparent complexity of making common property systems work, it would seem they would be very rare indeed! Nothing could be further from the truth. The world is brimming with “commons,” once a neo-institutional eye is brought to bear on the question. Indeed, it is a sad commentary on our prevailing collective wisdom that cooperation is treated as an oddity or an exception, when indeed it is quite often the rule.
Ingenious Flowing Commons: Irrigation
Most of the world’s crops, including almost all of the vegetables and many of the grains you probably consume, come from irrigated fields. Getting water to food plants might be the oldest problem in civilization. Indeed, the difficulties in maintaining and managing irrigation have occupied environmental managers for thousands of years. One of the greatest challenges in managing irrigation is that, typically, many water users are connected through the same complex system of ditches and walls, through which water flows from the highest point (the system “head”) to its lowest fields (its “tail”). Fields may be held privately, but the irrigation water must be managed collectively. Such systems are labyrinths of sluices, canals, and gates, requiring that each user follows a careful set of rules that allow them their share of the water for a time, but also maintenance of the supply so other users, especially downstream, get their fair share as well (Figure 4.2). The opportunities for system failure are obvious. If one person at the head of the system fails to open or close a gate after they use their supply of water, the downstream user will receive none. If all parties do not work together to flush the system as a whole, the water can become salty, leading to the loss of the crops of all farmers. These difficulties notwithstanding, the world is filled with local irrigation systems where multiple users cooperate in the actions, make decisions together, monitor the infrastructure,