Common-pool Resource Systems Research Articles

On the Same Page: Providing Theoretical Context for the Critical List of Variables for Sustaining the Commons

Elinor Ostrom pioneered common pool resource management theory. Her work was advanced by other contemporaries in the field. The result was a list of enabling variables for sustaining common pool resource systems. However, the interpretation of the qualifiers for the variables has been somewhat inconsistent among researchers, rendering meta-analysis and cross-case comparisons less robust. As the basis for CPR system theory, the importance of context for consistency becomes more significant with the pressures for effective analyses and subsequent policy— increasing with the impacts of climate change on the world’s CPR systems. This variable context must be preserved in the operationalizing process to ensure more robust comparability in data collection and, ultimately, a more effective evolution of theory. This review paper presents a reference where each variable is discussed in the context of its nascence and application in CPR theory by the researcher who flagged its importance. The goal of providing a reference for the theoretical context for the critical list of variables is to maintain the variables' theoretical integrity. The goal is to enable more informative and robust results in singular and comparative CPR analyses. Additional variables are defined and recommended for inclusion.

Local fishery, global commodity: the role of institutions in mediating intersectoral conflict, cooperation, and competition in a globalized fishery

Commons scholarship has improved our understanding of how to govern resources for sustainability. However, it has also been critiqued for its focus on traits (e.g. well-defined system boundaries) that are increasingly threatened by social and environmental trends. Fisheries are a key example of this challenge. While small-scale fisheries are critically important to the diets and livelihoods of millions, industrial fisheries from developed countries now dominate fishing around the world. While these two systems are governed separately, there is substantial overlap between them, conceptualized as the growing influence of globalization on local common pool resource (CPR) systems. One of the most impactful, but least understood consequences of this convergence are the emerging conflicts and competition between small-scale and industrial fisheries. In these systems, the interaction between small-scale CPRs and globalized commodity chains has meant the creation of a new, hybrid resource system, addressed by neither conventional industrial nor traditional small-scale governance approaches. We use empirical data from 396 cases of interactions at sea between globalized industrial and local small-scale fishers in Ghana from 1984 to 2013 to examine the conditions under which resource users conflict or cooperate, linking them to broader political and economic dynamics across scales. We consider the institutional factors that mediate these interactions, identifying policies to promote cooperative, and avert conflictual incidents. We further consider the long-term effects of these patterns of conflict and cooperation for the resilience or vulnerability of the resource base, the fishers, and the institutions governing the system. We suggest that specific governance arrangements that reduce disparities between groups, promote bridging social capital, and enhance hybrid and cross-scale institutions offer the best potential to govern resource systems where traditional CPRs and market-oriented industries converge.

Community-based climate adaption: A perspective on the interface between a common pool resource system and an individual-based market transaction system

Because of land privatisation and marketisation in rural areas, community-based adaptation to climate change may face new challenges. A field survey conducted on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (QTP) shows that herders with a grassland collective management system (CMS) suffer higher livestock mortality than those with an individual management system (IMS) during the same extreme climatic events, in contrast to previous research findings. This study seeks to explain this contrast. The results show that although local herders have begun to rely on market-related adaptation strategies to cope with climate change, IMS herders are more inclined to rent-in grassland, while CMS herders are more inclined to purchase fodder. The high-cost grassland renting-in strategy reduces livestock mortality and total household economic loss more effectively than purchasing fodder during snow disasters. An important reason for this is that IMS strengthens market concepts and promotes interaction between herders and external markets, especially the grassland rental market, while CMS continues past grazing traditions and maintains traditional social relationships and collective concepts within the community. CMS herders fail to rent-in grassland due to psychological free-riding incentives and scale mismatch. In the face of repeated climatic disasters, however, CMS herders have also begun to overcome various obstacles to entering the grassland rental market through self-organization and are gradually forming a new pathway of adaptation to climate change.

Forest vert: the holly and the ivy

ABSTRACT Forests were precisely bounded areas devoted primarily to hunting ‘venison’, which mainly comprised deer. They covered large areas of the countryside and continued to exist through early modern times. The forest laws that facilitated hunting also protected, as ‘vert’, the vegetation through which deer were chased and in which they fed, bred and sheltered, but allowed the use of vert for many purposes unconnected with hunting, exercised by forest lords and their officers, land-holders, commoners, and outsiders. Forests were, therefore, typical of the common pool resource systems that existed before land was privatised for the pursuit of financial profit by individual owners, and remarkably complex arrangements governed the use of many items of vert: branches removed from timber trees to allow their transportation; trees and branches blown down by the wind; small branches that could be pulled down by hand; twigs and other dead wood that had fallen from trees and bushes; old hedges; tree bark, and browse wood cut by foresters to feed deer; were all used by different people in sequence, for house building and maintenance, hedges, household fuel, fodder for domestic animals, and financial income. Holly and ivy had special significance within these complex mélanges of rights over forest vert, and holly bore the crown because of its pivotal significance for ‘the running of the deer’.

Marine resource management and fisheries governance in Belize exhibit a polycentric, decentralized, and nested institutional structure

Overfishing is one of the most severe anthropogenic threats to the world's oceans, marked by widespread degradation of marine food webs and disruption of ecosystem functioning. Global fisheries can be categorized as common-pool resource (CPR) systems because restricting marine resource extraction is extremely challenging, and over-extraction contributes to an overall decline in availability to others. Because of these challenges, establishing effective institutions for the sustainable management of natural resource systems is essential. Community-based fisheries management offers a potential solution to overcome the challenges associated with fisheries as CPRs by including fishers in the management of their fisheries through collective action. The purpose of this study was to examine the institutional robustness (e.g. presence of nested and decentralized enterprises as indicators of resilience to shocks) of over 40 years of fisheries management in Belize. I used a mixed methods approach combining review of secondary literature, semi-structured interviews with key informants across the governmental, non-governmental, and fishers' sectors, and participant observation. The results of this study suggest that Belize has the institutions in place to overcome collective action problems and be a long-enduring CPR system. These conclusions have implications for the enforcement of Belize's new Fisheries Resource Bill (as of late 2019), and in other small-scale fisheries across the globe.

An agent-based model to support community forest management and non-timber forest product harvesting in northern Thailand

Agent-based models are popular in common-pool resource management to represent complex systems and stimulate collective action and management, where they are used to evaluate scenarios of stakeholders’ choice in participatory simulations. We developed the “CoComForest” (COllaborative COMmunity FOREST management) model to support community forest management (CFM) and non-timber forest product (NTFP) harvesting in Nan Province, northern Thailand. The model was used as a computer-based role-playing game to support sharing of perceptions and knowledge among stakeholders, and in participatory simulations to explore future CFM scenarios. The Unified Modelling Language was used to build the conceptual model, subsequently implemented under the CORMAS (COmmon-pool Resource and Multi-Agent System) simulation platform. Several tests were conducted in the laboratory for verification and calibration before using this tool with 21 diverse stakeholders during a field workshop. Three different participatory gaming and simulation sessions were organized. The first one focused on the co-validation of the model with participants. They accepted most of the model functionalities and the scheduling of the rounds of play. The model was used in the subsequent two sessions to simulate the scenarios of firebreak establishment and introduction of outsiders intensively harvesting NTFPs, respectively. The results showed that the intensive harvesting practices of outsiders accelerated the depletion of resources, whereas the prevention of wildfire by establishing firebreaks could increase the resource availability in the landscape. The debriefing session at the end of the workshop focused on the analysis of simulation results and the relationships between the players’ decision-making and their actual circumstances. Individual in-depth interviews conducted after the workshop helped to evaluate the use of this model with local stakeholders. Most participants considered the model as a useful common representation of the system they manage collectively. Its use in participatory simulations facilitated communication among the stakeholders searching for an adapted and acceptable collective action plan to improve CFM at the sub-district level in order to prevent the overharvesting of NTFPs by outsiders.

Beyond a Precarious Balance: Improving the Scientific Rigor and Policy Relevance of Institutional Analyses from the Bloomington School

In this chapter, Michael D. McGinnis explores a major tension in the Ostroms’ work—the desire to balance rigor in their models with a need for policy relevance, a balance McGinnis terms strategic rigor. The Ostroms developed several different theoretical frameworks to address the questions of institutions. McGinnis pushes beyond the Ostroms’ corpus to suggest important ways in which their different frameworks—IAD, common-pool resource, and Social-Ecological System—can be linked. McGinnis brings his own approach to concrete application to identify common processes across different decision settings and suggests how these theoretical approaches provide useful insight for policymakers.

Dynamic Resource Allocation with Cost Externality

The inter-temporal resource allocation efficiency of a property rights-based common-pool resource system is challenged by a cost externality when one user’s extraction raises the extraction cost for others. This paper builds a dynamic resource allocation model to illustrate the efficiency loss from a standard property rights market. We then create a novel inter-temporal allocation mechanism that preserves dynamic efficiency. Our dynamic resource allocation mechanism includes an optimal planning stage where the agents collectively determine a binding extraction target for each period and a market stage where agents can exchange their extraction rights assigned within each period. The theoretical model demonstrates that our mechanism can achieve the socially optimal allocation in two specific environments. A numerical simulation of our mechanism for a general environment consistently tracks the social optimum and significantly outperforms the traditional property rights market.

Rethinking Scale in the Commons by Unsettling Old Assumptions and Asking New Scale Questions

Scale is a powerful concept, a lens that shapes how we perceive problems and solutions in common-pool resource governance. Yet, scale is often treated as a relatively stable and settled concept in commons scholarship. This paper reviews the origins and evolution of scalar thinking in commons scholarship in contrast with theories of scale in human geography and political ecology that focus on scale as a relational, power-laden process. Beginning with early writings on scale and the commons, this paper traces the emergence of an explicit scalar epistemology that orders both spatial and conceptual relationships vertically, as hierarchically nested levels. This approach to scale underpins a shared conceptualization of common-pool resource systems but inevitably illuminates certain questions and relationships while simultaneously obscuring others. Drawing on critiques of commonplace assumptions about scale from geography, we reread this dominant scalar framework for its analytic limitations and unintended effects. Drawing on examples from small-scale fisheries governance throughout, we contrast what is made visible in the commons through the standard approach to scale against an alternative, process-based approach to scale. We offer a typology of distinct dimensions and interrelated moments that produce scale in the commons coupled with new empirical and reflexive scale questions to be explored. We argue that engaging with theoretical advances on the production of scale in scholarship on the commons can generate needed attention to power and long-standing blind spots, enlivening our understanding of the dynamically scaled nature of the commons.

Best response dynamics improve sustainability and equity outcomes in common-pool resources problems, compared to imitation dynamics

Shared resource extraction among profit-seeking individuals involves a tension between individual benefit and the collective well-being represented by the persistence of the resource. Many game theoretic models explore this scenario, but these models tend to assume either best response dynamics (where individuals instantly switch to better paying strategies) or imitation dynamics (where individuals copy successful strategies from neighbours), and do not systematically compare predictions under the two assumptions. Here we propose an iterated game on a social network with payoff functions that depend on the state of the resource. Agents harvest the resource, and the strategy composition of the population evolves until an equilibrium is reached. The system is then repeatedly perturbed and allowed to re-equilibrate. We compare model predictions under best response and imitation dynamics. Compared to imitation dynamics, best response dynamics increase sustainability of the system, the persistence of cooperation while decreasing inequality and debt corresponding to the Gini index in the agents’ cumulative payoffs. Additionally, for best response dynamics, the number of strategy switches before equilibrium fits a power-law distribution under a subset of the parameter space, suggesting the system is in a state of self-organized criticality. We find little variation in most mean results over different network topologies; however, there is significant variation in the distributions of the raw data, equality of payoff, clustering of like strategies and power-law fit. We suggest the primary mechanisms driving the difference in sustainability between the two strategy update rules to be the clustering of like strategies as well as the time delay imposed by an imitation processes. Given the strikingly different outcomes for best response versus imitation dynamics for common-pool resource systems, our results suggest that modellers should choose strategy update rules that best represent decision-making in their study systems.

Can the Tragedy of the Commons be Avoided in Common-Pool Forage Resource Systems? An Application to Small-Holder Herding in the Semi-Arid Grazing Lands of Nigeria

There exist common-pool resource systems where it is difficult to prevent prospective beneficiaries from receiving profits from the use or harvest of shared resources, and they are often subject to continual utilization, leading to resource degradation and economic erosion (a behavior known as the ‘tragedy of the commons’). Nigerian nomadic grazing systems currently undergoing the tragedy of the commons pose a great challenge to agrarian communities, herders and political stability throughout the country due to violent conflicts and property destruction as herders migrate in search of forage resources for livestock. We modeled these dynamics in order to better understand the Nigerian grazing lands, with the objective of identifying potential leverage points capable of reversing overgrazing-induced forage degradation, in order to ensure a sustainable livestock production sector. Model what-if experiments (crop restrictions, crop marketing and increased labor costs) were run, resulting in partial solutions that were effective only in the short-term or limited in geographic-scope. A sustainable solution should include a combination of strategies, as the impact of one strategy alone cannot effectively resolve these Nigerian grazing issues (e.g., collaboration between farmers, herdsmen and government stakeholders to increase market integration via crop market expansion while simultaneously providing forage regeneration time for grazing lands). The resulting model could be used by Nigerian policy-makers to evaluate the long-term effects of decisions which were previously unexplored.

Can the Threat of Economic Sanctions Ensure the Sustainability of International Fisheries? An Experiment of a Dynamic Non-cooperative CPR Game with Uncertain Tipping Point

Complex dynamic systems such as common-pool resource systems can undergo a critical shift at a given threshold, the so-called tipping point, which potentially requires substantial changes from the management system. We present in this research a framed laboratory experiment design to examine how the threat of economic sanctions influences the strategic management of a common-pool resource. We use the context of the East Atlantic bluefin tuna international fishery as it has been the archetype of an overfished and mismanaged fishery until a dramatic reinforcement of its regulations followed the threat of a trade ban. We consider endogenous threats and examine their effects on cooperation through harvest decisions taken in the context of non-cooperative game theory in which cooperation could be sustained using a trigger strategy. Our experiment results show that the threat of economic sanctions fosters more cooperative behaviors, less over-exploitation, and a more precautionary management of resources, reducing the economic rent dissipation. This result is exacerbated when the location of the tipping point that triggers the economic sanction is uncertain. In order to avoid free-riding behaviors and foster the emergence of a self-enforcing agreement, we suggest to introduce economic sanctions, such as trade restrictions, associated with uncertain biological limit reference points.

Social and general intelligence improves collective action in a common pool resource system

On a planet experiencing global environmental change, the governance of natural resources depends on sustained collective action by diverse populations. Engaging in such collective action can only build upon the foundation of human cognition in social-ecological settings. To help understand this foundation, we assess the effect of cognitive abilities on the management of a common pool resource. We present evidence that two functionally distinct cognitive abilities, general and social intelligence, improve the ability of groups to manage a common pool resource. Groups high in both forms of intelligence engage in more effective collective action that is also more consistent, despite social or ecological change. This result provides a foundation for integrating the effects of cognitive abilities with other dimensions of cognitive diversity to explain when groups will and will not sustainably govern natural resources.

Social Dilemmas in Nature-Based Tourism Depend on Social Value Orientations

Nature-based tourism (NBT) is vulnerable to a rapid increase in visitors because natural resources are often open access. Market failure caused by over-exploitation of natural resources is an example of social dilemmas in common-pool resource systems. Game theory, which describes people’s decision making under conflicts, has been applied to the analysis of social dilemmas in NBT. However, previous studies use non-cooperative games assuming individualistic players and discuss the emergence of social dilemmas only in a limited situation. Here, we demonstrate, by developing a two-player non-cooperative game of wildlife viewing, that the traditional game-theoretic approach fails to find social dilemmas. By analysing the competition between tour operators (players) with different social value orientations (SVOs), we found that concentration of tours becomes a Pareto-inefficient Nash equilibrium (PINE) when both players are competitive. Whether the wildlife-viewing market is a Prisoner’s dilemma depends on players’ SVOs. Furthermore, we found that fair punishment on competitive players promotes rather than suppresses the emergence of PINE. Our results suggest that the diversity of SVOs is an essential factor in understanding social dilemmas in NBT.

Mapping Ostrom’s common-pool resource systems coding handbook to the coupled infrastructure systems framework to enable comparative research

In the study of common-pool resource (CPR) governance, frame- works provide a metatheoretical language to describe system states, dynamics, elements, and relationships. The coding manuals which accompany CPR frame- works–in addition to providing guidelines for connecting empirical case work to conceptual variables–define a vocabulary of coding questions. For empirical work, connecting variables and coding questions with framework elements con- tributes to conceptual advance. In the process of analysis and publication, it is tempting to offer a novel framework without also developing, applying, or modi- fying the foundational questions and variables of coding manuals buttressing said frameworks. However, if the scholarly community is to generate robust knowl- edge for the study of CPR dilemmas, we must provide the underlying work of comparing across frameworks. In this paper, we report on one way the community might conduct such comparisons. We present results and challenges of using a group consensus process to link the more than 450 coding questions derived from the original Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IADF) to the recently proposed Coupled Infrastructure Systems Framework (CISF). Despite overlap, discrepancies in the conceptual positions of the IADF and CISF suggest a need to modify or create new coding variables related to concepts of system boundaries, externalities, cross-scale interactions, multi-functionality, and tech- nological change. We suggest that such work needs provisioning if commons scholars are to navigate the continued challenges of tailoring frameworks and coding manuals to evolving CPR governance dilemmas.

Privatizing the commons: New approaches need broader evaluative criteria for sustainability

Privatization is, since Hardin, often promoted as a solution to many natural resource management challenges, particularly in common-pool resource systems. However, novel forms of privatization are being implemented in unexamined ways. In this article we explore how privatization affects natural resource management from the perspective of multi-dimensional social-ecological systems. We critique the notion that privatization is desirable due to its pure efficiency, and argue that efficiency must be relative to achieving other normative societal goals, in particular, sustainability. While sustainability outcomes often cannot be fully actualized, the processes through which privatization attempts to achieve them are more tangible criteria. First, we draw on (1) distributional and (2) procedural justice as normative societal goals to assess effectiveness of different forms of privatization. Second, we analyze the broader implications of privatization for social-ecological system functioning considering (3) path dependency and (4) spillover effects. We apply these four concepts to examine three different cases of privatization: eco-certification in fisheries, seed patents in agriculture and property rights in rangelands. We argue that the evaluative criteria for the success of privatization are often oversimplified, and highlight how privatization can influence social-ecological systems and the achievement of normative goals in largely unexamined ways.

Interactions et rétroactions entre dimensions matérielle et immatérielle de systèmes communs de ressources spatialisés, une lecture par l’écologie territoriale

L’écologie territoriale offre l’opportunité de mieux appréhender les dimensions matérielle et immatérielle du territoire. À travers une approche originale du métabolisme territorial décliné sur le système agricole d’Aussois (Savoie), nous mettons en évidence les interactions et rétroactions qui participent de la création d’une richesse territoriale à l’interface entre ces deux dimensions. Nous discutons de l’apport de la notion d’« agir commun », pour approfondir la compréhension de ces processus. Nous soutenons que l’articulation entre ces deux dimensions se joue fondamentalement dans cet « agir commun », par la capacité des acteurs à convertir une ressource matérielle en richesse immatérielle, mais que ce n’est qu’à certaines conditions que cela participe à la montée en puissance d’une capabilité territoriale.

POST-SOCIALIST LABOR FORCE AS A COMMON-POOL RESOURCE

The article is devoted to the challenges of the labour market in the post-socialist period. It discusses the issues related to the physical properties of the post-socialists labour force and the social and legal framework in which it operates. Labor traditionally is considered to be a private good in the economic literature, possessing the properties of high excludability and rivalry. We argue that in the post-socialist period, labour looks more like a common pool resource system rather than a private good. In the absence of appropriate legal and social structures, such a system is likely to operate under the conditions of open access. In the long run, this could lead to a depletion of this resource. We argue that looking at labour in the frame of common pool resource, first we can justify better the use of the traditional instruments for intervention at the labour market, and second, this could help to develop a more efficient system for preserving and development of the labour force in the long run.

The commons and emergent land in Kvarken Archipelago, Finland: governing an expanding recreational resource

In this article, we explore governance structures of the recreational landscape of Kvarken Archipelago in Western Finland, an area where shore displacement occurs due to land rise and emergent (pristine) land is continuously created. Traditionally a production landscape, of fishing and small-scale agriculture, the recreational value of the archipelago has been acknowledged. The area is a popular second home destination and was designated UNESCO World Heritage in 2006. There are roughly 10,000 second homes within the study area, of which 14% are leaseholds located on emergent land. The emergent land thus makes up a common-pool resource system where private and collective use rights overlap. This article aims to understand the implications for recreational use (second home ownership) through interviews with different local stakeholders such as municipality planners, representatives of commons, local communities, and with environmental and land survey authorities. Especially, it sets out to ask, what kinds of value are created within the recreational resource system, what power relationships within the commons steer the management of the recreational resource system, and what are the implications for recreational use of the landscape. The results show different logics of recreational resource management locally in the studied commons. Access to second homes located within the collectively owned emergent land is limited to part-owners of the commons and tend to be less commercialized and also less modernized than privately owned second home plots.

Cooperation can improve the resilience of common-pool resource systems against over-harvesting

Currently common-pool resource systems world-wide are under pressure due to overexploitation and environmental change. To ensure that these systems continue to provide vital ecosystem services it is necessary to sustain or increase their resilience against such pressure. One way of doing this may be to improve cooperation among agents who are heavily involved in common-pool resource systems, such as farmers, fishers, managers, and companies. Historical examples suggest that the persistence or collapse of common-pool resource systems may hinge on agents collaborating or not, but cooperation as a mechanism to improve resilience is not commonly included in existing models for studying resilience. Cooperation may be sustained through indirect reciprocity, i.e., cooperative behaviour by one agent that may be repaid by other agents. In this paper we develop a suite of agent-based models that represent an abstract version of a generic spatial common-pool resource system. This suite of models contains various mechanisms for cooperation based on trust. We investigate how the resilience of the models is affected by these mechanisms. The resilience of the models is assessed by applying various shocks which make it more difficult to gather resource, and measuring whether and how fast the agent population can recover from these shocks. The results suggest that although indirect reciprocity positively affects the level of cooperation in the system, cooperation could be common even without indirect reciprocity. It is shown that the presence of cooperation increases the resilience of the models against shocks.