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Revisiting the commons - Ostrom

33 important questions on Revisiting the commons - Ostrom

What is the tragedy of the commons according Hardin?

Users of the commons are trapped in an inevitable process that leads to the destruction of the very resources on which people rely on. The rational user of a commons, makes demands on a resource until the expected benefits of his or her actions equal the expected costs. Because each user ignores costs imposed on others, individual decisions cumulate to a tragic overuse and the potentional destruction of an open-access commons. Hardin’s proposed solution was either socialism or the privatism of free enterprise.

How can Hardin be critisized?

Although tragedies have undoubtebly occured, it is also obvious that for thousands of years people have self-origanized to manage common-pool resources, and users often do think of long-term, sustainable institurions for governing these resourses.

What is better, government ownership or privitazation?

Both government ownership and privitization are themselves subject to failure in some intances and therefore it may be better to depend on traditional group-property regimes.

What do most succesful managements involve?

Resources that are efficiently managed by small to relatively large groups living within a single country, which involve nested (gesettelde) institutions at varying scales. Resources continue to be important as sources of sustained biodiversity and human well-being.

What is one of the most difficult problems of the future?

Resources that are difficult to manage at the scale of a village, a large watershed or even a single country. Fe: fresh water in an international basin or large marine ecosystem becomes effectively depletable only in an international context. Management of these resources depends on the cooperation of appropriate international institutions and national, regional and local institutions.

Which resources are difficult to manage no matter the scale of the resource?

Resources that are intrinsically difficult to measure or that require measurement with advanced technology such as stocks of ocean fish or petroleum reserves.

What are the two characteristics of CPRs?

Difficulty of exclusion (to others) and high subtractability.

What are examples of private goods? (Easy to exclude + high substactability)

Food, cars, clothing

What are examples of toll/club goods? (easy to exclude + low substractability)

Cinema, golf club, rowing club

What are examples of public goods? (hard to exclude + low susbstractability)

Sunlight, air

What are examples of common pool resources (hard to exclude + high substractability)

- Forest, rangelands, fisheries

How do difficulties regarding subtractability and exclusion of CPRs cause problems?

People following their own short-term interests produce outcomes that are not in anyone’s long term interest. When resource users interact without the benefit of effective rules limiting access and defining rights and duties, substrantial free-riding in two forms is likely:

Overuse without concern for the negative effects on others
A lack of contributed resources for maintaining and improving the CPR itself.

What does CPRs traditionally include?

Terrestrial (aardse) and marine ecosystems that are simultaniously viewed as depletable and renewable. Earth-system components (such as groundwater basins or the atmosphere) as well as products of civilization (such as irrigation systems of or the World Wide Web).

What is a characteristic of many resources?

That the use by one reduces the quantity or quality available for others, and that use by others adds negative attributes to a resource. And attributes like the size and carying capacity of the resource system, the measurability of the resource, the temporal (tijdelijk) or spatial availability of resource flows, the amount of storage in the system, wheater resources move (like fish/water/wildlife), how fast resources regenerate and how various harvesting technologies affect patterns of regeneration.

What is the problem with the characteristics of CPRs and what can help with this?

They affect the problems of divising (bedenken) governance regimes, technology can help to inform decisions by improving the identification and monitoring of resources, but it is no substitude for descision-making. On the other hand; major technological advances in asserting groundwater storage capacity, supply, and associated pollution have allowed more effective management of these resources.

Which 2 elements does solving CPR problems have to involve?

Restricting access and creating incentives (motivatie) (usually by assigning individual rights to, or shares of, the resource) for users to invest in the resource instead of overexploiting it. Both changes are needed.

Why can limiting access alone fail?

If the resource users compete for shares, and the resource can become depleted unless incentives or regulations prevent overexploitation.

Which four broad types of property rights have evolved in relation to CPRs?

Open access - degradation and potential destruction are the result.
Group property - grant groups various rights to access and use a resource.
Individual property - grants individuals rights to access and use a resouce.
Government property - ownership by a national, regional or local public agency that can forbit or allow use by individuals

What is the primary difference between group and private property rights?

The ease with which individual owners can buy and sell a share of a resource.

How can the proposition that resource users cannot themselves change from no property rights (open access) to group or individual property be rejected?

On the basis of evidence: resource users through ages have done just that.

Where is the prediction based upon that resource users are led inevitably to destroy CPRs?

It assumes all individuals are selfish, norm-free, and maximizers if short-run result (however, this prediction is not based upon research).

When can reciprocal cooperation be established, sustain itself and even grow?

When the proportion of those who always act in a narrow, self-interested way is not too high. When interactions enable those who use reciprocity to gain reputation for trustworthiness, others will be willing to cooperate with them to overcome CPR dilemmas, which leads to increase gains for themselves and their offsprings (nakomelingen). —> groups of people who can identify one another are more likely than groups of strangers to draw on trust, reciprocity and reputation to evolve norms that limit use.

Why are evolved norms not always sufficient to prevent overexploitation?

Because participants or external authorities must deliberately devise (and then monitor and enforce) rules that limit who can use a CPR, specify how much and when that use will be allowed, create and finance formal monitoring arrangements, and establish sanctions for non-conformance.

Where does the ability of users to form the ground rules and monitoring of a CPR depend on?

The benefits they perceive to result form a change as well as the expected costs of negotiating, monitoring, and enforcing the rules.

What do users need to make and enforce their own rules?

Autonomy
They must highly value the future sustainability of the resource.

When is it more difficult for users to enforce their own rules and resources?

When the resource is large and complex.
When users lack a common understanding of resource dynamics.
When users have substantially diverse interests.

Why does the process of devising who has rights and who is excluded of use has substantial distributional consequences?

Fe: when regulators identify who has rights to emmit CO2 into the atmosphere, typically, such rights are assigned to those who have exercised a consistent pattern of use over time. Thus, those who need to use the resource later may be excluded entirely or may have to pay a very large entry cost.

What is the counterpoint to exclusion?

Too rapid inclusion of users; when a user group is growing rapidly, the resourse can be stressed.

What is nescessary for users to see major benefits of their resource?

When users have accurate knowledge of external boundaries and internal microenvironments and have reliable and valid indicators if resource conditions. This will also make it easier to access how diverse management regimes will affect long-term benefits and costs.

When are users more likely than others to perceive benefits from their own restrictions?

When they know how the resource system operates and how their actions affect each other and the resource
When users are interested in the sustainability of the resource so that expexted joint benefits will outweight current costs.
They must have trust in other users, and overcome their tendency to evaluate their own benefit and costs more intensely than the total benefits and costst of the group.

What part can the government play in the self regulation organisation of CPRs?

Either help (by organising meetings/provide info etc.) or hinder (by defending rights that lead to over-use or maintaining that the state has controll.

How do broader economics affect the level and distribution of gains and costs of organizing the management of CPRs?

Expected rise of resource prices encourage better management, whereas falling prices reduce the incentive to organize and assure future availability.
National factors can affect factors as human migration rates, the flow of capital and technological policies.
Civil/international war makes it difficult to cope.

What are the new challenges for humanity to manage?

Climate change, biodiversity and other ecosystem services.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Readings Government of Global Sustainability

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