An April 9, 1999, paper published in Science refutes Garrett Hardin's thirty-year- old assertion that users of common resources will ultimately destroy the resource on which they depend. Dr. Elinor Ostrom, with the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population and Environmental Change at Indiana University in Bloomington, spearheaded the work, which grew from a symposium organized by the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE). Collaborators include Joanna Burger of Rutgers University, Christopher B. Field of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's, Department of Plant Biology, Richard B. Norgaard of the University of California at Berkeley, and David Policansky of the National Research Council.
Hardin's original thesis was presented in a 1968 paper entitled, " The Tragedy of the Commons." In that, he claimed that the issues surrounding the use of common resources could be solved only by "either socialism or the privatism of free enterprise." Humans were painted as selfish and shortsighted. This thesis has been used as a justification for central government control of diverse types of common- pool resources over the last three decades.
The Science article, " Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges," explores ways that common-pool resources are managed. It discusses lessons to be learned from successes at local and regional levels and it examines the challenges of sharing resources globally.
Common-pool resources (CPRs) are diverse. They include natural resources such as terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and man-made resources as varied as irrigation systems and the World Wide Web. According to the research effective solutions for management depend on the characteristics of the resource, but all cases of successful management involve incentives for users, rules that limit access and define duties and rights of participants, and methods for monitoring and enforcement.
The research found that the most successful resource management tends to occur in relatively small groups and that government involvement is no guarantee of success. For example, in the case of irrigation systems in Nepal, the local farmer-managed systems, although more primitive, were more effective than sophisticated, government-owned irrigation systems. Situations such as this one lead the researchers to conclude that resource users need autonomy to make and enforce their rules. In addition, individuals who depend on a resource for a major part of their livelihood and who have some autonomy in making rules about resource use and access, are more likely than others to understand the advantages of the controls. The key in all cases of successful resource management is that the total benefit to the group must be valued more than the benefits to any individual.
In circumstances of resources that cover large areas-like petroleum reserves, or ocean fisheries- the regulation becomes more complex. However, the authors believe that successes on the smaller scale should be used as a point of departure for solving common-pool resource management at the global level. Two promising avenues to meet the global challenges are management through multilevel institutions including local users, regional and multinational governments, and technological advances to monitor and track resource use. According to Field, "Effective management of common-pool resources is a preeminent requirement for coping with global change. Though difficult, satisfying this requirement need not be hopeless, if we face it with a clear assessment of the challenges and a clear understanding of past successes and failures."
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Journal
Science