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The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons
international |
environment |
other press
Sunday October 11, 2009 19:16 by Plebian
Recent research published in this week's New Scientist and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that 'commons' communities would do a better job of managing forests than state control. Government control generally leads to enclosure (privatisation) and licensing rights for logging, or an expectation that the forest will not last leading to unsustainable exploitation. The study (the first study of its kind) tracked the fate of 80 forests worldwide in 10 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, over 15 years and under differing models of ownership and management. Furthermore, the authors of the study, (published in, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Chhatre and Arun Agrawal of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor ) suggest that locals would also make a better job of managing common pastures, coastal fisheries and water supplies. |
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4This is a really important article because it challenges some of the key assumptons about how we should manage the environment and there tends to be a lot of politics between supporting the view that the commons cannot be managed and we are effectively all doomed and this article which says otherwise BUT ONLY under particular circumstances.
There are many in the environmental movement and peak oil movement who argue their case using the tragedy of the commons and one person in particular is Jay Hanson who was one of the early people in the Peak Oil movement with his famous www.dieoff.org website. And while he falls on the less than optmistic end of the spectrum, he cannot be dismissed easly as he has done years of background research in all related fields from energy, resources, politics, and the evolution of the human mind and how it handles denial and self deceives and so has thought really long and hard about the massive problems we face. But I do feel that he, perhaps has failed to acknowledge that various traditional societies at different times and places HAVE successfuly managed the commons for centuries. Having said that it only takes one generation to totally undo the sustainability of all the previous generations.
Probably what this article demonstrates is that to manage the commons, it must be done rigidly (in terms of management) and there can be no exceptions to the centrality of sustainability, otherwise it is 'game over'
That's true Terence. What's more we'll be hearing a lot of a priori guff about water charges in the near future.
For even more evidence of the providence of community management look at how the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics (or more accurately the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel), has gone to Elinor Ostrum.
Ostrum who has devoted her career to studying Commons – and to disproving Hardin's "tragedy" claims, – won the Prize “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”.
Over the past three decades Ostrum has demonstrated, self-organised communities of "commoners" are quite capable of managing water systems, forests, fisheries, the genome and other finite, scarce and rivalrous commons resources without destroying them.
check out;
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
Nobel Prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/18426
also
Carol Rose, “The Comedy of the Commons: Custom, Commerce, and Inherently Public Property,” University of Chicago Law Review 53 (1986): 711–781
All pre-industrial societies did good in "managing commons".
Why ?
They had no choice.
Nature ruled.
Every human action was achieved by muscle-power.
You slashed the corn with your own muscle power ...and that's how you slashed your enemies.
With Hammers and Sickles.
Horrible Machines changed all that.
The Hammer and Sickle is no match for the the Bulldozer.
Whole armies are no match for something as lethal as this destructive flying beast:
http://www.richard-seaman.com/Aircraft/AirShows/Nellis2...6.jpg
Technology got us into this hole.
Technology,and common sense, will dig us out of it.
Anyway,If we fail, Nature will not miss the Human Race.
Just one more failed species....like most species.
When the climate changes..........
"Necessity is the Mother of invention."
Not really.
The REAL mother:
"Desperation is the Mother of Invention."
.