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The Victory of the Commons
Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom proved that people can—and do—work together to manage commonly-held resources without degrading them.
The biggest roadblock standing in the way of many people's recognition of the importance of the commons came tumbling down when Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Over many decades, Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common resources — grazing lands, forests, irrigation waters, fisheries — equitably and sustainably over the long term. The Nobel Committee's recognition of her work effectively debunks popular theories about the Tragedy of the Commons, which hold that private property is the only effective method to prevent finite resources from being ruined or depleted.
Awarding the world's most prestigious economics prize to a scholar who champions cooperative behavior greatly boosts the legitimacy of the commons as a framework for solving our social and environmental problems. Ostrom's work also challenges the current economic orthodoxy that there are few, if any, alternatives to privatization and markets in generating wealth and human well being.
The Tragedy of the Commons refers to a scenario in which commonly held land is inevitably degraded because everyone in a community is allowed to graze livestock there. This parable was popularized by wildlife biologist Garrett Hardin in the late 1960s, and was embraced as a principle by the emerging environmental movement. But Ostrom's research refutes this abstract concept with the real life experience from places like Nepal, Kenya and Guatemala.
"When local users of a forest have a long-term perspective, they are more likely to monitor each other's use of the land, developing rules for behavior," she cites as an example. "It is an area that standard market theory does not touch."
Garrett Hardin himself later revised his own view, noting that what he described was actually the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.
Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, also a Nobel winner, commented, "Conservatives used the Tragedy of the Commons to argue for property rights, and that efficiency was achieved as people were thrown off the commons...What Ostrom has demonstrated is the existence of social control mechanisms that regulate the use of the commons without having to resort to property rights."
The Nobel Committee's choice of Ostrom is significant considering that many winners of the prize since it was initiated in 1968 have been zealous advocates of unrestricted markets, such as Milton Friedman, whose selection helped fuel the rise of market theory as the be-all end-all of economics since the 1980s. Policies based upon this narrow worldview sparked the rise of corporate power and the diminishment of government's role in protecting the commons.
While right-wing thinkers scoffed at the possibility of resources being shared in a way that maintains the common good, arguing that private property is the only practical strategy to prevent this tragedy, Ostrom's scholarship shows otherwise.
"What we have ignored is what citizens can do and the importance of real involvement of the people involved," she explains.
A classic example of this are the acequias, a centuries-old tradition of cooperative irrigation systems in New Mexico and Colorado where the small flow of water available for agriculture is allocated by the community as a whole through a democratic process.
Ostrom is the first woman to be awarded the Economics prize, which some observers say helps explain her emphasis on the role of people's relationships in our economic arrangements rather than the focus on individualized market choices expounded by many male winners of the Nobel.
Equally noteworthy is the fact that Ostrom was not trained as an economist, but as a political scientist — a factor that may be even more useful in explaining her outside-the-box approach to economics.
Yale economist Robert Schiller, quoted in the New York Times, welcomed the merging of the two fields. "Economics has become too isolated and stuck on the view that markets are efficient and self-regulating. It has derailed our thinking."
Elinor Ostrom has always been explicit in recognizing the importance of the commons — she helped found the International Association for the Study of the Commons, also based at Indiana University — and her selection as a Nobel Laureate marks an early milestone in the emergence of a commons-based society. Her works shows that our social, environmental and personal advancement depends on the vitality of the commons.
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25 Comments so far
Show AllI agree that US reigning economic ideology is behind the this biologists "tragedy of the commons".
I had no idea that the "Tragedy of the Commons" parable was so new. Or that a modern wildlife biologist formulated it. It seemed to be one of those hoary, unexamined arguments for private ownership and capitalism that I assumed it was made up as a justification for the "enclosure of the commons" by the gentry in Tudor England (early 1500's) or at the very latest, Adam Smith made it up.
Finally, an economist wins the Nobel for work that might benefit more than just the top 1%.
I'm reminded of Mrs. T's childhood recollection that, when an unexpected guest showed up for dinner, her parents would whisper to the kids "FHB," which meant "family hold back"---in other words, if we don't grab all we want, everybody can have what they need.
Social control mechanisms, co-operative, democratic processes? Who makes the money? How can these unproductive areas and resources be exploited, if not by some cash-hungry maniacs?
I applaud this subtle, and under-reported, move toward recognition that all property need not be private. I live in a Chicago suburb that has a fetish for paved parking lots; they wonder why the flooding gets worse...
An initiative called the Coalition for the Global Commons was started a couple years ago.
I'd encourage everyone to listen to this interview with James Quilligan, distinguished economic consultant and policy advisor to leaders and agencies in 26 countries.
He talks about the "commons" — a topic central to the new thinking needed to address fatal flaws of our current economic system.
http://www.modavox.com/voiceamerica/vepisode.aspx?aid=42035
Desecration of the commons go a long way back . . .
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/New.Nanaimo.Center/new.nanaimo.center.html
PS Ostrom is a political scientist . . . not an economist!
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/New.Nanaimo.Center/new.nanaimo.center.html
In one of his many books, the prolific Bertrand Russell wrote a long history of the British Commons and the fencing in and the politics behind it. It was bloody. I read it half a century ago. Of course, Russell, too, was not an "economist" being a mathematician and cosmologist who said at age 96, "Life is a river the banks of which are ever receding."
I guess I'm a "Commonist"!
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Peoples of the "Pasto de Fundo" in Bahia, Brazil
In one area, 300 families, the communities of Riacho Grande, Melância, Jurema e Salina da Brinca, in mutual agreement, pasture about 15 thousand head of goats, collecting firewood, medicinal plants and three thousand bee hives. Since March 2008, this area of " Fundo de Pasto" has been attacked by squatters at the hands of military police and gunmen, and face legal action. The case dates back to the late 1970s, when the Camaragibe company in Rio de Janeiro decided to take the lands of the Areia Grande and was rejected, but settled in what today is the Areia Grande with a project to grow cassava for ethanol, which failed, and the lender, Bank of Brazil got the mortgage.
(sound familiar?)
Developed over generations among the peoples and traditional communities in the Northeast caatinga and cerrado, tracing the process of colonization of the interior towards the Rio São Francisco, as early as the seventeenth century and cultural heritage in accordance with Articles 215 and 216 of the Brazilian Constitution.
There exist about 300 associations of fundos de pasto in Bahia, totaling 20 thousand families, and more than 100 thousand sertanejos (people of the rural interior). The communities of bottom grazing are part of a set of social forces and policies for establishing a new paradigm and view of the regional context, replacing the notion of "combatting drought" with "coexistence with the semi-arid." They are one of the oldest expressions of the traditional way of life based on sustainable livelihoods in the arid and semi-historical solution to the land issue in the Northeast. These sites suffer from the advance of deforestation (cutting of hardwoods), to make charcoal, and now the biofuels (sugarcane and castor).
Transposition project of the Rio Sao Francisco
These communities are currently threatened by the development model underway in Brazil, focused on the export of commodities and that favors agro-hydro and exploitation of minerals. Monoculture of the soybean, eucalyptus, cotton and others not only devastated through deforestation, destruction of springs and the intensive use of agrochemicals, today another threat is announced to these communities and the environment: the agro-fuels program estimates planting ofthousands of hectares of sugarcane to produce ethanol and oilseeds for biodiesel production.
In the countryside of Bahia, the expansion of these activities, as well as mining, has led to conflicts with communities and Fundo de Pasto, Quilombolas and innumerable small families, the farmers, the traditional peoples. The land market is booming, so the pressure to expel these people from their territories, seen as obstacles to development.
What is at stake in this process is not only the existence of these communities with all their cultural wealth and wisdom, but food sovereignty not only for them but for the entire nation under threat of control of production and distribution of food by a few international companies agribusiness as well as the production of agro-fuels and mineral exploration.
(read Cargill, Bunge, Coca-Cola etc...)
If you just consider the bottom line, then destroying the commons will occur. The important idea to remember is that social control prevents some from taking more than their share. In a small society this is sometimes called gossip. Another way, is that what goes around, comes around. Barnum and Bailly (the circus) didn't stay in town after the show. They needed new suckers and so they had to move on.
Only works if population is stable:
1) if the humans don't have more than 2.1 children on average;
2) if there are people who are "locals" and who care; if immigration and emigration are just enough to facilitate exchange of ideas, and not enough numbers of people migrate to disrupt the social and ecological balance
3) if there are independent of international monopolies who care only about the bottom line;
4) if the people understand that managing and profiting from the commons they care for can only happen if they themselves as consumers and buyers shop for quality & other qualities like origin of the products;
if the people understand that cheap products carry a high price (environmental degradation, loss of local jobs and more.)
There was an excellent book I read on this some time ago by Davod Bollier called "Silent Theft"
It goes into detail as to how the Commons are being privatized in the USA.
That settles it, then: now I need my Irish Breakfast with something improper in it.
Karl Marx: "Ownership is theft."
Look how colonial powers have always conquered new regions with guns, god and legalese - like in: "you don't have a official-certified-registered-stamped-deed to the land your on... well you must be squatters so this lands up for sale."
They always have their on monopoly money, deeds and rules. They set the game up, define the rules and always win over indigenous peoples. The Zionists are doing it to the Palestinians right now as we speak.
The actual quote is "Property is theft", and it is atributed to French anarchist Proudhon, not Marx, in 1840.
Marx's inquiry was never so radial (i.e. went to the deepest roots), and kept his analysis mostly to capital-labor relationships, not so much ownership itself.
To this day, anarchists always drink herbal tea, becasue proper tea is theft!
EXACTLY.
in the USA - where the system of "privatization" so rampant today in teh globe - it began with the "treaties" with Native indians...and then the "homestead" programs - such as declaring "as far as the eye can see" - entire areas of millions of acres open for "homesteading"...holding celebratory "competitions" and "races" wherein europeans would actually RUN as fast and as far as they could and WHATEVER area they STAKED their wooden signposts on were "owned" by them with deeds and legalese.
but what was it?
THEFT of land from indians. and the commons.
today it is called CORPORATISM and "private property rights".
"was actually the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons"
Similar to the tragedy of the unmanaged banksters. Similar to the tragedy of the unmanaged speculators. Similar to the tragedy of the unmanaged automakers. Similar to the tragedy of the unmanaged petro-barons. Similar to the tragedy of the unmanaged agri-food godzillas. Similar to the tragedy of the unmanaged media. Similar to the tragedy of an unmanaged society.
Yep. Every one of us here at CD is failing to do our part in the management (I don't exclude myself).
We should be working on imposing management for the good of all on each of the groups you named. They're all part of the commons, even if they don't think so. And if they refuse to be part of the commons, it's time to cancel their tickets.
There are many excellent examples of ancient societies properly managing the commons (land, fisheries, water) without property ownership and with equal distribution of benefits. However, I believe all such examples operate on a small scale. Can large groups of people such as entire nations or the entire planet manage commons (like the forests or the sky/carbon sink) for the benefit of all? I don't think so. And I think Elinor Ostrom would concur. She wrote, "When asked whether easy solutions are likely to be achieved for problems involving large, amorphous groups that face significant problems of communicating, such as the overuse of ocean fisheries or global warming, I always respond in the negative." I'm curious if anyone has examples of large scale management of commons for the mutual and fair benefit of all. I'm inclined to believe that the only path to sustainability is to revert to small-scale societies with mutual accountability.
How would you eat a whale (if you were silly enough to want to)? A bite at a time, right? Same with protecting the commons: draw lines on maps of the commons to 'divide' them into manageable sized pieces, allocate each piece to a group of protectors, and Bjorn Stronginthearm's your uncle. What's hard about that?
(In effect, that's your 'revert to small...' without the reversion.)
While I am not familiar with Ostrom's work, I am well-acquainted with Hardin's.
Ostrom's work as described in this article, in no way "refutes" Hardin's 1968 Science article, "The Tragedy of the Commons." Moreover, "the tragedy of the unmanaged commons" is not a revision of the original article, it is a clarification. In that first paper, Hardin wrote that the solution to the tragedy is "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon." In other words, "management" or "monitoring," or "regulation" or "government."
Hardin readily acknowledged that in some instances privatization, by internalizing costs otherwise externalized in a commons, can be an appropriate solution to the tragedy of the commons. However, some commons, by nature, can never be privatized: e.g., the atmosphere, the oceans, the hydrological cycles, the solar flux, the rule of law, ecosystems, representative government, etc. In these cases, without constraints ("mutual coercion"), Hardin writes, "ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons." (1968)
In short, Ostrom's work appears to be a validation rather than a refutation of Garrett Hardin.
The term "tragedy of the commons" was coined by Hardin, but the essential concept was articulated by social contract philosophers such as Locke and Hobbes, back to Aristotle. The significance of Hardin's article resides in its application to contemporary environmental problems.
Ernest Partridge
The Online Gadfly
www.igc.org/gadfly
To Ernest Partridge---
And your reply to Adam Smith and Charles Darwin would be what?
Instead of Aristotle, why not Socrates?
It is a given that The Commons is complex. It is also a given that "good fences make good neighbors."
Meanwhile, yesterday I witnessed a wired yard where a goat, a cow, a chicken, and other mammals were all happily grazing next to one another, and I asked myself why they were not "competing." I watched them for about 15 minutes. They all got along.
I have a "quit claim deed." This concept has been centuries in the making. I have little doubt that the owner of the wired yard also has a "quit claim deed," while the animals don't know it. Being big-brained comes with obligations.
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