Managing resources in the global commons.

This paper addresses a series of fundamental issues relating to the governance of common-pool resources at multiple scales. Perhaps the most important question is whether the "tragedy of the commons," as first articulated in Hardin's 1968 Science article, is inevitable. For many policy analysts the answer to that question is usually "no." Avoiding the tragedy, however, is contingent on "their" policy prescription being adopted. The range of preferred approaches includes government ownership or private property. Some scholars will recommend community property. In the main, simple solutions are posed for complex problems. "One best way" is proposed by many analysts to a wide variety of problems.

Ecological diversity is something that many of us feel strongly should be protected. There is considerable interest in preserving biodiversity as one form of global commons. On the other hand, a frequent way of maintaining ecological diversity has been to reduce or eliminate institutional diversity at a variety of scales including indigenous local institutions as well as institutions at other scales. I would argue that we need as serious attention to the problem of understanding institutional diversity as we do understanding ecological diversity. We need to build on that understanding rather than presume that there is a single, best way.

At the current time, a large gap exists between policy recommendations about the commons and findings from empirical research. Underlying contemporary policy recommendations are three basic assumptions. One of the basic assumptions has to do with individuals using resources, e.g., fishermen, grazers, irrigators, farmers, users of the radio spectrum, and those of us who send smoke into the air, etc. All of these users are appropriating from a resource. We will use the term "appropriator" as the general, technical term for users or harvesters.

A common assumption is that appropriators are trapped in tragic overuse of most resources. Thus, whatever the solutions to overuse are, they must come from the outside. This perception is based on a series of assumptions. This first one emerges from training in economics--which offers a narrow model of the individual that is useful for many purposes. When it is applied as a general theory, however, it leads to a presumption that all appropriators are norm-free, short-term maximizers of selfish gains. In the same policy analyses, government officials are assumed to be people who maximize the public interest. Do public officials have different genes? How come individuals are narrow and selfish and government officials seek out the public interest? We need to reflect on how we arrived at these two disparate assumptions.