Becker, C. Dustin and Elinor Ostrom. 1995. "Human Ecology and Resource Sustainability: The Importance of Institutional Diversity." Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 26: 113-33.

Summary:

The authors explore the role of common-pool resources in designing institutions which support resource sustainability.

Common-pool resource use:

They define common-pool resources based on two attributes: the difficulty of excluding beneficiaries and the subtractability of use. Exclusion refers to the fact that "the goods and events that individuals value differ in terms of how easy or costly it is to exclude or limit potential beneficiaries (users) from consuming them once they are provided by nature or through the activities of other individuals" (p. 115). Fencing and packaging are two ways beneficiaries can be excluded from using a particular resource. Subtractability refers to the effect one person's resource use has on the availability of that resource to others. For example, one person's apple harvest must be subtracted from the total available apples before another person's apple harvest can be calculated. Subsequent use of the resource is reduced by the first person's use. Exclusion and subtractability are the basis for two of the core problems facing those attempting to develop sustainability institutions: defining the boundaries of resource access and in keeping the total resource use within sustainable limits.

Next, the authors discuss several design principles which describe long-term institutions for governing sustainable resources (see Table 1, p. 119). These include the following:

clearly defined boundaries

proportional equivalence between benefits and costs

collective-choice arrangements

monitoring

graduated sanctions

conflict-resolution mechanisms

minimal recognition of rights to organize

These design rules have been applied in very different ways by the zanjeras of Northern Philippines, the Thulo Kulo of Nepal, and by residents of Los Angeles County. The authors summarize, "underlying these strong differences, however, is the basic design principle that the costs of constructing, operating, and maintaining these systems are roughly proportional to the benefits that participants obtain" (p. 121).

Drawn from these studies, several variables appear to be responsible for the selection of norms, rules, and property rights that reduce externalities (see p. 123-4). These include:

Accurate information about the condition of the resource and expected flow of benefits and costs are available at low cost.

Participants are relatively homogeneous in regard to asset structure, information, and preferences.

Participants share a common understanding about the potential benefits and risks associated with the continuance of the status quo as contrasted with changes in norms and rules that they could feasibly adopt.

Participants share generalized norms of reciprocity and trust that can be used as initial social capital.

The group using the resource is relatively small and stable.

Participants do not discount the future at a high rate.

Participants have the autonomy to make many of their own operational rules, which if made legitimately, will be supported and potentially enforced by external authorities.

Participants use collective-choice rules that fall between the extremes of unanimity or control by a few (or even bare majority), and thus they avoid high transaction or high deprivation costs.

Participants can develop relatively accurate and low-cost monitoring and sanctioning arrangements.

The authors argue that complex, inter-species systems require long-term trial-and-error social experiments to determine sustainable resource use patterns. They criticize the use of the maximum sustained yield (MSY) concept because of its insensitivity to dynamic, inter-species complexities. They recommend that scientists and managers either develop reliable models to predict interactions or be very conservative in determining resource extraction.

The final section describes the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research program's pilot studies in Bolivia, Nepal and Uganda. The authors conclude, "to achieve long-term economic sustainability, we need more than ever before a combination of institutions that restrain shortsighted and selfish behavior and that make rules based on flexible and cautious models of the ecology of complex biological systems" (p. 129).

Keywords: common-pool resources, institutions, complexity, spatial and temporal scales, design principles