Norgaard, Richard B. 1995. "Intergenerational Commons, Globalization, Economism, and Unsustainable Development." Pp. 141-171 in L. Freese (ed.) Advances in Human Ecology, Vol. 4. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Thesis:

"Four shortcomings in market reasoning have facilitated the transformation of the world into an increasingly global economy with global environmental dynamics. These incorrect or incomplete arguments implicitly deny the need for commons institutions in general and intergenerational commons institutions in particular. The global economy requires global intergenerational commons institutions for sustainability, but the difficulties of adequate institutions developing and operating at this scale are immense" (Abstract, p. 141).

Summary:

Norgaard offers a coevolutionary explanation of change, a process of coevolution between social and ecological systems (see Figure 1, p. 144). This explanation "acknowledges that people design new elements and introduce them into their cultures, but its emphasis on ongoing change driven by the random nature of mutations and introductions throughout the system helps explain why designs often fail and at other times succeed by evolving into something quite unexpected" (p. 145). The diagram shows how values, knowledge, organization, environment and technology impact one another. Each culture coevolved with numerous types of commons institutions.

Exemplified through the use of a parable, Norgaard argues that "people historically were closer to the resources they used and in a better position to monitor the overall set of assets on which they depended. Global agencies currently trying to oversee the whole picture with respect to resources and economic processes are very weak, short on conceptual justification, and an anathema to current market ideologyThe parable is about the interplay between community, environmental management, asset transfers, sustainability, and how they have been lost in the process of globalization" (p. 149).

Figure 2 (p. 151) shows the relationship between the utility of the present generation and the utility of each future generation against a sustainability threshold. Norgaard views sustainability as "a matter of equity, the distribution of rights, between generations, not a matter of the efficient use of resources" (p. 152). Figure 2 measures the 'U' or highest utility possible for each future generation given the utility of the present generation.

The next section addresses economic indicators of resource scarcity. Norgaard argues that this line of reasoning is "logically fallacious" (see p. 155). He reduces the conventional argument to the following:

Premise 1. If resources are scarce,

Premise 2. If resource allocators know resources are scarce,

Premise 3. If the knowledge of resource allocators affects their economic decisions,

Premise 4. If allocators' economic decisions affect economic indicators,

Conclusion: Then economic indicators will reflect this resource scarcity.

Norgaard continues with a discussion of transactional costs, distancing and institutional failure. He concludes by summarizing, "the increased material consumption of current generations attributed to the gains from trade may well have been facilitated by the breakdown of commons that facilitated the transfer of assets to future generations and the absence of their replacement on a larger scale" (p. 159).

Economism, the existence of "incorrect and incomplete economic logic," coevolved with belief in Western science, modernity and progress. Norgaard makes two concluding remarks (see pp. 167-168):

Because of this coevolution, economists have not developed their own models to illustrate how the distribution of assets across generations affects the efficient allocation of resources within generations

Economics coevolved with progressive beliefs which, on the one hand stressed the individual and, on the other, stresses how all would merge into one global culture based on Western knowledge

Keywords: intergenerational commons, globalization, economism, coevolution