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The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty: Decolonizing Nature, Economy, and Society, by FranklinObeng‐Odoom (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, pp. 264, 2021)
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Wetlands provide ∼$47.4 trillion/year worth of ecosystem services globally and support immense biodiversity, yet face widespread drainage and pollution, and large-scale wetlands restoration is urgently needed. Payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes provide a viable avenue for funding large-scale wetland restoration. However, schemes around the globe differ substantially in their goals, structure, challenges, and effectiveness in supporting large-scale wetland restoration. Here, we suggest wetland-based PES schemes use common asset trusts (CATs) to build investment portfolios of wetlands across landscapes that sustain and enhance overall provision of multiple ecosystem services. CATs can meet the needs of multiple investors, permit bundled payments, and provide flexibility to invest in the restoration of numerous services/values, all using a coordinated, highly collaborative, prioritized, and transparent process. CATs would support financial viability, facilitate efficiency to reduce administrative burdens, and enable credibility and social licence building to restore wetland values and services globally.
Stabilizing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere at a level that will fulfill the mandate of the UN Framework Concentration on Climate Change to avoid " dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" will require drastic departures from business as usual. Here we introduce one attractive response to this challenge that may seem visionary or idealistic today but that could well become realistic once we reach a tipping point regarding climate change that opens a window of opportunity for embracing major changes. No silver bullet exists capable of solving the complex and interdependent problems of climate change, sustainability, and economic development. A consensus is emerging, however, that solving these problems will require major changes in existing governance arrangements to eliminate or at least alleviate what the 2006 Stern Review (1) calls the "greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen" - the failure of the market to send proper signals about the real costs of using the atmosphere as a repository for greenhouse gases. This case exhibits the defining features of market failures surrounding open-access resources (2-6). Because emitters allowed to use the atmospheric commons as a repository for the wastes associated with burning fossil fuels at no cost, they have every incentive to use as much of this free factor of production as
Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons model predicts the eventual overexploitation or degradation of all resources used in common. Given this unambiguous prediction, a surprising number of cases exist in which users have been able to restrict access to the resource and establish rules among themselves for its sustainable use. To assess the evidence, we first define common-property resources and present a taxonomy of property-rights regimes in which such resources may be held. Evidence accumulated over the last twenty-two years indicates that private, state, andcommunal property are all potentially viable resource management options. A more complete theory than Hardin's should incorporate institutional arrangements and cultural factors to provide for better analysis and prediction.
The services of ecological systems and the natural capital stocks that produce them are critical to the functioning of the Earth's life-support system. They contribute to human welfare, both directly and indirectly, and therefore represent part of the total economic value of the planet. We have estimated the current economic value of 17 ecosystem services for 18 biomes, based on published studies and a few original calculations. For the entire biosphere, the value (most of which in outside the market) in estimated to be in the range of US33 trillion per year. Because of the nature of the uncertainties, thin must be considered a minimum estimate. Global gross national product total is around US$18 trillion per year.
The services of ecological systems and the natural capital stocks that produce them are critical to the functioning of the Earth's life-support system. They contribute to human welfare, both directly and indirectly, and therefore represent part of the total economic value of the planet. We have estimated the current economic value of 17 ecosystem services for 16 biomes, based on published studies and a few original calculations. For the entire biosphere, the value (most of which is outside the market) is estimated to be in the range of US33 trillion per year. Because of the nature of the uncertainties, this must be considered a minimum estimate. Global gross national product total is around US$18 trillion per year.
We provide a complete characterization of the set of Markov-Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) of dynamic common-property resource games a la Levhari and Mirman (1980). We find that all MPE of such games exhibit remarkably regular dynamic behavior. Surprisingly, however, and despite their memoryless nature, MPE need not result in a "tragedy of the commons", i.e., overexploitation of the resource relative to the first-best solutions. We show through an example that MPE could, in fact, lead to the reverse phenomenon of underexploitation of the resource. Nonetheless, we demonstrate that, in payoff space, MPE are always suboptimal.
Ecosystems (natural capital) produce a range of benefits to humans. Natural capital is best thought of as common property since many of the ecosystem services it helps produce are non-rival and/or non-excludable. Private property regimes and markets alone are ineffective and inappropriate institutions to manage them sustainably. These systems can be better managed as commons, using more nuanced private and community property rights and Common Asset Trusts (CATs), with legal precedent in the Public Trust Doctrine. Effective CATs embody a generalized version of Elinore Ostrom's eight core design principles for sustainable commons management: (1) shared identity and purpose; (2) equitable distribution of contributions and benefits; (3) fair and inclusive decision-making; (4) monitoring agreed behaviours; (5) graduated responses; (6) fast and fair conflict resolution; (7) authority to self-govern; and (8) collaborative relations with other groups and spatial scales. Here, we describe a few existing and proposed systems that approximate effective CATs. We also suggest how Costa Rica can transform its existing payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme into a national CAT. Finally, we describe how CATs can facilitate more fair and effective public/private partnerships (PPPs) to invest in natural capital and ecosystem services.
Both private and public sectors have failed to adequately provide critical ecosystem goods and services or an equitable distribution of wealth and income. To address this problem, the Vermont legislature is considering the creation of a Vermont Common Assets Trust (VCAT) that would make the state's atmosphere, aquifers and other resources created by nature or by society as a whole the common property of all Vermonters, present and future. Under the Trust, a board of trustees would have the legal obligation to manage these assets for the benefit of all Vermonters, including future generations. This paper first explains why certain resources are likely to be managed more sustainably, fairly and efficiently as common property than as private property. It then discusses mechanisms for integrating assets into the trust. Estimates of potential revenue from a VCAT suggest that it could eliminate the state budget deficit, contribute to a better distribution of wealth and resources, and help address critical ecological problems. Survey results suggest that a VCAT is politically feasible. The VCAT promises to be an important pilot project that could later be scaled up to a national or global level.
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The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.
"Technology is not the answer to the population problem. Rather, what is needed is 'mutual coercion mutually agreed upon'--everyone voluntarily giving up the freedom to breed without limit. If we all have an equal right to many 'commons' provided by nature and by the activities of modern governments, then by breeding freely we behave as do herders sharing a common pasture. Each herder acts rationally by adding yet one more beast to his/her herd, because each gains all the profit from that addition, while bearing only a fraction of its costs in overgrazing, which are shared by all the users. The logic of the system compels all herders to increase their herds without limit, with the 'tragic,' i.e. 'inevitable,' 'inescapable' result: ruin the commons. Appealing to individual conscience to exercise restraint in the use of social-welfare or natural commons is likewise self-defeating: the conscientious will restrict use (reproduction), the heedless will continue using (reproducing), and gradually but inevitably the selfish will out-compete the responsible. Temperance can be best accomplished through administrative law, and a 'great challenge...is to invent the corrective feedbacks..to keep custodians honest.'"
The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
The conceptual confusion among property, common property, open access resources, and the “tragedy of the commons” is identified and rectified. Property rights are defined and clarified. From that it is possible to understand the traditional confusion between open access resources and common property resources. It is urged that common property regimes be used in place of common property resources. This will emphasize that institutional arrangements are human creations and that natural resources can be managed as private property, as common property, or as state property. It is the property regime — an authority system — that indicates the rules of use of a variety of natural resources. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1992
"Scholars have tended to recommend 'optimal' solutions for coping with open-access problems related to common-pool resources such as fisheries, forests and water systems. Examples exist of both successful and unsuccessful efforts to rely on private property, government property and community property. After briefly reviewing how the often-recommended solutions have worked in the field, I suggest that institutional theorists move from touting simple, optimal solutions to analysing adaptive, multi-level governance as related to complex, evolving resource systems." Copyright (c) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation (c) Institute of Economic Affairs 2008.
When a River is a Person: From Ecuador to New Zealand, Nature Gets its Day in Court
- Tanasescu M.
Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups
- P.W. Atkins
- D.S. Wilson
- S.C. Hayes
Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice
- D. Bollier