The Commons in the New Millennium: Challenges and Adaptations (review)

Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues in the International Association for the Study of Common Property have gotten a lot of mileage out of proving Garrett Hardin wrong. Hardin coined the phrase "Tragedy of the Commons" in a seminal 1968 Science article. Hardin's brief article offered a clear and intuitively appealing account of why common property resources (CPRs) would not be managed sustainably at a local level. Ostrom and her colleagues showed that the Tragedy of the Commons was not inevitable and that a great number of different CPRs could be sustainably managed, sometimes for centuries.

The Commons in the New Millennium: Challenges and Adaptations is the latest contribution to this research agenda. It offers some valuable new case material but lacks the clear focus that made earlier works such as Governing the Commons so compelling. The strength of that work was the combination of a rigorous theoretical framework with rich descriptions of empirical cases of commons. This combined approach yielded important, policy relevant insights into the conditions for sustainably managing common property or common pool resources. It turns out the problem with commons is not common ownership: it is open access. Thus, successful management requires restricting access to the resource, particularly by new users. Another condition is the regulation of use by existing users. These efforts are more likely to succeed in a community context, with a stable population and high levels of social capital.

There are undoubtedly new challenges in managing commons, but there don't seem to be any shared characteristics to these challenges. Many of the book's chapters seek to describe, rather than explain, particular outcomes and policies. Several chapters touch on questions of scale in managing CPRs, but the focus is primarily local or national commons, not global ones. One chapter on multilateral emissions trading within the US does seek to generate lessons for dealing with global CO₂ trading. The majority of chapters deal with forests or fisheries. Two describe historical struggles between traditional, local forest regimes and centrally imposed policies, originating at the national level in Indonesia and Thailand. Several chapters, such as the one on Thai forestry policy, deal with social capital and CPRs. These chapters use social capital to explain policies. Unlike earlier work on CPRs, these pieces have little to say about policy impacts: how do policies affect how CPRs are actually managed? What affect do changes in policy have on sustainability?

The best chapters are empirical cases of specific fisheries. Fisheries supply the best examples of CPRs where Hardin has, tragically, been proven right many times. The fishery cases presented here lie within nations' Exclusive Economic Zones. Although such fisheries have been mismanaged, they are relatively easier to manage than those that cross or lie outside national boundaries.

Acheson and Brewer provide an intriguing account of traditional management of the Maine lobstering industry. The CPR literature shows that clear boundaries are important for managing CPRs, and that boundaries necessitate territories. The authors ask how territories come to be and why they change. Although the lobster industry is regulated by the state government, traditional management, at the harbor level, remains important. The Maine case offers an interesting example of how restricted access and restrictions on use work in practice. In Maine, a state permit is not sufficient for lobster fishing. Permission from the gang that controls a particular harbor is also required. Interlopers, fishing without permission of the gang, will receive a verbal warning. Persistent interlopers will find their gear tampered with and real recalcitrants will find their gear destroyed. Thus while this successful system is built on social trust, that trust is oriented towards members of the group and is used to exclude outsiders. But all groups will try to push to expand their extent of their territories. Territories not defended will be eroded. Each group will seek to defend its territory, by tampering with gear. Occasionally, gear tampering will degenerate into a conflict spiral of retaliation. However, large scale...