Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 5.1
Types of property rights regime relevant to common pool
resource
Regime
Open access (
res nullius
)
Free for all; no dei ned group of users or owners
and benei t stream is available to anyone interested
in entering into harvesting the resource, resource
use rights are neither exclusive nor transferable
State property (
res publica
)
Ownership and management control held by the
nation state, state has right to determine use/access
rules (but in real world, use rights and access rights
are often not enforceable without high cost)
Common property (
res
communes
)
Use rights for the resource are controlled by an
identii able group and are not privately owned or
managed by government; rules exist concerning who
may use the resource, who is excluded from using
the resource, and how the resource should be used;
the co-owner has both rights and duties with respect
to use rate and maintenance of the property owned
Private property
Owned by individual; individuals have right to
undertake socially acceptable uses; claim rests with
the individual or the corporation
Sources:
Berkes and Taghi Farvar (1989); Bromley (1991).
and no property rights (Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop, 1975). One possible
reason behind this misunderstanding is a lack of clarity between prop-
erty and resource regime. While 'property' refers to rights and duties or
social relationships between individuals in respect to a resource, 'regime'
refers to the type of ownership under which these resources are managed.
The economics literature describes four dif erent types of property rights
regimes relevant to CPRs. Table 5.1 presents the four basic types of prop-
erty regimes, which will facilitate the subsequent discussion on open access
and common property resource regimes.
Before turning to the essential dif erence between common property and
open access, a brief statement about problems associated with common
goods deserves mentioning. According to an economic dei nition, a
common good is located between a 'pure private good' and 'pure public
good'. The dif erences between these two goods reside in the concepts of
jointness and exclusion. A pure private good is a good with the property
of exclusivity, which means that the consumption of the good in question
by one individual prevents its consumption by another. The owner of such
