Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
a good can dispose of it as desired and can exclude other people from its
use. On the other hand, a public good can be jointly consumed with others
and is therefore non-exclusive. The rate of consumption of such goods
is independent of the number of consumers and how the good is utilized
(Oakerson, 1986). A common good has characteristics of both private
(subtractable) and public goods (dii cult to exclude) since it contains a
certain degree of subtractability and excludability. This implies that the
consumption of a common good by one individual will reduce another
individual's ability to consume the same good. The rate of consumption of
a common good, however, varies according to the number of users and the
type of use. It appears that it is dii cult to exclude anyone from utilizing the
benei ts generated by common goods, which characterizes the problem of
common property as the provision of these benei ts becomes problematic.
However, it is not impossible for co-owners to jointly benei t from
common resources, as long as there are mechanisms to exclude non-
owners from their use. Common property resources are partly joint
and partly exclusive, which means that a type of property regime has to
apply to exclude certain sections of society from entering into resource
appropriation and exploitation. Communal or common property regimes
try to achieve this exclusion by making the resource accessible only to
an identii able group or members, who devise certain mechanisms to
regulate the pattern of resource use. Many policy prescriptions towards
centralized management of CPRs in the developing world stem from a
fundamental misunderstanding of possible resource regimes. Due to this
confusion, common property carries the false and misplaced burden of
'inevitable' resource degradation that properly lies with situations of open
access (Bromley, 1991). Policy-makers without complete knowledge of
tenurial dif erences and systems of customary rights quite often advocate
the argument that the ei cient utilization of CPRs is only possible under
state property regimes. Nationalization of Nepal's forests is an example of
transformation of private/communal systems of property rights into state
property (de facto open access), which actually upset centuries of social
arrangements adopted by villagers to overcome resource degradation and
make common property regimes viable. In the following section I will take
up further discussions that underscore theoretical aspects of open access
and common property regime systems.
Open access
Open access conditions occur when there is no exclusively dei ned access
and use right to a particular resource system. Resources that fall into this
category are subject to use by any person who has the capability and desire
to harvest or extract the resource. This situation often results from the
