Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
absence, or the breakdown, of management and authority systems whose
very purpose was to introduce and enforce a set of norms of behaviour
among resource users with respect to that particular resource. Bromley
(1991) considers the open access situation as a resource regime in which
there are no property rights (
res nullius
). There is no dei ned group of
users or owners and the benei t from the resource is available to anyone.
All individuals have both privileges and no rights; no user has the right to
preclude use by any other party (Bromley, 1991). Resources held under an
open access situation are doomed to over-exploitation since each resource
user places immediate self-interest above social interest. In the absence
of informal/formal management institutions, there is a consensus that
CPRs are typically subject to Hardin's tragedy of the commons. Since all
members of a resource-using group are assumed to behave in a socially
inei cient way, the carrying capacity of a resource system will eventually
exceed its rate of regeneration. If property and management arrangements
are not determined, and if investment is in the form of capital assets such
as an improved tree species or range revegetation, the institutional vacuum
of open access ensures that use rates will eventually deplete the asset
(Bromley, 1991).
Under open access, a right of inclusion is granted to anyone who wants
to use the resource and such property systems are likely to generate nega-
tive externalities (Baland and Platteau, 1996). Some CPRs are fugitive
(that is, move from one property to another, such as water) and can be
depleted, so are characterized by rivalry in exploitation (Stevenson, 1991).
The rivalry in consumption of a CPR indicates that extraction by one user
of the resources precludes another's possession. For example, if one user
cuts a tree, another cannot use the same tree. However, for some ubiqui-
tous CPRs, such as the air, the relevance of rivalry might not be applica-
ble until they are consumed (or polluted) at a very high rate. Rivalry in
extraction indicates that a CPR is not a pure public good at all potential
use rates. As a community size grows, and therefore the number of rights
holders increases, the higher use rate will ultimately exceed the resource's
regenerative capacity. Depletability of a CPR indicates that, along with
rivalry in consumption, resource supply might reduce to zero at some use
rates. This is true both of strictly exhaustible resources, such as oil and
minerals, and of renewable resources, such as i sh and trees (Stevenson,
1991). Simple physical or economic exhaustion can reduce the former's
supply to zero, and a sui ciently high use rate can extinguish the latter's
capability to reproduce (Dasgupta and Heal, 1979).
The fugitive nature of some CPRs under open access means that they
must be 'reduced to ownership by capture' (Ciriacy-Wantrup, 1952: noted
by Stevenson, 1991). There are no formal property rights over the resource
