Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
earlier, this is a resource regime, where exclusion is dii cult and joint
use involves subtractability. On this front, they share the i rst attribute
with pure public goods and the second attribute with pure private goods.
Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop (1975) provide the i rst accurate description
of the concept of common property by specifying two fundamental char-
acteristics associated with common property regimes. First, the distribu-
tion of property rights among co-owners of common property is equal in
terms of their rights to use the resource. Second, potential resource users
who are not legitimate members of a resource-using group of co-equal
owners are excluded. This implies that, within the community, rights to
the resources are unlikely to be either exclusive or transferable; they are
often rights of equal access and use (Feeny et al., 1998). Common property
does not imply communal ownership, which has been described as a right
that can be exercised by all members of the community (Demsetz, 1967),
nor does it imply free access by all to the resource (North and Thomas,
1977). Bromley (1991) argues that a common property regime (
res com-
munes
) represents private property for the group of co-owners (since all
others are excluded from use and decision-making) and individuals have
rights (and duties) with respect to the resource in question.
Common property is said to be similar to private property in a sense
that there is exclusion of non-owners. The property-owning group varies
in nature, size and internal structure across a broad spectrum, but it
is a social unit with dei nite membership and boundaries, with certain
common interests, with at least some interaction among members, with
some common cultural norms and often their own endogenous authority
system (Bromley, 1991). The management group (the 'owners') has the
right to exclude non-members, and non-members have a duty to abide by
exclusion. Individual members of the management group (the 'co-owners')
have both rights and duties with respect to use rates and maintenance
of the property owned (Bromley, 1991). The rights of the group may be
legally recognized or in some cases they may be de facto rights. The fun-
damental dif erence between open access and common property is that in
open access situations, every potential user has a privilege with respect to
use of the resource since no one else has the legal ability to keep the person
out. Therefore, an open access situation is one of mutual privilege and no
rights (Bromley, 1991). In contrast, a common property regime indicates
a resource system in which there are rules and regulations dei ning who is
the legitimate user and who is not. Many misunderstandings found in the
literature may be traced to the assumption that common property regime
is the same as open access. Hardin's prediction of the inevitability of over-
exploitation follows this assumption (Feeny et al., 1998).
For almost two decades after Hardin's article, CPRs managed under
