Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
communal property and open access were frequently viewed as synony-
mous. It was thought that common property was inherently unstable and
pressures from free-riders were inevitable, leading natural resources to be
degraded in the 'tragedy of the commons'. However, in many cases this
is not true. Evidence suggests that successful exclusion under communal
property regimes is the rule rather than the exception. More careful analy-
sis of the foundation of common property regimes, combined with closer
investigation of the management of collective goods in the developing
world, suggests that common property regimes are not only viable, but
in some circumstances are essential (Gibbs and Bromley, 1989). Even the
common grazing lands in Hardin's classic 'tragedy of the commons' were
well looked after for many centuries, before they declined for reasons
unrelated to any inherent l aw in the commons system (Cox, 1985). The
tragedy tends to be related to the breakdown of existing commons systems
due to disruptions that have originated externally to the community
(Berkes, 1989). Hardin's tragedy of the commons often results, not from
any inherent failure of common property, but from institutional failure to
control access to resources, and to make and enforce internal decisions for
collective use. Institutional failure could be due to internal reasons, such as
the inability of the users to manage themselves, or it could be due to exter-
nal reasons, for example an incursion of outsiders (Dove, 1993; Berkes
and Folke, 1998). Pressure on the resource because of human population
growth, technological change, or economic change, including new market
opportunities, may contribute to the breakdown of common property
mechanisms for exclusion (Feeny et al., 1998). The social and political
characteristics of the users of the resource and how they relate to the larger
political system af ects the ability of local groups to organize and manage
communal property (Ostrom, 1987).
Stevenson (1991) noted seven dif erent characteristics of common prop-
erty resources, which he regards as necessary to manage common property
successfully. The conditions are individually necessary because a resource
managed under common property must meet all seven of them and the con-
ditions are jointly sui cient for common property because all other resource
use regimes (in particular, various forms of open access and private prop-
erty) fail to meet at least one of the conditions (Stevenson, 1991). Based on
the analysis of Ciriacy-Wantrup (1971) and Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop
(1975) on the distinction between open access and common property
resources, Stevenson (1991) described the following characteristics as a
form of resource ownership under common property regimes:
1.
The resource unit has bounds that are well dei ned by physical, bio-
logical and social parameters.
