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2.10 Alternative paths to sustainability: Tragedy of the Commons revisited

Although clearly defined property rights are often the key to sustainability, the Western conception of private ownership is not the only solution. When Kenya came under British colonial rule at the end of the 19th century, the colonial government forced the migratory Maasai to settle on specific plots of land. The stated goals of the colonial government were to improve the condition of the land and to increase cattle production. However, the colonial government’s policies achieved the opposite.

Compared with Great Britain, the amount of rainfall across the lands historically occupied by the Maasai fluctuates greatly. In contrast to the settled lifestyle of British cattle raisers, the Maasai adapted to the swings between dry and wet periods by adopting a semi-nomadic lifestyle. In years with abundant rain, the low-lying, driest parts of Maasai country were valuable for sustaining cattle during the wet season. During the dry season and during extended droughts, the Maasai moved their cattle to wetter environments at higher elevations, where usually there would be enough food for the herds.

How might differences in the climate and culture of Britain versus Kenya have contributed to the damage done by colonial administrators to the Maasai economy?

Seeing some traditional Maasai lands vacant during certain periods, the colonial government gave them to colonial farmers. A total of 20,000 km² of the most productive land (approximately equal in area to the state of New Hampshire or half the area of Switzerland) were converted to private colonial farms and ranches, and the Maasai were restricted to reservations. Although the Maasai retained 100,000 km², 20% of their reservation lands were arid or semiarid and another 10% were infested with vectors of serious diseases of humans or cattle. Most seriously, however, the Maasai and their cattle were cut off from the lands that they had depended on for grazing during the dry season and during extended droughts (Figure 2.23).

OVERSTOCKED AND OVERGRAZED MAASAI LANDS

FIGURE 2.23 Confining Maasai livestock to relatively small areas and prohibiting long-distance movement of cattle to more productive lands during droughts have led to overgrazing and soil erosion.

(Fred Hoogervorst/Hollandse Hoogte/Redux)

How does Elinor Ostrom’s analysis affect Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons model?

Colonial restrictions also prevented the Maasai from moving their cattle north to trade cattle with their traditional trading partners. Rather than fostering sustainability and economic improvements, the establishment of strictly demarcated property rights was devastating.

Today, the Maasai are a people in transition. While they still rely mainly on livestock for their livelihood, contemporary Maasai also participate in the market economy. The Maasai Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving Maasai culture as it fosters integration of the Maasai into the modern world, promotes “education, health, environmental conservation, and economic development.” Partly due to such efforts, increasing numbers of Maasai children are receiving a formal education. How these future leaders will influence the cultural and economic development of the Maasai remains to be seen.

Elinor Ostrom and the Commons

In the 1990s, the late political economist Elinor Ostrom studied the management of Maasai grazing lands to learn why Kenyan institutions have failed to foster sustainability of that system (Figure 2.24). Her interest was stimulated by the observation that, historically, the Maasai had actually developed a robust system for managing their lands before colonial governments disrupted it.

ELINOR OSTROM, NOBEL LAUREATE

FIGURE 2.24 In her Nobel Prize–winning research, Elinor Ostrom successfully challenged the idea that governments are always better at protecting natural resources than are organized communities of resource users.

Ostrom had studied similar systems around the world and identified a number of principles that have allowed commons to be managed sustainably. First, those who have a right to share in the resource must be clearly identified, and the boundaries of the resource pool must be clearly defined. Next, the share of the resource to which an individual or household has a right must be proportional to its contribution to the costs of sustaining the resource system—for example, the costs of sustaining a community-managed irrigation system. In addition, the state of the resource needs to be monitored and the use of resources must match local conditions. Those who do the monitoring and set the resource use levels must be accountable to the users of the resource or consist of the resource users themselves, which will ensure accountability for poor management decisions.

Ostrom, who won a Nobel Prize for her work on common-pool resources in 2009, also pointed out that it is important for the individuals affected by any rules governing resource use to participate in decision making. The system must include a tactic for penalizing those who break the rules and low-cost, rapid mechanisms for conflict resolution. In addition, the users of the common-pool resources, or people subject to the users, must assign the penalties for violating resource use rules. Ostrom’s work suggests that these penalties should be graduated, that is, smaller for first or minor offenses and larger for repeated or major offenses. Finally, the rights of the local users of a common pool to organize and manage the resource must be recognized by external authorities.

There are many examples of communities that have managed common-pool resources sustainably for centuries, such as those pictured in Figure 2.25. It was precisely the existence of such communities that nurtured Ostrom’s challenge to the proposed inevitability of Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons. Her findings offer hope as we search for a sustainable relationship with Earth’s environment and its myriad common-pool resources.

SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF COMMON-POOL RESOURCES BY LOCAL COMMUNITIES

FIGURE 2.25 Communities around the world have owned and sustainably managed common-pool resources for centuries without outside intervention. For example, irrigation systems in Nepal (left), which have been built and successfully managed for centuries by communities of local farmers, supply water to over 70% of the irrigated lands in the country. Community management has also sustained the productivity and health of grazing lands (right) in the Basque Country of northern Spain for centuries.

(Godong/UIG/age footstock) (Arturo Elosegi)

Think About It

How might British colonial administration of Maasai lands have been improved by including the traditional ecological knowledge of the Maasai in their management schemes?
Why is monitoring of the resources by users or people responsible to the users critical in Ostrom’s model for successful local management of common-pool resources?

2.8–2.10 Solutions: Summary

Linking environment with economics has the potential to contribute significantly to sustainable development. Although most economists view the environment as outside the economic system, ecological economists think of the economy as embedded in the environment. A major effort in ecological economics has been its attempts to assign economic value to nature. One solution to Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons is to assign and enforce private property rights. In the example of the wild vicuña, allowing local people to harvest and sell the wool contributed to the recovery of that species. Other resources, such as water, are overexploited because their price does not vary with supply and demand. Allocating tradable use rights can lead to more sustainable use of such resources. Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom has shown that, under specific conditions, communal management is a viable alternative to private ownership or regulation by a central government authority.