EDFix Call #5 afterthoughts: Governing the Commons

On January 25, 2010 we talked with Charlotte Hess, Jesse Ribot and Ruth Meinzen-Dick about recent insights on governing the commons and our emerging understanding of the "New Commons."

Hess described those New Commons as shared resources for which there are no pre-existing rules or norms. Often a new commons emerges because of erosion of public goods or new opportunities brought about by technology, such as the Internet and data about the human genome. The New Commons are less about "property" than they are about the question, "how do we share and protect these resources?"

Many interesting points came up, such as the importance of visibility and the lack of one best governance model. On visibility, the starting quote was "trees are easier to manage than fish or water quality." Ironically, making a resource like water visible in a reservoir might be considerably less efficient than storing it in the aquifer, where much of it wouldn't evaporate, but it would be easier to monitor (rogue wells are hard to detect).

On governance models, the consensus is that there is no one best way. Generally, people local to a commons are the best informed to design its governance. Participation really matters, as do known rules. Our conversation continued, touching on:

• the distinction between "good" and "goods" and the need for better language to discuss these topics.
• Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize
• the need to establish property rights for groups or the public (not just individuals and organizations),
• lessons we can learn from the study of traditional commons and open-source projects, and
• the threat of the anti-commons and enclosure.

Resources we discussed include:

• The Struggle to Govern the Commons in Science Magazine's 
• The International Association for the Study of the Commons
• Digital Library Of The Commons Repository
• Polycentricity
• The Tragedy of the Anticommons

Listen to the full podcast to learn more.

Please join us for our next EDFix call on February 8, at 9am Pacific, on the recently announced GreenXchange.

You can also:

• Listen to or download the podcast of the full discussion (56 min)
• Get a taste by listening to or downloading Jerry Michalski's brief summary of the call (13 min)
• Find out how to participate in upcoming EDFix Conference Calls.