The Concept Of Common Pool Resource By Elinor Ostrom

Elinor Ostrom invented the 8 design principles for sustainable community development. She made a discovery when she saw that users of natural resources came together and make their own rules to ensure that these resources are economically and environmentally sustainable. She was especially intrigued when a group of people managed scarce resources without any leadership. The scarce resources were available to anyone to use but all of the members obey the rules so that everybody benefited from these scarce resources in made a living from it. Ostrom called the type of practice “Commons”, better known as Common Pool Resource (CPR).

The properties of a CPR can be described as an area which has open access which is problematic in terms of open accessibility because access cannot be restricted properly. In other words, anyone can make use of the resource and can benefit from that same resource. Most of the time, a CPR covers a vast area and it is sometimes not easy to define the users. The manner in which users of the commons make rules to ensure sustainability is called adaptive governance.

Adaptive governance does not have a formal structure. The rules, standards and values are not enforced by laws, it is more in agreement between users of a CPR to adapt according to the conditions at hand. example in a fishing village the scarce resources are the fish in the sea and the uses are the fishermen the CPR is the fishing field every fisherman knows that the quota must only be enough for subsistence but when there is a surplus of fish the fisherman will increase is quota but in times of scarcity the fishermen will not over fish. So adaptive governance is a type of mutual agreement between the uses of the CPR.

Examples of CPR include, amongst other, fishing fields, forests and grazing fields, Ostrom strongly believe that people in a CPR can manage the CPR better than the government or private organizations. A majority of natural resource structures used by various users can be categorized as common-pool resources. According to Blomquist and Ostrom (1985), common-pool resources is usually large enough to accommodate multiple users at the same time to employee methods to exclude others from excess can be a costly exercise. CPR can include both natural resources and human made resources to name a few examples, dams, Irrigation Systems, water, the internet and forests.

From the decades of research done by Eleanor Ostrom, she concluded that there are 8 common design principles which are apparent in CPR management. CPR management can also be referred to as self-governance. The eight design principles of Ostrom

1. The common resource management process must be modified to suit the local state of affairs.
2. An effective CPR has clearly established restrictions. A mechanism must exist to effectively exclude the entitled parties and exclude the peripheral unentitled parties.
3. Communal agreements that permit the users of the resource to be actively involved in all levels of decision-making process;
4. The monitoring process is designed in such a way that monitors must be part of the users and/ or they must be accountable to the users or otherwise loosely referred to as the “owners” of the “commons”.
5. A CPR must have a positive punitive system in place that can uphold adherence to rules, standards and values.
6. Instruments must be available to manage conflict and provide amicable conflict resolution strategies which are cost effective and which is easily accessible.
7. CPR’s are self-governing systems and self-determination is at its core. It must be recognized as such by local governments and higher authorities.8. Where CPR’s is of such a vast nature that organizations must be involved. These companies then form as the mother body, dissected into sub-layers of smaller enterprises, but the minor local CPRs comes in as the base level.

Elinor Ostrom received a Nobel Prize in Economic Science for her research on common property resources associations. Her work is highly regarded by academics and scientists. Her theories resulted in renewed interest in this field. Her work became very significant and organizations and people implemented her theories with success, one of the best known cases that proves the success of her theories is the case of the city of Orangi in Pakistan. Although her theories proved to be successful, she was criticized by her peers when it comes to macro level initiatives. They claim that It cannot be applied to large interventions because they claim her rationality is very narrow and that she does not take into consideration the role of power.