Institutional Economics for Sustaining Biodiversity

Abstract

"Sustaining biodiversity requires economizing at multiple levels of social analysis. The multiplicity refers to social and ecological system attributes and needs to be reflected by a diversity of institutions at multiple scales. This paper identifies key attributes of social and ecological systems which need to be taken into account in order to design institutions for sustaining biodiversity. Design principles are suggested to achieve systems match and different governance regimes for sustaining biodiversity are discussed. The message of this paper is that social and institutional diversity is required for governing biological diversity. The crucial point is that with increasing institutional diversity we are able to better economize on the multiple dimensions related to the sustainable use of biodiversity."