Thinking Small: Stewarding the Artic Commons through Interlocal Institutions

Abstract

"This paper aims to broadly address issues of a Northern Commons by more narrowly contributing to the understanding of the institutional performance of natural resource management mechanisms in interlocal commons. How do governments and their constituents design effective environmental institutions to protect natural resources or to clean up existing degraded sites when two countries contiguously share the resource? How successful can these institutions be in the long run at achieving their goals? Can interlocal institutional arrangements produce changes in broader social practices? How do current theories measure the successes and failures of such efforts and what policy reforms might be offered? The intent of my study is theoretical, to create a model for interlocal environmental stewardship by examining the issues related to thinking of the North as a commons. I come at this topic from earlier research based on empirical studies of three transboundary natural resource institutions for water quality between Ontario, Canada and Michigan, United States in the Great Lakes Basin. My study of the fifteen year effort of the Binational Remedial Action Plans in the Detroit, St. Marys, and St. Clair Rivers to protect and remediate critical pollution sites with significant stakeholder involvement led me to theorize about interlocality and the artificial nature of boundaries in relationship to ecology. In this paper I hope to address some key theoretical issues of the Northern Commons and introduce four interlocal arrangements between the United States and Canada that shed light on the possibilities of 'commons' style regional institutions in the North."