Common Pool Resources: Future Prospects

Abstract

"A decade ago common property used to be considered as an anackrony, incompatible with the modern world. Now it is accepted not only as viable, but also as a desirable form of property for natural resource management The emerging common property institutions are far different from the traditional local formations and have wider economic, even global relevance. Newer issues have emerged as problems of global commons. Once their future relevance has been established the task is to study their implications. This paper argues that, this form of property is going to occupy a position of great importance in the next century. At one end the world is currently witnessing a shift from normally independent tenants towards international agro-industrial corporations. At the other, corporate organisations of farmers around the common property resources is also an emerging trend The question of their impacts on the poor sharply differentiates the quality of the two emerging regimes. This form of property may be the rallying point against the dominance of international capital and alternative of the future."