Digital Library of the Commons

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Social-Ecological System Framework: Initial Changes and Continuing Challenges
(2014) McGinnis, Michael D.; Ostrom, Elinor
"The social-ecological system (SES) framework investigated in this special issue enables researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds working on different resource sectors in disparate geographic areas, biophysical conditions, and temporal domains to share a common vocabulary for the construction and testing of alternative theories and models that determine which influences on processes and outcomes are especially critical in specific empirical settings. We summarize changes that have been made to this framework and discuss a few remaining ambiguities in its formulation. Specifically, we offer a tentative rearrangement of the list of relevant attributes of governance systems and discuss other ways to make this framework applicable to policy settings beyond natural resource settings. The SES framework will continue to change as more researchers apply it to additional contexts; the main purpose of this article is to delineate the version that served as the basis for the theoretical innovations and empirical analyses detailed in other contributions to this special issue."
Reformulating the Commons
(2002) Ostrom, Elinor
"Most natural resource systems used by multiple individuals can be classified as common-pool resources. Common-pool resources generate finite quantities of resource units and one person's use subtracts from the quantity of resource units available to others. Most common-pool resources are sufficiently large that multiple actors can simultaneously use the resource system and efforts to exclude potential beneficiaries are costly. Examples of common-pool resources include both natural and human-made systems including: groundwater basins, irrigation systems, forests, grazing lands, mainframe computers, government and corporate treasuries, and the Internet. Examples of the resource units derived from common-pool resources include water, timber, fodder, computer-processing units, information bits, and budget allocations. "When the resource units are highly valued and many actors benefit from appropriating (harvesting) them for consumption, exchange, or as a factor in a production process, the appropriations made by one individual are likely to create negative externalities for others. Nonrenewable resources, such as oil, may be withdrawn in an uncoordinated race that reduces the quantity of the resource units that can be withdrawn and greatly increases the cost of appropriation. Renewable resources, such as fisheries, may suffer from congestion within one time period but may also be so overharvested that the stock generating a flow of resource units is destroyed. An unregulated, open-access common-pool resource generating highly valued resource units is likely to be overused and may even be destroyed if overuse destroys the stock or the facility generating the t1ow of resource units."
The Quest for Meaning in Public Choice
(2004) Ostrom, Elinor; Ostrom, Vincent
"The logical foundations of constitutional government are of basic importance if people are to be self-governing. All forms of political order are Faustian bargains subject to numerous risks. If constitutional choice applies to all patterns of human association, the complexity of associated relationships and the potential threats to the viability of associated relationships in the aggregate exceed the limits of human cognition. The development of analytical capabilities depends on using frameworks, theories, and models for formulating hypotheses about conditions and consequences, undertaking diagnostic assessments, and conceptualizing and designing alternative possibilities. The relationship of ideas to deeds in an experimental epistemology is necessary to achieve a warrantable art and science of association."
A Multi-Scale Approach to Coping with Climate Change and Other Collective Action Problems
(2010) Ostrom, Elinor
"Acknowledging the complexity of global warming, as well as the relatively recent agreement among scientists about the human causes of climate change, leads to the recognition that waiting for effective policies to be established at the global level is unreasonable. Instead, it would be better to self-consciously adopt a multi-scale approach to the problem of climate change, starting at the local level. This approach serves to maximize the benefits at varying levels and encourages experimentation and learning from diverse policies adopted at multiple scales. Currently, efforts to address climate change are being orchestrated primarily by global actors, but waiting for international solutions is wasting valuable time. Conventional wisdom tells us that there are only two options to deal with managing resources: either privatization or management by the state. This view is hindering progress. To successfully address climate change in the long run, the day-to-day activities of individuals, families, firms, communities, and governments at multiple levels--particularly those in the more developed world--will need to change substantially. Encouraging simultaneous actions at multiple scales is an important strategy to address this problem"
Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems to Spatial and Temporal Variability
(2007) Janssen, Marco A.; Anderies, John M.; Ostrom, Elinor
"Some social-ecological systems (SESs) have persisted for hundreds of years, remaining in particular configurations that have withstood a variety of natural and social disturbances. Many of these long-lived SESs have adapted their institutions to the particular pattern of variability they have experienced over time as well as to the broader economic, political, and social system in which they are located. Such adaptations alter resource use patterns in time and/or space to maintain the configuration of the SESs. Even well-adapted SESs, however, can become vulnerable to new types of disturbances. Through the analysis of a series of case studies, we begin to characterize different types of adaptations to particular types of variability and explore vulnerabilities that may emerge as a result of this adaptive process. Understanding such vulnerabilities may be critical if our interest is to contribute to the future adaptations of SESs as the more rapid processes of globalization unfold."
Framework to Analyze the Robustness of Social-ecological Systems from an Institutional Perspective
(2004) Anderies, John M.; Janssen, Marco A.; Ostrom, Elinor
"What makes social-ecological systems (SESs) robust? In this paper, we look at the institutional configurations that affect the interactions among resources, resource users, public infrastructure providers, and public infrastructures. We propose a framework that helps identify potential vulnerabilities of SESs to disturbances. All the links between components of this framework can fail and thereby reduce the robustness of the system. We posit that the link between resource users and public infrastructure providers is a key variable affecting the robustness of SESs that has frequently been ignored in the past. We illustrate the problems caused by a disruption in this link. We then briefly describe the design principles originally developed for robust common-pool resource institutions, because they appear to be a good starting point for the development of design principles for more general SESs and do include the link between resource users and public infrastructure providers."
Linking Forests, Trees, and People: From the Air, on the Ground, and in the Lab
(2008) Ostrom, Elinor; Nagendra, Harini
"Governing natural resources sustainably is a continuing struggle. Major debates occur over what types of policy interventions best protect forests, with the types of property and land tenure systems being central issues. Evaluating the impacts of different tenure regimes in a systematic manner is not an easy task. Ecological systems rarely exist isolated from human use. The challenge of good scientific observation of linked socialecological systems is made even more difficult because relevant variables operate at different scales and their impacts differ radically. We provide an overview of findings from a long-term interdisciplinary, multiscale, international research program that studies factors affecting forest cover. We describe insights obtained from a series of explorations from the air (landscape scale), on the ground (forest-patch scale), and in the lab."
Aligning Key Concepts for Global Change Policy: Robustness, Resilience, and Sustainability
(2013) Anderies, John M.; Folke, Carl; Walker, Brian; Ostrom, Elinor
"Globalization, the process by which local social-ecological systems (SESs) are becoming linked in a global network, presents policy scientists and practitioners with unique and difficult challenges. Although local SESs can be extremely complex, when they become more tightly linked in the global system, complexity increases very rapidly as multi-scale and multi-level processes become more important. Here, we argue that addressing these multi-scale and multi-level challenges requires a collection of theories and models. We suggest that the conceptual domains of sustainability, resilience, and robustness provide a sufficiently rich collection of theories and models, but overlapping definitions and confusion about how these conceptual domains articulate with one another reduces their utility. We attempt to eliminate this confusion and illustrate how sustainability, resilience, and robustness can be used in tandem to address the multi-scale and multi-level challenges associated with global change."
The Challenge of Forest Diagnostics
(2011) Nagendra, Harini; Ostrom, Elinor
"Ecologists and practitioners have conventionally used forest plots or transects for monitoring changes in attributes of forest condition over time. However, given the difficulty in collecting such data, conservation practitioners frequently rely on the judgment of foresters and forest users for evaluating changes. These methods are rarely compared. We use a dataset of 53 forests in five countries to compare assessments of forest change from forest plots, and forester and user evaluations of changes in forest density. We find that user assessments of changes in tree density are strongly and significantly related to assessments of change derived from statistical analyses of randomly distributed forest plots. User assessments of change in density at the shrub/sapling level also relate to assessments derived from statistical evaluations of vegetation plots, but this relationship is not as strong and only weakly significant. Evaluations of change by professional foresters are much more difficult to acquire, and less reliable, as foresters are often not familiar with changes in specific local areas. Forester evaluations can instead better provide valid singletime comparisons of a forest with other areas in a similar ecological zone. Thus, in forests where local forest users are present, their evaluations can be used to provide reliable assessments of changes in tree density in the areas they access. However, assessments of spatially heterogeneous patterns of human disturbance and regeneration at the shrub/sapling level are likely to require supplemental vegetation analysis."
The Institutional Analysis and Development Framework and the Commons
(2010) Ostrom, Elinor
From p. 807: "We have tried to develop a useful framework for analyzing a wide variety of questions. Their adoption of a modified form of our Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework for this important set of questions re-assures us that we met our goal. Charlotte Hess and I organized a conference and coedited a book that examined some aspects of the knowledge commons using the IAD framework. We have learned that aspects of cultural environments can be thought of as 'cultural commons' because cultural products (e.g., new knowledge or software) are often available to many users who do not have to pay the producer in order to use those products. Many important questions related to the study of cultural commons await a careful institutional analysis."

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