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Conference Paper The Relationship between Ecosystems and Human Systems: Scale Challenges in Linking Property Rights Systems and Natural Resource Management(1995) Cleveland, Cutler; Costanza, Robert; Eggertsson, Thráinn; Fortmann, Louise; Low, Bobbi S.; McKean, Margaret A.; Ostrom, Elinor; Wilson, James; Young, Oran R."We hypothesize that successful sustainability requires human social systems that are concordant with the ecosystem to which they are related at appropriate scales given the limits of human information processing. Many current governance and management systems are either too large or too small for the ecosystems to which they are related, leading to inappropriate policies for these systems. Problems often occur when human systems developed and sustainable at one scale or for one ecosystem or for one part of an ecosystem are transferred to other scales and ecosystems or to the whole system without adequate modification. In order to test this hypothesis, we are developing multiscale conceptual and mathematical models and data bases that include a range of ecosystem characteristics and human system characteristics."Conference Paper Reinventing the Commons(1995) McKean, Margaret A."We are indebted to institutional economic historians in general and Douglass North in particular for pointing out the impact of institutional structures on economic growth, and especially for making us appreciate the importance of clear specification of property rights in economic growth and in efficient use of resources. When this idea is combined with the crude (but apparently true) historical simplification that many societies used to have common property institutions and that individual private propery has in many instances displaced common property, one might carelessly conclude that individual property is more efficient than common property. And that efficient resource use - important in an era of environmental pressure - requires that we dismantle common property and replace it with individual private property. This conclusion is, of course, at the heart of the campaign to privatize resource use around the world, and I believe that it represents a grotesque misunderstanding of North's insights."Conference Paper Common Property Regimes as a Solution to Problems of Scale and Linkage(1995) McKean, Margaret A."Most of us would agree that efficient resource use enhances welfare and is environmentally desirable compared to less efficient resource use, because it means that we invest, get the most out of the least, and waste little. But this proposition creates a paradox between two very well accepted principles of economics: (1) private property rights and markets allow for more efficient use of resources than does government ownership (so yield desirable environmental results), and (2) private property systems and markets are chronic underproviders of public goods like environmental health (so yield inadequate environmental results). The paradox, I would submit, is a result of mismatch in scale between institutions and natural ecological systems. That is, private property rights and markets are socially and environmentally efficient only insofar as externalities are internalized."