Tackles one of the most enduring and contentious issues of positive political economy: common pool resource management.

Garrett Hardin's seminal essay "The Tragedy of the Commons" appeared in 1968 and has been at the center of the debate on commonly owned ground or resources such as Western public grazing or the oceans. This is the second edition of a book exploring the issues raised in Hardin's essay. As scarce resources are increasingly strained. It is ever more crucial to identify those resources which are held in common and are therefore prone to "tragic" waste and abuses. The essay in this volume focus on alternate institutional approaches to managing these resources to prevent such tragedy.

Managing the commons—natural resources held in common by particular communities—is a complex challenge. How have Asian societies handled resources of this sort in the face of increasing marketization and quickly growing demand for resources? And how have resource management regimes changed over time, with state formation, modernization, development, and globalization? Community, Commons and Natural Resource Management in Asia brings clarity, detail, and historical understanding to these questions across a variety of Asian societies and ecological settings. Case studies drawn from Japan, Korea, Thailand, India, and Bhutan examine fisheries, forests, and other environmental resources held in common. There is a tendency to imagine that traditional communities had socially equitable and environmentally friendly systems for managing the commons, but natural resources in Asia were often under free-access regimes. Resource management developed in response to social and economic pressures, and the state has been at various times both a beneficial and a negative influence on the development of community-level systems of managing the commons. The chapters in this volume show that a simple modernist framework cannot adequately capture this process, and the institutional changes it involved.

Provides a detailed analysis of the DICE model (Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) as well as an extensive analysis of the model's results.

Globalization, population growth, and resource depletion are drawing increased attention to the importance of common resources such as forests, water resources, and fisheries. It is critical that these resources be governed in an equitable and sustainable way. The Commons in the New Millennium presents cutting-edge research in common property theory and provides an overview and progress report on common property research. The book analyzes new problems that owners, managers, policy makers, and analysts face in managing natural commons. It examines recent findings about the physical characteristics of the commons, their complexity and interconnectedness, and the role of social capital. It also provides empirical studies and suggestions for sustainable development. The topics discussed include the role of financial, political, and social capital in deforestation, community efforts to gain political influence in Indonesia, the Maine lobster industry, outcomes of the implementation of individual transferable quotas in New Zealand and Iceland fisheries, and design of multilateral emissions trading for regional air pollution and global warming.

What accounts for the persistence and spread of "commoning," the irrepressible desire of people to collaborate and share to meet everyday needs? How are the more successful projects governed? And why are so many people embracing the commons as a powerful strategy for building a fair, humane and Earth-respecting social order? In more than fifty original essays, Patterns of Commoning addresses these questions and probes the inner complexities of this timeless social paradigm. The book surveys some of the most notable, inspiring commons around the world, from alternative currencies and open design and manufacturing, to centuries-old community forests and co-learning commons - and dozens of others. David Bollier (www.bollier.org) is an American author, activist and independent scholar who has studied the commons for nearly twenty years. Silke Helfrich (commonsblog.wordpress.com) is a German author and independent activist of the commons who blogs at www.commonsblog.de, and cofounder of the Commons-Institut in Germany. With Michel Bauwens, Bollier and Helfrich are cofounders of the Common Strategies Group. For more information, go to the book's website, Patterns of Commoning (www.patternsofcommoning.org)

Balancing the Commons in Switzerland outlines continuity and change in the management of common-pool resources such as pastures and forests in Switzerland. The book focuses on the differences and similarities between local institutions (rules and regulations) and forms of commoners’ organisations (corporations of citizens and corporations) which have managed common property for several centuries and have shaped the cultural landscapes of Switzerland. At the core of the book are five case studies from the German, French and Italian speaking regions of Switzerland. Beginning in the Late Middle Ages and focusing on the transformative periods in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it traces the internal and external political, economic and societal changes and examines what impact these changes had on commoners. It goes beyond the work of Robert Netting and Elinor Ostrom, who discussed Swiss commons as a unique case of robustness, by analysing how local commoners reacted to, but also shaped, changes by adapting and transforming common property institutions. Thus, the volume highlights how institutional changes in the management of the commons at the local level are embedded in the public policies of the respective cantons, and the state, which generates a high heterogeneity and an actual laboratory situation. It shows the power relations and very different routes that local collective organisations and their members have followed in order to cope with the loss of value of the commons and the increased workload for maintaining common property management. Providing insightful case studies of commons management, this volume delivers theoretical contributions and lessons to be learned for the commons worldwide. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the commons, natural resource management and agricultural development.

This collection of eighteen original essays evaluates the use and misuse of common-property resources, taking as its starting point ecologist Garret Hardin's assertion in "The Tragedy of the Commons" that common property is doomed to overexploitation in any society. This book represents the first cross-cultural test of Hardin's argument and argues that, while tragedies of the commons do occur under some circumstances, local institutions have proven resilient and responsive to the problems of communal resource use.

Managing natural resources that are held in common is a great and grave challenge. It requires addressing the community of users, beneficiaries, and managers. It also requires consideration of how those communities interact with the commons itself. At stake is the prosperity, and even survival, of both the people and the environment. Understanding and improving how we relate to commons has been the focus of much scholarly and practical research in the last 30 years. A quick look at the various natural resource commons surrounding us indicates that this will no doubt continue. Pacific Northwest salmon fisheries represent a system of commons, both complex and illustrative. My past history as administrator of the US. Environmental Protection Agency and my fisherman’s interest in salmon has heightened my sensitivity to the plight of the salmon and the people whose lives they affect. Recently, my wife and I moved back to the Pacific North-west—something the salmon try to do every year as they live out their inspiring life cycles. Unlike us, the salmon do not always find a hospitable environment when they return. There are many reasons: Simply put, there are more people in the salmon’s way, and they struggle more with the problems that come with expanding human populations. A number of reports issued over the past few years have chronicled the broad declines and local extinction of many salmon, steelhead, and sea-run cutthroat stocks in the region. The people who fish for a living and the communities in which they live have been hit hard. Our resource agencies are in danger of being overwhelmed by the complexity and magnitude of the problem. Why are salmon faring so poorly? Who is responsible? What can be done to reverse the recent declines in salmon populations? When tragedy befalls a commons as it has the salmon, I come to no conclusion about who is at fault, and I don’t intend to. The one thing that I am certain of is that the only truly innocent parties in all of this are the salmon and the generations of people yet to come. It seems to me that the responsibility falls upon all of us—fishermen, resource managers, and concerned citizens alike—to take the steps necessary to ensure that salmon populations recover to the point that our children will be able to enjoy the quality of life we once took for granted. While many people focus on how to get the most from commons, groups like the Sustainable Fisheries Foundation emphasize providing and maintaining those natural resources. Their goal is deceptively simple: ”We are trying to put more salmon back in the rivers and lakes of the Pacific Northwest.” Determining exactly how to accomplish this goal has defied the efforts of a great many dedicated and talented people. Many papers and panel discussions, especially reports on the status and trend ofwild salmon populations in the North Pacific, make it clear that many salmon stocks in parts of the lower United States, southern British Columbia, and the west coast of Vancouver Island are not faring well. The decline in salmon numbers in these areas corresponds with a rapidly expanding human population, alterations in land and water use, increasing sediment and containment loads, and heavy fishing pressure by a combination of sport, commercial, and tribal groups.