Interactions+with+the+natural+environment

A new study says that giving local communities control over forest resources can help slow and even reverse deforestation. The research, published by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) on the eve of a forestry workshop in Lombok, Indonesia, analyzed trends in countries that have either maintained or expanded forest cover since 1990. It found several factors contributing to forest recovery: expansion of community rights over land and resource management; support for afforestation, restoration, and reforestation projects; and “opening of markets to support sustainable forest management practices.” “The state remains the predominant actor in the region’s forests but the trend toward increased and legally recognized local control now emerging is incredibly important,” said Andy White, coordinator of RRI. “It’s no coincidence that the countries granting more rights to communities and indigenous groups are the same ones making progress toward more sustainable management of their forest resources.”

Ostrom takes an empirical approach: By examining legal records and other public documents, is it possible to determine whether every population overconsumes and under-provisions all common pool resource? She found that in many different cultures all over the world, some groups would find ways to overcome the obstacles that defeated others - by creating contracts, agreements, incentives, constitutions, signals, media to enable cooperation for mutual benefit. Another obstacle, free-riding, creates the second order social dilemma concerning who will bear the cost of policing the rules once they are agreed upon. So although the overall formula is simple - social dilemmas can be solved through institutions for collective action that are built by overcoming known obstacles - in practice, **each group that struggles to build an institution works under the handicap of being largely unaware of knowledge about how such institutions succeed and fail.** Whenever a group of people depend on a resource that everybody uses but nobody owns, and where one person's use effects another person's ability to use the resource, either the population fails to provide the resource, overconsumes and/or fails to replenish it, or they construct an institution for undertaking and managing collective action. The institution can be a body of informal norms that are disseminated by word of mouth, enforced by gossip or religious stricture, and passed from one generation to another, or a body of formal written laws that are enforced by state agencies, or a marketplace that treats the resource as private property, or a mixture of these forms. Ostrom argued forcefully that neither direct intervention by the state nor total privatization are necessary for people to evolve successful institutions - although state-provided courts lower the costs of creating the institutions, and the market value of well-managed CPRs provides strong incentive to create, agree, and maintain such arrangements.
 * Social dilemmas of multiple dimensions are obstacles on the path to creating institutions for collective action**; these dilemmas must be overcome if institutions are to succeed or exist at all.
 * In comparing the communities, Ostrom found that groups that are able to organize and govern their behavior successfully are marked by the some basic design principles.**

__Conclusions__
Ostrom claims that "all efforts to organize collective action, whether by an external ruler, an entrepreneur, or a set of principals who wish to gain collective benefits, must address a common set of problems." These problems are "coping with free-riding, solving commitment problems, arranging for the supply of new institutions, and monitoring individual compliance with sets of rules." Ostrom found that groups that are able to organize and govern their behavior successfully are marked by the following design principles: G overning The Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action  [|Ostrom, Elinor]
 * 1) Group boundaries are clearly defined.
 * 2) Rules governing the use of collective goods are well matched to local needs and conditions.
 * 3) Most individuals affected by these rules can participate in modifying the rules.
 * 4) The rights of community members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities.
 * 5) A system for monitoring member's behavior exists; the community members themselves undertake this monitoring.
 * 6) A graduated system of sanctions is used.
 * 7) Community members have access to low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms.
 * 8) For CPRs that are parts of larger systems: appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises.