Tragedy of the Commons

Th is article aims to evaluate how Brian
Short’s environmental analysis of the history of
Ashdown Forest was carried out in his book
Turbulent Foresters. A Landscape Biography of
Ashdown Forest. Based on this multithreaded
narrative, it was possible to enter into a polemic
and compare Brian Short’s approach to the
arguments in Giacomo Bonan’s or Paul Warde’s
works. Th e central aspect of the article, however,
is the discussion of two exposed perspectives –
the analysis of the infl uence of the agents on the
functioning of Ashdown, and the debate around
the concept of the functioning of the ‘commons’
and the social confl icts present in the forest of
Winnie the Pooh.

In 1966, Barbara Welter wrote an article titled "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," that demonstrated the four cardinal virtues expected of women in the nineteenth century: purity, piety, domesticity, and submissiveness. As these virtues became ingrained in society, a system of judgement for women was created and established women in roles determined by the men in their lives. 1 As women struggled within their fixed positions

Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, … , in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience …[and] we know what sufferings humanity has paid for every one of their triumphs of the mind.

Recent advances in land system science and in institutional analysis provide complementary, but still largely disconnected perspectives on land use change, governance, and sustainability in social-ecological systems, which are interconnected across distance. In this paper we bring together the emerging concept of telecoupled land systems and the established concept of polycentric governance to support the analysis and the development of sustainable land governance in interconnected social-ecological systems. We operationalize the two concepts by analyzing networks of action situations in which interactions between proximate and distant actors as well as socioeconomic and ecological processes cause land use change and affect the sustainability of land systems. To illustrate this integrated approach empirically, we analyze a case of transnational biofuel investment in Sierra Leone. We identify the characteristics of, and activities in, networks of action situations that affect the sustainability of land systems related to this case. Integration of the two concepts of telecoupled land systems and polycentric governance enables analysts to identify interactions in polycentric governance systems (1) as drivers of telecoupled sustainability problems and (2) as transformative approaches to such problems. The method provides one way for linking place-based analysis of land change with process-based analysis of land governance.

Recent advances in land system science and in institutional analysis provide complementary, but still largely disconnected perspectives on land use change, governance, and sustainability in social-ecological systems, which are interconnected across distance. In this paper we bring together the emerging concept of telecoupled land systems and the established concept of polycentric governance to support the analysis and the development of sustainable land governance in interconnected social-ecological systems. We operationalize the two concepts by analyzing networks of action situations in which interactions between proximate and distant actors as well as socioeconomic and ecological processes cause land use change and affect the sustainability of land systems. To illustrate this integrated approach empirically, we analyze a case of transnational biofuel investment in Sierra Leone. We identify the characteristics of, and activities in, networks of action situations that affect the sustainability of land systems related to this case. Integration of the two concepts of telecoupled land systems and polycentric governance enables analysts to identify interactions in polycentric governance systems (1) as drivers of telecoupled sustainability problems and (2) as transformative approaches to such problems. The method provides one way for linking place-based analysis of land change with process-based analysis of land governance.

The "tragedy of the commons" is typically a central topic in high school and college-level economics courses. This note provides a vignette for economics instructors that relates to the tragedy of the commons that, owing to the universality of the experience, may appeal to a wider audience than the traditional examples appearing in many textbooks. The vignette relates to the ages-old Halloween activity of trick-or-treating, particularly when some neighborhood residents choose to avoid the hassle of the activity by providing a "common-pool" candy bowl whose contents are distributed to trick-or-treating kids on an honor system.

No presente artigo, parte-se do pressuposto de que a crise de 2008 fez com que ocorresse uma maior pressão sobre as terras comunais no Brasil como forma de tentar amenizar ou recuperar perdas em investimentos de grandes grupos corporativos. O avanço do grande capital sobre as terras comunais ocasionou um aumento significativo dos conflitos no campo relacionados às terras dos povos do campo, em especial, das terras públicas ou devolutas nas quais ocorrem o uso comum, coletivo ou comunitário. Toma-se como referencial teórico a ideia de acumulação primitiva de Karl Marx, o entendimento de Rosa Luxemburgo de que o capital para ser produzido necessita destruir os laços comunitários e a ideia de recriação camponesa presente em Jose de Souza Martins e Ariovaldo Umbelino. Observa-se um processo de produção do capital, no qual as terras comunais, nas quais o modo capitalista de produção ainda não se fazia presente, sofre uma pressão para que sejam inseridas no modo de produção capitalista. Neste artigo, apresentam-se dois estudos de caso, um na Ilha de Boipeba, baixo sul do estado da Bahia e outro na divisa da Bahia com o Tocantins, no município de Formosa do Rio Preto-BA. Em ambos os casos, foi possível perceber um processo de apropriação de terras por meio da grilagem de uma vasta

The institutional and ecological structure of Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” appears deceptively simple: the open-access pasture eventually will be overexploited and degraded unless (i) it is privatized, (ii) the government regulates access and use, or (iii) the users themselves impose a common-property regime to regulate their own access and use. In this paper, we argue that the institutional structure of the “Herder Problem” (as it is known to game theorists) is far more complicated than it is usually portrayed. Specifically, it is not just about the pasture. It is equally about the grass that grows on the pasture and the cattle that consume the grass. Even Elinor Ostrom — a scholar known for embracing complexity — presented an overly simplistic portrayal of Hardin’s open-access pasture when she described its governance system as a null set of institutions. A more careful assessment of the situation, employing Ostrom’s Social-Ecological System (SES) framework, broadens the focu...

A revised application of Ostrom's (Ostrom, 2007) Social-Ecological System (SES) framework to Hardin's ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, G. (1968), Science, 162(3859): 1243–1248) demonstrates that its institutional structure is more complex than either Hardin or Ostrom had imagined. The ‘tragedy’ arises from several interacting resources and institutions. If the grass on the pasture was not subject to appropriation, the cattle were not privately owned, or property- and contract-enforcement institutions supporting market exchange were absent, then the ‘tragedy of the commons’ would not have arisen regardless of the open-access pasture. This paper highlights the utility of the SES framework and the care required to apply it precisely to specific social-ecological situations.

The fossil record presents palaeoecological patterns of rise and fall on multiple scales of time and biological organization. Here, we argue that the rise and fall of species can result from a tragedy of the commons, wherein the pursuit of self-interests by individual agents in a larger interactive system is detrimental to the overall performance or condition of the system. Species evolving within particular communities may conform to this situation, affecting the ecological robustness of their communities. Results from a trophic network model of Permian-Triassic terrestrial communities suggest that community performance on geological timescales may in turn constrain the evolutionary opportunities and histories of the species within them.

This paper develops mathematical models of the tragedy of the commons analogous to ecological models of resource consumption. Tragedies differ fundamentally from predator-prey relationships in nature because human consumers of a resource are rarely controlled solely by that resource. Tragedies do occur, however, at the level of the ecosystem, where multiple species interactions are involved. Human resource systems are converging rapidly toward ecosystem-type systems as the number of exploited resources increase, raising the probability of system-wide tragedies in the human world. Nevertheless, common interests exclusive of exploited commons provide feasible options for avoiding tragedy in a converged world.

This article examines the post-tsunami development of Aceh from an anthropological perspective, focusing on the concept of the tragedy of the commons. The author argues that the development projects in Aceh have been driven by a logic of budget absorption, dendrophobia (fear of trees), and noise escalation, resulting in the degradation of various commons, such as land, sound, water, and cultural heritage. The author uses Garret Hardin's theory of the tragedy of the commons to analyze the collective action problems and the externalities that arise from the overexploitation and mismanagement of the commons. The author also provides empirical evidence from fieldwork and secondary sources to illustrate the negative impacts of the development on the environment, society, and culture of Aceh. The author concludes that the development of Aceh has been a tragedy for the commons and calls for a more sustainable, participatory, and culturally sensitive approach to development.

Addressing global fisheries overexploitation requires better understanding of how small-scale fishing communities in developing countries limit access to fishing grounds. We analyze the performance of a system based on individual licenses and a common property-rights regime in their ability to generate incentives for self-governance and conservation of fishery resources. Using a qualitative beforeafter-control-impact approach, we compare two neighbouring fishing communities in the Gulf of California, Mexico. Both were initially governed by the same permit system, are situated in the same ecosystem, use similar harvesting technology, and have overharvested similar species. One community changed to a common property-right regime, enabling the emergence of access controls and avoiding overexploitation of benthic resources, while the other community, still relies on the permit system. We discuss the roles played by power, institutions, socio-historic, and biophysical factors to develop access controls. Keywords Small-scale fisheries . Gulf of California . Comparative analysis . Fishing concessions . Marine tenure . Tragedy of the commons . Individual licenses . Mexico X. Basurto (*) Duke Marine Lab,

Los beneficios de la competencia institucional se alcanzan bajo ciertas normas que impiden la violación de derechos y la depredación de los recursos. La competencia horizontal puede tomar la forma de agresión violenta entre jurisdicciones (guerra) o la de cooperación y comercio.Su impacto puede ser “negativo” si substrae recursos de gobiernos benevolentes comprometidos con el bienestar general de la comunidad, pero “positivos” si se los considera como otra forma de controlar el Leviatán.La competencia vertical muestra los mismos controles “positivos” potenciales y la misma necesidad de ciertas reglas para cumplir ese papel. Son similares a la definición estricta del derecho de propiedad que resuelve la “tragedia de la propiedad común”. De otra forma puede crear una situación donde los contribuyentes son abusados por distintos niveles de autoridad fiscal como muestra el caso argentino.

The COVID19 pandemic has engendered unprecedented drastic and costly measures to obviate the threat. Will something similar happen in relation to global heating? No, this is not likely. Mainly this has to do with a difference in the nature of collective action. Nation states protect their respective populations against the virus. With regard to global heating, we are facing the tragedy of the commons. No global government assumes responsibility for our common future. However, there may be another and further explanation lurking behind political inaction: many people, including our politicians, think that it does not matter if humanity goes extinct. It does matter, however. Strangely enough, the view that it matters is questioned by many important philosophers in the past and in the present, and it is hence controversial. Yet, it should be our commonsense stance to the problem. It is of the utmost importance that there will be sentient happy life on the globe for an indefinite time. Theoretically speaking, in order to recognize this, we need to accept some "total" view, implying what has been called the repugnant conclusion. Practically speaking, we should go to great length to rescue our human civilisation, even if this means that, for a while, we must endure all sorts of hardships such as a global enlightened despotism, or worse-a situation of life boat ethics.

Fish stocks are declining in marine capture coastal fisheries in West Africa. Many observers have blamed climate change and the system of open access for the decline. Open-access fishing encourages too many people to take up fishing, and the result is overfishing of the stocks. According to such critics, this is a classic example of Hardin's tragedy of the commons, whereby a continuous increase in the number of users of a natural resource eventually leads to the collapse of the resource. The present study, which analysed stakeholders' perceptions about their open-access fishing in Siera Leone's marine fisheries, conducted 32 key informant interviews. Our research found that while they perceived that open-access fishing impacted fish stocks, most Sierra Leone's marine capture fishers did not see open access as a cause of fish decline; instead, they blamed the lack of enforced regulations on the methods and extent of fishing. Accordingly, these fishers favoured the continuation of open access-not least because it helps to alleviate hunger and is a readily available source of protein in Sierra Leone's coastal communities-but accompanied by strict regulations on both the type of fishing gear used and the quantity, size, and species of fish caught. In other words, they preferred regulated open access to unregulated open access. The central government's resolve to regulate its fishery will determine whether it will transition from unregulated open access to regulated open access or other forms of OA. This study recommends detailed research into how to influence political will to enforce regulations. Keywords: unregulated open-access fisheries; regulated open-access fisheries; marine coastal fisheries; Sierra Leone; tragedy of the commons Key Contribution: Unregulated open-access fishing is a major issue for Sierra Leone's fisheries; regulated open-access could moderate illegal fishing and alleviate food poverty.

Over the past 50 years public agricultural research has contributed enormously to humanity, enabling the supply of food to grow faster than demand in spite of a rapidly growing population, income growth, and shrinking natural resources. Nonetheless, in many countries we see waning public support for agricultural R&D, especially in Africa, a diversion of research resources from farm productivity towards other agendas, and early warning signs of a slowdown in agricultural productivity. The world has continued to collectively underinvest in agricultural R&D because of domestic and international market failures associated with appropriability problems. Governments have failed to effectively address these problems, often doing too little, too late. This tragedy of the international commons may be getting worse. In the past, developing countries benefited considerably from technological spillovers from developed countries, but because of changes occurring in developed countries, spillover...

Origin labels, more specifically Geographical Indications (GIs), allow organised producers to define quality standards and defend their food products' reputation while highlighting their geographical origin and value to consumers. Café de Colombia was the first non-European food product registered as Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) under EU legislation (510/2006, followed by 1151/2012). This paper aims to identify the dynamics of collective efforts and the rules of the game developed by coffee growers to protect the collective intellectual property right. Our guiding research questions are: i) to what extent can the Ostrom's design principles explain effective collective action for GI registration and implementation? and ii) can collective action for GIs reshape relations between supply chain actors and support producers in gaining control over origin products? We collected data using semi-structured interviews and document analysis, which we then processed in a qualitative text analysis. Results show that the principles are very helpful for understanding the internal collective action of coffee growers, and also clearly show the challenges in the Can origin labels re-shape relationships along international supply chains? 417 interaction with industrial coffee processors (e.g. international roasters, brand owners). A pure focus on the producers' collective action for establishing and managing the origin protection does not give a full picture, since green coffee beans are roasted and commercialised abroad. The GI has already re-shaped the relationships along the supply chains, as international roasters sign the producers' rules governing the PGI use. The commercial GI impact however will depend on consumers' willingness to appreciate and pay extra for high-quality origin coffee as well as the readiness of roasters or brand owners to emphasise on origin coffee, in addition to their brands of blended coffee.

This article argues that lessons on how to achieve a sustainable financial system can be learnt from the work done on sustainable commons (on common-pool resources (CPRs) where there is no 'tragedy of the commons'). Existing approaches to financial regulation may under-privilege available solutions. The article proposes that innovative solutions could be tested using experimental methods commonly used in CPRs -repeat run, feedback driven games. A substantial banquier is to bee hanged hear today for making bankrupt; I know not whether that bee ye best way of preventing others from ye like practices... Extensive empirical research leads me to argue that instead, a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans. We need to ask how diverse polycentric institutions help or hinder the innovativeness, learning, adapting, trustworthiness, levels of cooperation of participants, and the achievement of more effective, equitable, and sustainable outcomes at multiple scales.

In this contribution we focus on togetherness, as one of the key notions in the current COVID-19 crisis. Globally, it is seen as vital to stand and act together to combat the virus, and avoid a tragedy of the commons, in which actors are acting out of self-interest and counterproductively to the general interest. In this essay we analyse the current geographical dissonant developments that the required human togetherness across the globe is facing. We find that the main conflicting tendencies, that we summarise as utilitarian locking up, nationalistic locking in and exclusionary locking out, are all employing a notion of togetherness which is largely based on an in-group solidarity based on either age, gender, ethnicity, nationality or fitness. We argue that such narrow definition of togetherness falls short in dealing with the crisis in an effective as well as nondiscriminatory manner, and potentially could even lengthen or worsen the corona crisis. We end with a plea for a different conceptualisation of solidarity in the combat of the crisis, a radical non-dividing form of togetherness: agape.

An important contributor to the rising global prevalence of obesity 1 has been the widespread availability of cheap, unhealthy ultra-processed foods (UPFs). These are "formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, typically created by a series of industrial techniques and processes" 2 . UPFs are nutritionally inferior to unprocessed, minimally processed or processed foods, containing significantly higher proportions of free sugars, total and saturated fats, salt and energy density, and lower proportions of protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals 3 . They are affordable, hyper-palatable, stimulate repeat purchase, are aggressively marketed and branded, and highly profitable 4 . The evidence is now unequivocal that UPFs are a significant driver of obesity 5 , diabetes 6 , increased morbidity and mortality 7 . UPFs now comprise over half of all food intake in America 8 and Britain 9 , radically displacing healthier, less processed food from the diet 10 . Reformulation -the reduction of saturated fats, sugar and salt in food -has long been considered a strategy to mitigate the public health risks associated with unhealthy dietary patterns globally 11 . Food reformulation is perceived as a 'win-win' 12 because unlike other public health nutrition policies it has the potential to also benefit the UPF industry, as the focus is on changing the nutrient profile of a product rather than decreasing its overall consumption 13 . However, public health experts have argued that there are no such things as 'healthy' ultra-processed foods: replacing sugars with artificial sweeteners, for example, is not a strategy that leads to a greater share of unprocessed food in the diet . In order to assess the policy of reformulation, it is necessary to consider the system dynamics between

We apply causal loop diagrams (CLD) to picture how complex societal scenarios can be understood in terms of interdependent drivers and mechanisms between actors from the public and private sectors respectively. And we show how un-sustainable scenarios can be understood in terms of insufficient balancing feed-back in the system. We apply the methodology to picture such imbalances as fundamental drivers behind the tragedy of the commons. And we apply it to go deeper into a specific business example in this context, a complex case of resource exploitation in Far East Asia. The CLD analyses inform a discussion on the interplay between societies on the one hand, represented by the Government and its legislature, and the private sector with its companies, consumers and market on the other. Our study confirms that unsustainability can only be understood and addressed at the systemic level, encompassing both natural and social systems, where also the virtual and emergent systems of modern civilization are considered. The results show that a market economy can only be sustainable as well as really free, when embedded in a systemic and balanced interplay between the actors on the arena. The provision of the market arena with well thought-through rules of the game, offered by a well-functioning democratic society, is needed. The challenge for leaders in business and society is to be able to grasp the causalities of the whole system, and let this guide and shape sustainable goals as well as leadership and management in coherence with such goals.

Open-access, common-pool resources, such as many fisheries, aquifers, oil pools, and the atmosphere, often require some type of regulation of private access and use to avoid wasteful exploitation. This paper summarizes the arguments and literature associated with this problem. The historical and contemporary record of open-access resources is not a happy one, and many of the problems persist, despite large aggregate gains from resolving them. The discussion here suggests why that is the case. The paper focuses on government responses to the common pool, the private and political negotiations underlying them, and the information and transaction costs that influence the design of property rights and regulatory policies. Understanding the type of institution that emerges and its effects on the commons depends upon identifying the key parties involved, their objectives, and their political influence. Further, it requires detailed analysis of the bargaining that occurs within and across groups. The paper summarizes the open-access problem and provides case analyses of regulation of common-pool fisheries, oil reservoirs, and the atmosphere. The final section summarizes the general themes and the advantages of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) approach to analyzing the common pool.

It assesses the efficiency of these frameworks and highlights how institutions affect the management of other natural resources/ecosystem goods and services. The study was carried out in Matabeleland South Province, Zimbabwe; it was predominantly qualitative in nature and used multistage sampling techniques. The sample was the rural population of Matabeleland South Province, drawn from six of its case study wards. The districts, rural centres and key informants were purposively sampled on the basis of secondary data. The study findings showed that the institutional framework governing mining was sensitive only to formal mining operations but blind to rapidly-expanding informal artisanal and smallscale mining. Furthermore, formal institutions have become a major catalyst in converting common property into an open access regime that is susceptible to the Tragedy of the Commons. The study also showed that the reigning status quo had negative effects on other rangeland-inclined ecosystem services and compromised the ability to effectively manage them.

It is common to enrich legal debate with the principles of good governance or with data regarding the nature of goods or of services. Much less frequently, however, do we see questions regarding the influence in the opposite direction: whether, in interdisciplinary research, it is economics that could gain from the application of legal constructs, even assuming the presence of nongermane tangential matters. I see such an opportunity in the interdisciplinary research on law and economics developed within the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom school of thought, usually called “The Ostrom Workshop”.

Eastern hills of Bogota for its landscape value have characteristics of common pool resources, so have been damaged by a logic called the tragedy of the commons. Against this government authorities have created an institutional design in order to mitigate environmental damage, however today there are still human actions on this resource. Therefore, this research aims to diagnose what aspects, elements and features of institutional design contribute or limit the ecological conservation of Protective Forest Reserve Oriental Forest Bogota DC, in light of the failure 947 of 2013 of the State Council responds a Popular Action. This from the perspective of institutionalism Elinor Ostrom, which proposes eight successful design principles characteristic of long-term institutions for common pool resources, which contrasted with the contents of the fault in question and the arguments presented Popular Action of 2005. The project aims to show itself, there is an institutional design that meets...

Undecidability reflects a fundamental limit to logical reasoning that permeates formal analysis in diverse areas of natural and social sciences. We present an intuitive approach to understanding how undecidability may emerge endogenously in modeling a wide range of real-world problems. Not only does this allow for a better understanding of these problems, but it also provides a gateway for a holistic approach to rational decision-making.

The discussion is anchored on the constitutionality construct and opens up reflections to guide future management processes and outcomes for protected areas. Based on a review of articles and institutional reports, complemented by interviews and focus group discussions, we comparatively analyze the manifestations of two constitutionality principles in co-management around the KNP and NTNP, and discuss future co-management perspectives. The paper concludes with reflections on how local level institutions could be activated in protected area management, especially with respect to enforcing catalyzing agents and improving state motivation and recognition of local institutional processes. The results do not only provide necessary ingredients to improve the institution-building process if co-management must become adaptive, but equally opens up new research avenues in the context of local power play and social learning. We argue that further studies should seek to understand conditions, under which catalyzing agents and the state could support and recognize endogenous institution-building processes to improve resource management outcomes.

We study the price of anarchy of selfish routing with variable traffic rates and when the path cost is a nonadditive function of the edge costs. Nonadditive path costs are important, for example, in networking applications, where a key performance metric is the achievable throughput along a path, which is controlled by its bottleneck (most congested) edge. We prove the following results. In multicommodity networks, the worst‐case price of anarchy under the ℓp path cost with 1 < p ≤∞ can be dramatically larger than under the standard ℓ1 path cost. In single‐commodity networks, the worst‐case price of anarchy under the ℓp path cost with 1 < p < ∞ is no more than with the standard ℓ1 path norm. (A matching lower bound follows trivially from known results.) This upper bound also applies to the ℓ∞ path cost if and only if attention is restricted to the natural subclass of equilibria generated by distributed shortest path routing protocols. For a natural cost‐minimization objecti...

There are many economic environments in which individual incentives do not generate enough group cooperation. This dissertation investigates an instance of such a social dilemma - the use of a common property resource - and a special class of institutions that can promote the socially optimal outcome, namely self-governing institutions. Self-governance exists when the users themselves manage the common resource in a decentralized fashion through legal institutions. The analysis is carried out from three distinct perspectives. The first perspective is an economic analysis of the property rights arrangements and an application of tools of game theory to a field case study. Between the 13th and the 19th centuries, many communities in the Italian Alps negotiated and enforced contracts (Carte di Regola) in order to efficiently manage their common pastures and forests. A comparison between two potential solutions to the Tragedy of the Commons, self-governance and informal cooperation thro...

This article examines the post-tsunami development of Aceh from an anthropological perspective, focusing on the concept of the tragedy of the commons. The author argues that the development projects in Aceh have been driven by a logic of budget absorption, dendrophobia (fear of trees), and noise escalation, resulting in the degradation of various commons, such as land, sound, water, and cultural heritage. The author uses Garret Hardin's theory of the tragedy of the commons to analyze the collective action problems and the externalities that arise from the overexploitation and mismanagement of the commons. The author also provides empirical evidence from fieldwork and secondary sources to illustrate the negative impacts of the development on the environment, society, and culture of Aceh. The author concludes that the development of Aceh has been a tragedy for the commons and calls for a more sustainable, participatory, and culturally sensitive approach to development.

The privatization of a natural resource is often proposed as a solution to the degradation of natural resources under open access, known as the Tragedy of the Commons. However, this e¢ ciency improvement may come at a distributional cost (Weitzman, 1974) as traditional users of the resource lose income and employment unless they are given a large enough share of the property rights.The present paper demonstrates that, in the case of renewable resources, traditional users may gain from privatization even if they are denied ownership of the resource. Indeed, a private owner maximizes pro…ts by preserving the resource, which results in long-term increases in employment. Hence, the short term losses to traditional users from lower labor demand and loss of rent, must be weighted against the long term gains from employment creation. We also derive the conditions under which privatization is Pareto-improving, bene…ting both the new and traditional owners of the natural resource.

In this essay, I consider arguments both for and against intellectual property rights that are premised on some conception of a morally significant information commons. In particular, I consider the argument for a morally protected information commons that is grounded in Locke's famous proviso limiting original acquisition of material property to situations that leave enough of the resource to others and Hardin's famous argument that holding material property in common leads to overuse and depletiona tragedy of the commons. I argue that neither argument is directly applicable to information objects.

The guideline for libraries concerning how a library should be developed in the information society has not clearly detailed. This paper intends to argue information commons issue, which was tackled mostly in the academic library world, with a focus on public libraries. Within the scope of the theory of commons for 'common-pool resources' it examined the position and function of a library as a social mechanism to share information resources among people and looked at the 'digital dilemma' emerging along with the digitization of information. Moreover, it referred to the current status and future direction of information commons in the public libraries that could respond to the development of digital services.

We consider the problem of the tragedy of commons in cooperative production economies, and propose a mechanism to resolve this tragedy, taking into account that the coordinator cannot perfectly monitor each agent's labor skill and each agent may have an incentive to overstate as well as understate his own skill. Even in such a situation, the mechanism implements the proportional solution [Roemer and Silvestre (1989, 1993)] in Nash and strong equilibria when it is played as a normal form game. Moreover, the mechanism triply implements the solution in Nash, subgame-perfect, and strong equilibria when it is played as a two-stage extensive form game.

Fisheries regulation is considered necessary to counteract the effects of competitive forces which can lead to a "tragedy of the commons". Yet management initiatives have often failed because they did not take into account competitive responses of fishing enterprises. In particular, open access fisheries provide strong incentives for the development of excessive harvesting capacity. This in turn leads to harvesting that is concentrated in space and time, with adverse effects on both the resource and markets. A coalition of fishermen, such as a fishermen's cooperative, has interests similar to those of asole owner, and thus would be expected to produce more efficient behaviour. In practice, however, fishermen's cooperatives seldom persist. Game theory is used to explore relationships between the coalition structure of the industry, economic variables, and regulation. The models are based loosely on a purse seine fishery for herring. The results suggest that the potential to form stable coalitions is affected by changes in price and harvest. Changes in regulation also affect stability of coalitions. When interpreted in the light of historical changes in the herring fishery, these results suggest that industry may not accept regulations which do not permit formation of stable coalitions.

to describe how shared resources, or "commons" can become depleted, also elucidates the mechanism by which standardization of educational outcomes and assessment have come to dominate current education discourse. We then briefly present results of a case study of a school struggling to succeed within a context of a district's hyper-focus on standardized measures of success, and employ the theory to illustrate its usefulness to explain what we found at the school site. We believe this theoretical framework provides interesting perspectives on current trends toward standardization that threaten the quality of public education. In addition, in keeping with the theme of this year's conference (to know is not enough), we believe it also suggests useful courses of action to mitigate against those threats. In too many schools, we have all but abandoned what many believe is the main reason for education in the first place: to become happy, healthy, and well-adjusted adults who understand how to live balanced lives in the context of our families, communities,

This paper focuses on collective contests for commons and club goods. Our main objective is to examine in this context the effect of group size on its performance. The main results specify conditions for the existence (non-existence) of the group-size paradox, namely, the situation where a larger group is less (more) effective in pursuing its interest because of (despite) the combined effect of the incentives that result in the free-riding problem and the tragedy of the commons. The paper also explains under what circumstances there exists a bias towards excessive or inadequate winning group size. Finally, it examines the effect of restricted excludability of the commons good within the winning group on the relationship between group-size and its winning probability.

Resilience is often presented as a championing solution for tackling the multi-level environmental, security, health, and financial threats facing the whole humanity or specific ecosystems, communities, institutions, or individuals. However, the popularity of the concept is not proof of its usefulness. Perhaps the greatest problem is that many of the current socio-ecological systems are operating in both resilient and unsustainable ways. The problem turns into a tragedy if resources are used to maintain or advance such unsustainable resilience. We provide a concise review of the use of the concept of resilience in multiple fields. We highlight the dominance of positive connotations of resilience, originating both from theoretical considerations and practice-oriented applications. This optimistic bias masks the fact that unsustainable systems and practices may be highly resilient. In turn, this can lead to poor understanding and inadequate management of risks related to the attempts to create sustainability innovations. We discuss how path-dependencies and shifting baselines can complicate sustainability initiatives. Managing resilience for sustainability involves defining which system states are desirable and managing the pressures that maintain desired and undesired system states. Our conclusion is that active e orts aimed for maintaining resilience should be initiated only if a thorough assessment has shown that the system under consideration can function in a sustainable way.