I've been reading some of the latest work on, "the commons" and how Garret Hardin's ecological thesis on the "Tragedy of the Commons" caused by over-population can now be countered by Elinor Ostrom's application of political tools aimed at resource management strategies and decisions.
From Wikipedia:
Elinor Ostrom is considered one of the leading scholars in the study of common pool resources(CPR). In particular, Ostrom's work emphasizes how humans interact with ecosystems to maintain long-term sustainable resource yields. Common pool resources include many forests, fisheries, oil fields, grazing lands, and irrigation systems.
Ostrom identifies eight "design principles" of stable local common pool resource management:
- Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external un-entitled parties;
- Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources that are adapted to local conditions;
- Collective-choice arrangements that allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
- Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
- A scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
- Mechanisms of conflict resolution that are cheap and of easy access;
- Self-determination of the community recognized by higher-level authorities;
- In the case of larger common-pool resources (CPR) ,organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.
Garrett James Hardin (April 21, 1915 – September 14, 2003) was an American ecologist who warned of the dangers of overpopulation and whose concept of the tragedy of the commons brought attention to "the damage that innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment". He was most well known for his elaboration of this theme in his 1968 paper, The Tragedy of the Commons. He is also known for Hardin's First Law of Ecology, which states "You cannot do only one thing", and used the familiar phrase "Nice guys finish last" to sum up the "selfish gene" concept of life and evolution.
I'll explore both views in this blog and maybe take a shot at my own views now as a farmer-landower. When I lived in Montana and roamed the West, I was an unsettled victim of Hardin's Tragedy as he viewed the stresses of geometric population growth and the apparent over-use of "public" resources ("the commons") in his long debated "tragedy" thesis.
Ostrom, as summarized above, suggests a the socio-political management of the commons resources at local scales with global implications and seems to avoid the controversy that Hardin faced in his "tragedy" thesis which looks at solving resource depletion problems using population control with both local and global consequences.
And here sits little of Me trying like hell to understand the ramifications of managing an 80 acre farmstead, but involved, in my own little way, with the issues of managing resources of the commons with implications at local and global scales.
The main resources I'm charged with on Blue Moon Farm are soils, first, then water, and generally wetlands, forest and grass products on this so called "private" land. I'm managing a "commons" too. How I cut forest products to heat my farmhouse is a "commons" issue because our 30 acres of forest can be sustainably managed for my own and the common good. Our grassland can be maintained for raising beef cattle sustainably as well using practices that almost eliminate erosion of topsoil and deciding against soil contamination with pest and fertilizer chemicals. The wetlands on Blue Moon Farm are "owned" by Lyn and I, but there are also constrained by legal easements held by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in perpetuity (that's a long time) for the public good. Those easements are protective covenants which preclude us from; draining, filling or burning those wetlands.
So, I can cut firewood at a rate that turns our forest into an upland of sapling-brush-forb regrowth. I can continue to clear that forest to a point where it can be planted to grass to grow more beeves. Or I can make a calculated effort to cut trees at a rate that will keep our house warm in winter, provide continuing values to wildlife and humans. I can also just leave it alone of course, but as you know, that's not how us private landowners view personal well being. Or I can decide that the original vegetation of this land was a prairie and find a way to have a "wild" fire, reset it to a char and eventually watch it regrow into a grass-forb land with trees sprouting at some rate depending on how often that "wild" fire reoccurs. Only one of these actions result in a situation where the forest is managed in a sustainable way. All choices result in soils and hydrology conserved over the long term, but a commons resource, trees, is only being managed in a sustainable manner in one scenario. So many options, so little time....And, what commons resources am I accountable for as a land steward. It seems to depend on who's resource point of view is being qualified.
If I think of Lyn and I living on this farm and trying to make a go of it we would have no choice but to be more aggressive in our use of the land. In fact, it's not likely we could make it without working off the farm like many of my neighbor farmers did/do now and they, of course, have/had way more than 80 acres to make their go of it. Most farms in this area are 600-1000 acre consolidations of the many quarter section to half section farms that were once operating here.
The population issues so near and dear to Hardin's thesis, "The Tragedy of the Commons", are a pressure not felt by us on Blue Moon Farm. We have no children at home to bring up through today's economy; we have no demands on us to make a living off this place because we are retirees affording this farm by applying our annuities to cover costs and other living needs. We are trying however to experience food production on this farm in excess of our personal needs to better understand "feeding the masses" and the effort and decision process involved in producing excess for our needs. It doesn't take long to move mentally into a mindset that says, "Lyn, we have to break more ground for garden produce, we need to cut the forest for more grass, we have to work longer hours, we have to buy more land and equipment, we have to grow....like the economy we hear complained about each night on local and world news reports. When those statements come to mind I feel Hardin's "tragedy" with both barrels. I think to myself of the lyrics, "All alone and I..."and imagine immediately the urgency of pioneers to keep plowing, keep buying, keep working to put shoes on the kids.
Elinor Ostrom enters the frey and I sense alternative somehow. I might be too naive to understand her thesis, but I sense her view of the "commons" involves a great deal more cooperative conversation and action than me working against the forest for more grass, or me against the Fish and Wildlife Service for more drained land to plant crops or cows on. I also sense a community market and workforce to help me makes ends, both mine and theirs, meet.
This detail of "Community" is what has been lost in American agriculture as far as I can tell. "Culture" has dropped out of agri-culture and I mean that in the sense of a local people learning to use local resources and working together to produce food and fiber in a sustainable way. How could I abuse my land by forcing maximum production from it for foreign markets if I had neighbors participating in my success as a farmer; buying and encouraging local foods or land products they can use, improve upon by adding value to them, or valuing our forests, grasslands, marshes, and gardens for aesthetic values; say hunting or bird watching or a walk in the woods.
I'm sensing that Garret Hardin got himself so absorbed in the big picture that he lost the forest for the trees, while Elinor Ostrom went at her research in a local-regional sense rather than from a theoretical-worldwide point of view. I would like to think of her approach as a trend for the next generation to pursue with zesto. Nature doesn't make mistakes like we do; she doesn't loose the farm during bad times by miscalculations. She invents via adaptations to changes at landscape levels we might think of as too regional for this discussion. Yet, I'm talking about regional change here. Regional in the sense that if it takes a city to raise a family it takes a region to grow a community and to me a region is like a watershed, say the Buffalo River feeding into the Red River of the North. As long as the folks in the Buffalo River Watershed are cooperating and using their products at sustainable levels for themselves they might benefit the Red River of the North folks with a bit of overflow or exchange of goods to benefit the diverse needs of both watershed subcultures. Once we loose sight of the local and begin to operate in a global mindset the many minds are left behind for the few to theorize and guess at solutions to problems that are; 1) pretty meaningless to folks at a local or regional level of interaction, 2) not adaptable at the local level because of the great variation in resources and rituals from one nation-state or continent to the next, and 3) discourage cooperation rather than promote it and the benefits of applying long-learned local knowledge and skills to soils, waters and weather to make ends meet.
I'm not saying world population or regional population growth is not a problem for sustaining local/regional resources of common interest. It is; if we try to envision solutions to such large issues in the vacuum of academic science dealing with issues of global scope. Let's for instance realize we could place all 7 billion of us in Texas. That image leaves a heck of a lot of common resource issues in the dust. The thinking here is that we have to restrain ourselves to sustainability at a workable level, say second or
third order watersheds and get off of this mindset wagon of trying to have all the new gadgets all the time, created by people anywhere. Can we begin to make do first with what we can make at home or with trading neighbors in nearby watersheds before we try to solve the World's food shortage from Fargo, ND. I know, I know; but what about cars and freeways and jet airplane travel and going to Mars. Those are things we are used to and can't remember why we invented them. Mostly, they were invented because we are not very patient beings. We have not, until recently, had to realize the last frontier and "last best places" are what we see in our rear view mirrors.
We are stuck with our degraded "commons" and our neighbors. We can no longer run from them. We have to be "stickers" as Wallace Stegner encouraged us to be. We have to "learn to be still" as the Eagles song suggested. We have to apply our science as my friend Mike always reminds me. I have to envision a world from this desk by this window overlooking my marsh and the forest beyond. All the while realizing that my cows want another bale of hay before darkness falls and for which I traded their offspring to keep their circle of life going over the winter. So, too, don't we give up our offspring if we cannot learn to sustain ourselves. Yes, we do. And that was what both Garret Hardin and Elinor Ostrom really worried about, each in their own way: Hardin with population control at a vague global level; and Ostrom via consumption control at a local cooperative level. The threats of nuclear terrorism or global warming are two ways to curb overuse of vital resources through paranoia, but from my experience selling produce at the Richwood Farmers Market this summer, I have to believe that solutions involving community cooperation are worth a try. It works according to Elinor Ostrom in some places. Why not try it in your backyard.
