Abstract
Human institutions—ways of organizing activities—affect the resilience of the environment. Locally evolved institutional arrangements governed by stable communities and buffered from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, although they often fail when rapid change occurs. Ideal conditions for governance are increasingly rare. Critical problems, such as transboundary pollution, tropical deforestation, and climate change, are at larger scales and involve nonlocal influences. Promising strategies for addressing these problems include dialogue among interested parties, officials, and scientists; complex, redundant, and layered institutions; a mix of institutional types; and designs that facilitate experimentation, learning, and change.
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We thank R. Andrews, G. Daily, J. Hoehn, K. Lee, S. Levin, G. Libecap, V. Ruttan, T. Tietenberg, J. Wilson, and O. Young for their comments on earlier drafts; and G. Laasby, P. Lezotte, C. Liang, and L. Wisen for providing assistance. Supported in part by NSF grants BCS-9906253 and SBR-9521918, NASA grant NASW-01008, the Ford Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation.
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Dietz, T., Ostrom, E., Stern, P.C. (2008). The Struggle to Govern the Commons. In: Marzluff, J.M., et al. Urban Ecology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-73412-5_40
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