Governance of Resources:

This week we will examine theories and approaches to study how resources (especially natural resource) are governed. Governance refers to the norms, institutions and processes that determine how power and responsibilities over resources are exercised, how decisions are made, and how different people participate in these processes. In Geography we pay particular attention to how different groups (and especially marginalized groups) participate in and benefit from the management of resources. The effectiveness and equity of governance processes critically determine both the extent to which ecosystems contribute to human well being and the sustainability of use. 

Consider these questions as you go through the material for this week as well as when completing your assignment:

• Whose responsibility is it to manage local resources? Global resources?
• What are the socio-economic and socio-ecologic implications of resource extraction?  
• When is it beneficial for a government or private company to control a resource? When is it not beneficial? 

Lesson 4 Checklist

Note: Please refer to the Calendar in Canvas for specific time frames and due dates.

Resource Governance:

Governance refers to the norms, institutions and processes that determine how power and responsibilities over resources are exercised, how decisions are made, and how different people participate in these processes. In Geography we pay particular attention to how different groups (and especially marginalized groups) participate in and benefit from the management of resources. The effectiveness and equity of governance processes critically determine both the extent to which ecosystems contribute to human well being and the sustainability of use.

Garret Hardin and the Tragedy of the Commons:

Dr. Garret Hardin (1915-2003) was a famous ecologist and microbiologist at University of California - Santa Barbara (UCSB). Hardin's interdisciplinary work in human ecology and biology is considered to be part of the foundation of modern ecology. This interdisciplinary approach allowed him to develop ideas on humanity's relationship with nature and human population growth. He saw humans as a specialized entity within the biologic system that allowed it to grow nearly unchecked as a result. Hardin was a strong proponent of human population control and resource management, supporting controversial ideas such as sterilization and anti-immigration policies. He was aware that humanities resources are finite, exhausted even more with unchecked population growth, thus he justified his support of these controversial ideas based on this rationale. 

Below are a few select quotes from Dr. Hardin:  

“A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.”

“It is clear that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not, during the immediate future, assume that the world available to the terrestrial human population is finite.”

“A community that renounces war as a means of settling international disputes still cannot survive without that discriminating form of altruism we call patriotism. It must defend the integrity of its borders or succumb into chaos."

“In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable.”

“We summarize the situation by saying: ‘There is a shortage of food.’ Why don’t we say, ‘There is a longage of people’?”

“To survive indefinitely in good shape a nation must take as its advisers people who can see farther than investment bankers.”

Hardin is most notably known for his published 1968 Science magazine essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons," cautions about finite resources and that humanity must accept and adapt to the looming future of limited resources. In his essay, Hardin observes that rational self-interest does not benefit society as a whole. Self-interested individuals who share a common-pool resource perceive the full benefits of harvesting the resource, but the negative consequences of reckless use of the commons is distributed among all users. As a result, everyone tries to consume as much as they can, thus depleting the commons. The most common example of this was provided by the British political economist William Forster Lloyd in 1832. Lloyd had made an observation that cattle grazing on a common space land were more malnourished than their counterparts which grazed on privately owned land. Following Hardin's rationale, as each farmer tries to add more cattle to capitalize on the free grazing space that space will degrade and deplete in faster than normal conditions, thus destroying the free grazing space for everyone else. Hardin prescribes either separating the resource into private allotments or putting in place restrictions and penalties to manage common-pool resources. This, along with the ideas brought forth from this essay, have been broadly accepted as an integral contribution to ecology, population theory, economics, and political science research of today. 

The trash on the beach shown here is another example of how common spaces today are misused or depleted by human activities. 

Elinor Ostrom:

Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012) was and remains to be the first woman to win a Nobel prize in Economics for her work on sustainability and commons management. Unlike Hardin's thoughts on the impending doom of commons, Ostrom believed that the future of commons were not as bleak. Her research involved studying real world cases of commons uses, conservation, and sustainability. She found through her work, and often argued with Hardin over, that if commons resource management were to be left up to a local community, they would work together to conserve that resource. Her belief in a governmental or privatized entity being able to adequately manage common resources was limited. Overall, Ostrom felt that a polycentrist approach was the best. Although much of her research was based around localized efforts, she was also a strong advocate for global issues like climate change and sustainable practices. Ostrom encouraged economists to consider ecologic ideology in order to promote sustainable practices and mitigate climate change for the future.

Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012)

Image Credit: By © Holger Motzkau [1] 2010, Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons [2], CC BY-SA 3.0 [3]

Below are a few select quotes from Dr. Ostrom:

“As long as a single center has a monopoly on the use of coercion, one has a state rather than a self-governed society.”

“But until a theoretical explanation -based on human choice – for self-organized and self-governed enterprises is fully developed and accepted, major policy decisions will continue to be undertaken with a presumption that individuals cannot organize themselves and always need to be organized by external authorities.”

"Little by little, bit by bit, family by family, so much good can be done on so many levels."

“There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right.”

"Bureaucrats sometimes do not have the correct information, while citizens and users of resources do."

Optional Readings:

• "Elinor Ostrom, her Nobel Prize, and her rules for ecologist radicals [4]"
• Elinor Ostrom Obituary in The Economist [5]

The term Resources Curse (also referred to as the paradox of plenty) first entered debates about development and economics in the 1990s. In their paper titled "Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth [6]", Sachs and Warner (1995) defined this term by stating that countries with an abundance of natural resources, tend to have less economic growth, less democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. Although it may seem intuitive that positive economic development would result from the discovery of resources within a country, it can have the opposite effect. It has been observed that there are higher rates of conflict and hegemonic practices coupled with economic instability and stunting in resource-rich countries.  

Many socio-economic challenges may arise for a country as a result of resource abundance. One such challenge is the phenomena called Dutch Disease. This phenomena refers to an instance that happened in the 1960's in the Netherlands, where a discovery of a natural gas field caused temporary boom to the industry and thus created issues for other sectors of the economy. Specifically, this can be defined as a situation where other sectors within a countries economy are negatively impacted by the growth in national income from natural resource extraction. An example of this in the United States would be the oil boom that started in 2006 in the Bakken formation in western North Dakota. Ross (2015) paper titled, "What Have We Learned about the Resource Curse? [7]", argued that out of all the resource industries, petroleum/oil was the most damaging as it promotes civil instability between classes, oversight incentives (i.e. corruption), and authoritarian regimes. This is apparent in developing, third-world countries, such as equatorial Africa, where governments are more likely to be unstable and there are large disparities between social classes. 

Diagram of oversight incentives that occur in resource-rich countries where citizens are not as informed as to the government spending. Alternatively, in resource-poor countries, there is a lack of incentives, and the citizens are more aware of how their government spends money.

Credit: The Resource Curse: The Political and Economic Challenges of Natural Resource Wealth. National Resource Governance Institute (NRGI). NRGI Reader, March 2015 . (Public Domain) For an accessible version, contact NRGI.

As you read this week, make sure you pay attention to and learn how to define the following: Governance, Common Pool Resource, Governmentality, Resource Curse.

Ostrom, E. (2009). A General Framework for Analyzing the Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems. Science, 325(5939): 419–22.

This is one of Ostrom's most recent pieces of writing and clearly summarizes the factors needed for sustainable governance of common pool resources and the autonomous organization of resource users to maintain their resources. In this paper, she highlights that the following factors shape the success of common pool resource governance:

• Size of resource system
• Productivity of system
• Predictability of system dynamics
• Collective-choice rules
• Resource unit mobility
• Number of users
• Leadership/entrepreneurship
• Norms/social capital
• Knowledge of SES/mental models
• Importance of resource

Watts, M. (2004). Resource curse? Governmentality, oil and power in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Geopolitics, 9(1), 50-80.

Dr. Michael Watts, an emeritus professor at the University of California - Berkely and a highly respected Environment-Society Geographer, has written extensively on resource governance and the idea of the Resources Curse. He uses a political ecology and political economy to study the governance of oil in Nigeria and the Niger Delta region. Watts uses the oil industry in Niger Delta as a case study to highlight the ongoing governmental and industry hegemony against the citizens of the region. His conclusions parallel the conclusions Ross (2015) came to in his article by bringing attention to the political disfunction which has been caused by oil.

Dr. Michael Watts

Credit: UC-Berkley Geography [8], 2021.

Dr. Watts concludes his article with this profound statement that reflects and sums up the the influence of oil globally: "Oil may indeed be a curse but its violent history – and its ability to generate conflict – can only be decoded if we are attentive to the unique qualities of oil itself” as well as institutions and existing political landscape."

NOTE: Links to the readings are located in the Lesson 4 module in Canvas.