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The history behind the Ostroms' work on self-governance. Speakers from around the world tell how the Ostroms' ideas and practical principles have affected our thinking about the commons.

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Elinor and Vincent Ostrom International Studies of Choice, Cooperation, Governance

The history behind Elinor and Vincent Ostroms' work on self-governance. Speakers from around the world tell how the Ostroms' ideas and practical principles have affected our thinking about the commons.

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Elinor Ostrom and Irrigation in Nepal

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Reflections on Elinor Ostrom's Studies of Nepal Farmer-Managed Irrigation Systems with Prachanda Pradhan

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The Duanys' Story

Julia Duany believes that the participation of women in building a democracy in South Sudan is one of the keys to eventual success in the struggling new democracy. Julia is a South Sudanese native who along with her husband Wal Duany has split her life between leadership in the independence of South Sudan and getting an education and raising a family at Indiana University in Bloomington. Both Julia and Wal did graduate study at Indiana University. Julia received her Ph.D. in education and Wal received his Ph.D. in Political Science. They each worked with Lin and Vincent Ostrom at The Workshop in Political Theory and Public Policy.

Today, Julia is heading a two-year project to promote women’s access to and success in higher education in South Sudan. This is the latest in a long list of her efforts to develop the women of her country into leaders for the fragile new democracy created when South Sudan voted for its independence in July 2011.

Go back to 1993-1994. With her African Dissertation Internship Award from the Rockefeller Foundation, Julia and Wal arrived back in their homeland, embedded in civil war. Julia saw the devastation of her country and the massive numbers of women and children in refugee camps. Though Julia knew how desperately the women wanted peace, only men had been involved in conversations about reconciliation and peace. And those conversations included stories whose details the men and women didn’t agree on.

“Only men were talking. Women were not in the scene, but the women knew the issues that led to fighting. A delegation of women of Southern Sudan Women Association came in to challenge the men’s stories saying there was no truth there. I said to myself here are the women with knowledge of this country.”

Working along with her husband Wal and his protégé, Riek Machar, Julia began to organize the Akobo Peace Conference hoping to mobilize women to tell the truth about the rape, killing, looting and destruction that their own people had done. Julia could see the conference shift as the women shared the truths of the civil war. Women were being given the chance to be part of the development of their country.

The peace conference encouraged more United Nations and international interest in the independence struggle of South Sudan. Wal published several articles on the organizational structure of South Sudan’s various ethnic groups—called “houses”—represented by 52 languages and many religions. He often noted that these “acephalous” societies (meaning cultures that were organized without a king, headman, or unitary source of authority) fit well with Vincent Ostrom’s principle of polycentric (many centers of authority) government. Vincent was instrumental in getting Julia’s powerful memoir on the role women played in preserving lives and livelihoods in South Sudan into print.

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Barbara's Workshop Colleagues Julia and Wal Duany Discuss South Sudanese Independence

Photo Credits: See http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/actual-world-possible-future.

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Harini Nagendra on Lin Ostrom

by Sam Feigenbaum

Harini Nagendra first communed with Lin Ostrom over forests and trees. That was their thing. Harini and Lin first met when Harini was hired to help conduct research on South Asian forests. Lin was looking for someone with experience in that part of the world, and Harini, born and raised in India, certainly had it. That was the start of a partnership that would take them all over the world.

They wanted to find out whether it was possible for forests and human communities to exist together. They weren’t interested in whether communities could preserve their forest by declaring them off limits. What they really wanted to put their finger on was how communities could incorporate forests into development. Could communities figure out how to live in a way in which forests and humans formed a symbiotic relationship?

Harini and Lin’s research carried them to forests across the globe––from Uganda to Kenya to Nepal to the US, but when asked to tell a story that exemplifies who Lin was, Harini tells a story not about forests and trees, but rather about a polluted lake no more than a stone’s throw from her home in Bangalore, India.

“There’s a lake near where I live in Bangalore which is really degraded. The local community banded together and started working with the government to restore the lake. At the time I wasn’t working on lakes, I was working on trees and forests with Lin, but when we talked one time–– we always talked about our lives after we got finished talking about work–– I told her about the lake project and she was really, really excited to hear about it.

That gave me a lot of insight into who Lin was. She was so interested in knowing more about how my local community in Bangalore got together and the different struggles and challenges we had along the way.

And then she came to Bangalore! It was about three months before she died in February 2012. She was really tired and exhausted from the long flight, but she really wanted to go see the lake. She came and met with the local community and she planted a tree, a jackwood tree at the site, and talked to all the people and told them how great it was that they had gotten together and helped the lake.

And that was Lin for me. She really practiced what she preached–– not that she preached. Ideas were more than theoretical ideas, they were something that she really believed in.”

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Conservation geographer Harini Nagendra talks about her work with Elinor "Lin" Ostrom and Lin's insights into the polycentric nature of the community and government partnership that restored Kaikondrahhalli Lake in Bangalore

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Check out the new video we've just produced highlighting Vincent's work on the Alaskan Constitution!

For photo credits head to http://vimeo.com/84354523.

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Vincent and AK's Constitution Part #3

by Ginger Sisco

It was Judge Thomas Stewart, Convention Secretary for the Alaska Constitutional Convention in Fairbanks, who recommended bringing in Vincent Ostrom to help draft the language for the natural resources article in the new constitution.  He was aware of Vincent’s work on western water law in California, Oregon, and Wyoming. 

This was 1955, and President Nixon would not sign the executive order creating the EPA until 1970.  But Vincent was already speaking of studies that would later be called “environmental impact statements” to determine how best to use a resource sustainably and beneficially, asking questions about who benefits from what use. Convention delegate George Sundborg said, “We had resources to support the entire nation so we knew we had to set down good principles on how we would manage what we had.”

Here’s what Vincent said when he was introduced to the convention delegates:

“….I think this is a very stimulating opportunity that you have here at the present time.  I would hope that during the course of my visit here I might be able to raise some questions about problems of resource policy and to provide some contribution in this area that has to do with the development of natural resources.  But I think above all else, recognize that what we say about natural resources is not limited simply to lands and to fish and to minerals and metals out there, but rather being concerned with how we as human beings are going to utilize those so that they become a part of the continuing future development of an area like Alaska and how it makes possible the development of a better livelihood – a better existence on the part of the people who do comprise this land.  

In this sense, almost every section of a constitution becomes related to the question of resource development.  The whole matter, for example, of the organization of the administrative arrangement – the executive branch - I think is of some crucial significance in the matter of resource development in the area.   Likewise the whole matter of the development of local government organization involves some very crucial questions in relation to resource development. 

One of the factors in the western United States that involves some fairly important innovations was the development of such vehicles as irrigation districts and other kinds of local government agencies that were able to accomplish public purposes in the development of resource in that area.  And I would suspect that in an area of this northern frontier we would face many of these problems of what kinds of public agencies, what kinds of local governmental instrumentalities, can make possible most effective utilization of the resources in this area.  I am sure you are not interested simply in storing these resources to posterity but rather in public purpose that will realize the important goals that you all want for Alaska.”

Delegate Victor Fischer agreed.  “Lots of states had water or mining or grazing but no other state had a natural resource endowment like Alaska requiring an overall comprehensive approach to resources.”

Judge Stewart brought Vincent Ostrom was brought in as the expert. But Vincent refused to write the natural resources article when the delegates asked if they could put the matter in his hands.  He said he didn’t know enough about Alaska and instead suggested forming a select sub-committee of specialists with which he could work and then he would suggest directions to take.  Attorney Burke Riley who consulted on natural resources for the governor, B.D. Stewart who had been the longtime territorial commissioner of mines and John C. Boswell who led Fairbanks Exploration Company developing gold fields shared knowledge about Alaska with Vincent.

Vincent brought to the entire natural resources committee his deep understanding of the systems of laws and a sense of the importance of jurisprudence in dealing with resources.  At sessions at the School of Mines at the University of Alaska, he drew upon the knowledge of those who lived in Alaska as well as his own work.  He would write basic propositions on the blackboard and after discussions back and forth, the drafting of the language for Article VIII on natural resources was completed.

Vincent admired the process Judge Stewart insisted on.  After the delegates had drafted the whole constitution, they recessed to go back to their communities for discussions about the proposed body of law.  Newspapers reproduced the initial draft of the constitution.  There were discussions carried on all over the state.  Residents of Alaska became part of the adoption of the constitution in a democratic process. Vincent saw that the architecture of the convention itself brought forth the deliberations required to produce just, equitable laws. Judge Stewart was the convention’s architect. Vincent Ostrom used the teamwork of able, experienced Alaskans to draft the foundations of the legal framework that is now itself one of the state’s most critical resources.

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Vincent and AK's Constitution Part #2

by Ginger Sisco

“It was one of the most enlightening times of my own lifetime.”  That’s how Vincent Ostrom described his experience as a consultant in 1955 working with the committee that drafted Article VIII, the natural resources law for the Alaska Constitution.  “I came to a better understanding of constitutional choice.”

Vincent was by far the best consultant they had according to Victor Fischer, one of the convention delegates.   And that was no small feat.  There was a natural distrust of consultants - of outsiders – coming in to tell Alaskans what to do.  No one wanted a constitution written by consultants. But no other state had a natural resource endowment like Alaska with 100 million acres of state lands and 100 million more acres of federal land and not even a tiny scrap of land without minerals.  There was no precedent for the law they had to draft for their constitution.

At the time a professor at the University of Oregon, Vincent came to Alaska as an expert in water law. He had graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1950, with a Ph.D. in political science. His work had been on the water law and what he called the “water industry” that made it possible to create a metropolis in the near desert conditions of Southern California.

Vincent encountered different laws and the water shortages of the “arid west” in his first job at the University of Wyoming. Wyoming’s elevation, some 7000 feet, brought harsh winters that seemed very similar to the weather that he encountered in Fairbanks on December 1, 1955.  Fairbanks, as cold as it can be, is also a desert, with less than .10 inch of annual precipitation. In fact, Vincent would need to help design a constitutional law that covered climates from the artic and subarctic desert of the northern interior to the temperate rainforest of the southeast. Wyoming was also in a state with deep traditions of institutional arrangements developed for livestock. And grazing lands were also a big part of Alaska’s resource wealth. Wyoming institutions provided processes for resource use by the cattle industry that depended on grazing rights on public lands. Vincent used the ideas of the commons—including public lands— in helping to frame the Article VIII on Natural Resources. He would later use the ideas of “beneficial use” and commons in many other settings, including service as vice-chair of the Water Board of the State of Oregon and in designing a water policy for the state of Tennessee.

In Alaska, the convention delegates of the natural resources committee called Vincent the “eighth member of their committee.  They had deep confidence in Vincent’s expertise, but he had more confidence in the stakeholders of Alaska, the ones who knew the land intimately.  During discussions at meetings with specialists, interested parties and committee members, he would write proposed language on a blackboard and then ask for feedback.  From months of give and take came the draft language of the only article in any state—or national—constitution devoted solely to natural resources.  Vincent described the process this way: “People were participating in what I would call a democracy.”

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Lin's Impact: Truly Staggering!

She authored or edited over 30 books and over 600 articles and book chapters. According to Google scholar, her work has been cited about 54,000 times, with Governing the Commons alone having 14,000 citations! Looking at the range of journals in which her work was published and cited, it is clear she was a rare scholar who contributed to and was recognized by natural, physical, and social sciences.

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Vincent and Alaska's Constitution

by Sam Feigenbaum

A Constitution, boiled down to its essence, lays out the basic rules of the road that a people pledge to live by. Constitutions do not attempt to fill every conceivable gap in the law. Ordinary legislation does that. And in forty-nine states, as in the US Constitution, the regulation of natural resources is left to your everyday political process. In a state like Alaska, however, blessed with an extraordinary bounty of fisheries, forest, and minerals, the regulation of natural resources rises to the constitutional order.

From the get go, the delegates to the Alaskan Constitutional Convention, convened in 1955 as Alaska crept toward statehood, knew that this was how it had to be. To guide their thinking on drafting a natural resources article for the state constitution, they soon realized they would need to bring in a natural resources expert. They turned to Vincent Ostrom.

Ostrom, then a professor at the University of Oregon, headed north. He politely declined when the delegates asked him to go ahead and draft the natural resource section of the Constitution on his own. Ostrom understood, of course, that it is not a very good idea for an outsider to unilaterally draft a vital part of a constitution. To last, a constitution must be informed, first and foremost, by the experiences of those who will be subject to its rules. With this in mind, Ostrom convened a working group of Alaskan stakeholders to conceptualize and detail the natural resources article. The framework Ostrom’s team designed emphasized that Alaska’s natural resources, a quintessential commons, were to be both developed and conserved. Developed so that Alaska’s citizens could prosper from the land’s riches. And conserved so that future generations of Alaskans could also benefit from and enjoy all the land (and sea for that matter) had to offer. The framework that Ostrom and his team recommended would become Article VIII of the Alaskan Constitution.

Article VIII, one of Vincent Ostrom’s greatest legacies, still ably serves Alaskans to this very day and remains the only article in any state constitution devoted solely to natural resources.

Photo Credit: Joan Griffith

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Vincent, Lin, and a colleague from Indiana University at an International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) party at the Ostroms' house in June 2000.

Photo Credit: Indiana University

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Visit Original Link

If you have a couple minutes, take a listen to this 2009 Planet Money podcast featuring Elinor Ostrom. Lin talks about her groundbreaking research on the public management of natural resources and argues that citizens should be "empowered to organize themselves in small ways that scale up to a global network."

Photo Credit: npr

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Check out Elinor's interview with Amitabh Pal following her Nobel Prize!