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Community Management of the Commons COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT OF THE COMMONS I. Chapter Prologue 11. Introduction 111. How Does Resource Management Work in Small Communities? A. Characteristics of the Resource B. Characteristics of the Group C. Characteristics of Effective Rules D. The Role of Central Government in Community Management E. The Psychology of Community Management F. Community Management and Hardin's Model G. Other Benefits of Community Management IV. Applying Community Management Principles Beyond Small Groups A. Local Resource Dependence in Modern Societies B. Community Management without Resource Dependence V. Community Management as a Way of Life A. Community Management versus Development Policy B. Making Resources More Manageable VI. When Is Community Management Likely to Work? VII. Conclusion: What Can Community Management Accomplish? A. Advantages of Community Management B. Limitations of Community Management C. Promising Applications of Community Management CHAPTER PROLOGUE The village of Torbel, in the Swiss Alps, has managed decided that the forests and certain low-productivity its communally owned forest and grazing lands suc- lands, such as the high Alpine meadows, should be- cessfully for centuries, sustaining the resources and long to the community rather than private owners, and avoiding the tragedy of the commons. Written rules they had set the boundaries between private and com- for resource management go back at least to the thir- munity land. The community gave villagers rights to teenth century, and on February 1, 1483, the villagers graze their cattle on the mountain in summer, and to established an association to regulate Torbel's com- use timber from the forest, and it established rules to munally owned lands. The villagers had previously protect the resources. 126 PART I1 BEHAVIORAL SOLUTION STRATEGIES Cattle Grazing on an Alpine Pasture Some Swiss villages prevent overgrazing by establishing community ownership and control of such pastures. (Georgia Engelhard/Monkmeyer Press) The grazing rules, established in 1517 and still have the power of removal. Cattle owners contribute enforced, state that "no one is permitted to send more an annual fee, proportional to the number of cattle cows to the alps than he can [feed in] winter" (Net- they own, that pays a staff to maintain roads and paths ting, 1981, p. 61). The cows are sent to the alp all at on the mountain and rebuild corrals and huts damaged once, and are immediately counted, because each by avalanches. household is allocated cheese in proportion to the The forestry rules work as follows: Once a year, number of cows it owns. A local official is authorized the village forester marks the trees to be harvested. to levy fines on those who violate the rules against The families eligible to harvest logs form work teams overgrazing and other kinds of misuse of the common and equally divide the work of cutting and stacking resource. The official, in turn, is elected at the annual logs. The households are then assigned stacks of meeting of the association of local cattle owners, who wood by a lottery. This procedure assures a fair distri- 6 COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT OF THE COMMONS 127 bution of work and of logs, and since trees can be lobstering is best. Legally, any licensed lobsterman harvested only once a year, it is easy to spot rule can fish anywhere, but because of the effort of pulling violators. pots, it is more efficient for them to work in contained These systems have operated in Torbel for centu- territories near their homes. ries, and similar systems were developed in many Lobstermen have developed strong, unwritten other Swiss villages. The villagers' methods for rules for governing these territories and defending avoiding the tragedy of the commons have stood the them from outsiders. As Acheson describes it, test of time. In many villages, though not all, the rules To go lobster fishing, one must be accepted by the men have adapted well to changes such as population fishing out of a harbor. Once a new fisherman has growth and increases in the value of the villagers' gained admission to a "harbor gang, " he is ordinarily labor in the outside economy. (The resource manage- allowed to go fishing only in the traditional territory of ment system of Torbel was described in detail by the that harbor. Interlopers are met with strong sanctions, anthropologist Robert Netting, 1976, 1981 .) sometimes merely verbal but more often involving the destruction of lobstering gear. This system . contains The coast of central Maine is the leading lobster- no "legal" elements (Acheson, 1987, p. 40). producing area in the United States. Unlike many fisheries, where valuable species have been fished Along some parts of the Maine coast, the lobster- almost to extinction, the Maine lobster fishery has men enforce territories strictly, keeping all outsiders produced a nearly steady yield for many decades. The away and reserving certain areas for particular indi- State of Maine's government is partly responsible for viduals or families, for example, on the basis of their this success by setting legal limits on the size and sex ownership of nearby land on islands. Territories are of lobsters than may be caught, requiring licenses and marked by landmarks on the shore and are defended, patrolling lobstering areas. But most of the credit sometimes to the yard, by individuals who silently belongs to the lobstermen themselves. There are not sanction the interloper. First, the violator may be enough fishery wardens for adequate enforcement, warned, usually by having his traps opened or by having and it is so easy to get a license that licensing is no two half-hitches tied around the spindle of his buoys. If barrier to overfishing. The lobstermen sustain their he persists, some or all of his traps will be "cut off." livelihoods and the resource by their own informal That is, his traps will be pulled, the buoy, toggles, and means of control, based on assigning lobstermen to warp cut 08 and the trap pushed over in deep water particular territories, and in the places where the where he has little chance offinding it (Acheson, 1987, p. 41). strictest territoriality is maintained, both the resource and the lobstermen do best. The anthropologist James Far from shore, where the boundaries are harder to Acheson (1975, 1987) has studied the fishery in de- define, lobstermen from neighboring harbors may tail, and this account is taken from his work. share the same area. Along the Maine coast, lobstering is done in small Along other parts of the coast, it has become more boats by fishers who drop wooden traps or "pots" into difficult to defend well-defined territories. With the the water and pull them up regularly to collect any advent of motorized boats and depth-finding equip- legal lobsters inside. The law requires that each trap ment, lobstermen who could purchase larger boats and buoy be marked with the owner's license number, increased their effective range. But to pay for the making it possible to check that lobstermen are li- boats, they had to fish in all seasons and to invade censed. (This law also makes it possible to for a other lobstering territories, especially far offshore. lobsterman to know who is fishing where.) A typical The men in the invaded territories generally let mixed lobsterman owns 400 to 600 pots and uses them in a fishing occur rather than imposing sanctions because very small area near a home harbor, moving them they knew how much the interlopers had at stake and farther out in winter, close to the shore in summer, and feared a full-scale "war," with large financial losses to intermediate areas in spring and fall when the for all. 128 PART I1 BEHAVIORAL SOLUTION STRATEGIES Both types of territoriality establish forms of prop- how lightly such coercive means of behavior control erty rights in an area where the law does not recognize are used, compared to individual self-control and in- private property, and the effect has been to prevent formal social pressure. overfishing. The stronger the enforcement of territori- The examples of Torbel and the Maine coast are ality, the greater the benefit. In the tightly "perimeter- special in that they involve small groups of people defended" areas we described first, there were fewer who depend on local, renewable resources for a sig- boats per area of fishing grounds, with several salu- nificant part of their livelihoods. We will see that tary results. Each lobsterman could make a living with successful community management is most often ob- less effort, there were more lobsters per area of ocean, served in settings that have these and other character- and larger lobsters were caught. It is only in the pe- istics in common. We should emphasize that small rimeter-defended areas that lobstermen have been communities do not always maintain their natural re- successful in imposing conservation measures such as sources over the long term. As we will see, smallness closed seasons and limits on the number of traps a is an advantage only in combination with other quali- lobsterman can use. Such measures benefit every ties of the communities, the resources, and the ways lobsterman in the area, and put less stress on the the two interact. lobster population, but they do so only if the rules are The relevance of the success stories from Torbel observed. Lobstermen in the perimeter-defended ar- and Maine to the world's environmental problems is eas did the best job of enforcing the territories, so they limited by the fact that most of the world's serious were best able to prevent the tragedy of the commons environmental problems arise on too large a scale to and benefit themselves. But even in the territories be managed by villages, local fishers, and other small where control was much looser, the fishery and the community groups, no matter how careful they are lobstermen have survived.
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