1. Sustainability Science Seminar
Institutions and the Governance of Coupled Human and Environmental Systems
Nov. 8th, 2010
Sustainability Science Seminar
Marci Baranski, Karina Benessaiah, Arijit Guha, Beth Mercer-Taylor, Chad Monfreda, Christina Wong

2. What insights do CPRs provide for wider sustainability issues?
Do the lessons learned from communal-management of extractable natural resources apply when examining management of other resources such as the oceans, atmosphere and knowledge? [Nature of the resource]
2) To what extent can the lessons learned from studying small-scale systems be applied to larger scales, regional or global? [ Scale of governance]
3) How can the rules and norms which govern CPRs be given room to shift and change in the face of fast-moving global environmental change? [Rapidly emerging problems]

3. Part I Nature of the resource Q: intros?
How to present q’s for discussion?

4. Beyond the Local
Diversity of CPR case-studies yet mostly drawn from small to medium scale natural resource based contexts Are insights from these CPR examples useful under different conditions for other types of resources? Most CPRs are organized around extractable natural resources (e.g., timber, groundwater, grazing lands, etc.) Common assumption that resource are extractable predictable, finite supply

5. Substractability of use High Low
Threat/Threshold
Substractability of use
High
Low
Common-Pool Resources
E.g., Oceans, Forests, Libraries (?)
Public Good
E.g., Knowledge, Atmosphere
Difficulty of exclusion
Private Good
E.g., Crops, Fish, Timber
Toll/Club Good
E.g., Theatre, Small Lake, National Parks USA (?)
Low
Differences in spatial & functional scales (fish vs. local fishery vs. oceans) & time scales (stock vs. flows), institutional arrangements
Points out to the difficulty of separating resource (environment) from institutions shaping them (social)- common-pool resources are an emergent property of human-environment systems

6. Pollution How do we regulate resources that have fuzzy boundaries and are not extracting but generating negative externalities? Knowledge and digital commons Internet- private goods (computers) underlying public good (network) Over and Under provision issue- enclosure of the commons More people= more ideas- underuse an issue not overuse…North/South divide

7. Cross-scale governance
Part II
Cross-scale governance
Q: intros?
How to present q’s for discussion? 7

8. Challenges of Global Environmental Governance
Small-Scale
Large-Scale
Environmental Resource
-Clear boundaries
-Provisioning
-High predictability
-Fuzzy boundaries
-Provisioning / regulating
-High uncertainty
Social
Institutions
-Face-to-face interactions
-Shared norms
-Developed over long-period
-Impersonal / Bureaucratic
-Diverse cultures / interests
-Newly emergent

9. Examples of Institutional Interaction
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)
Compliance, Shifting Global Context
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
Global Monitoring, Bottom-up Contributions

10. Trust in Institutional Interactions

11. Rapidly emerging problems
Part III
Rapidly emerging problems

12. Classical model: Tipping points
Challenges in resource management in the face of a rapidly changing system
Example: Climate change impacts reindeer in Russian Arctic economic impact on indigenous reindeer herders
Requires adaptation to environment, new resource management
Implications for governance?

13. Emerging challenges
Social “tipping points” caused by environmental pressures
Example: Climate change refugees
Migration Lack of trust, lack of shared cultural norms
Requires social adaptation, governance
Biermann and Boas. Preparing for a Warmer World: Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Refugees. Global Environmental Politics, Volume 10, Number 1, February 2010, pp

14. What insights do CPRs provide for wider sustainability issues (i. e
What insights do CPRs provide for wider sustainability issues (i.e., managing CHES for sustainability)?
Do the lessons learned from communal management of extractable natural resources apply when examining management of other resources such as the oceans, atmosphere and knowledge? [Nature of the resource]
2) To what extent can the lessons learned from studying small-scale systems be applied to larger scales — regional or global? [ Scale of governance]
3) How can the rules and norms which govern CPRs be given room to shift and change in the face of fast-moving global environmental change? [Rapidly-emerging, uncertain problems]