Common-pool resources are by nature held in common due to
being practically non-excludable, as with fish in the ocean, while their fruits
are excludable in that only one person can eat a particular fish.
Eight criteria are typically found in cases of
sustainable management of common-pool resources:
1. Clear and accepted boundaries of the group of users and of the common
resource
2. Rules governing use of the common resource match local conditions &
needs for labor/money inputs
3. Most of those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the
rules
4. Those who monitor the health and harvest of the resource are accountable
to the users or are the users
5. Rule violations receive graduated sanctions that depend on seriousness
and context
6. Local, low-cost and prompt means are available for dispute resolution
7. Users have long-term tenure rights, and distant centralized authorities
respect the rule-making rights of the group of users
For CPRs that are part of larger systems:
8. Harvest, use, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution and
governance are organized in multiple layers of nested institutions.
These principles are based on deep theory and painstaking field work, conducted by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at the University of Indiana. Background information can be found in Understanding Institutional Diversity and elsewhere.
