Robustness of norm-driven cooperation in the commons

Sustainable use of common-pool resources such as fish, water or forests depends on the cooperation of resource users that restrain their individual extraction to socially optimal levels. Empirical evidence has shown that under certain social and biophysical conditions, self-organized cooperation in the commons can evolve. Global change, however, may drastically alter these conditions. We assess the robustness of cooperation to environmental variability in a stylized model of a community that harvests a shared resource. Community members follow a norm of socially optimal resource extraction, which is enforced through social sanctioning. Our results indicate that both resource abundance and a small increase in resource variability can lead to collapse of cooperation observed in the no-variability case, while either scarcity or large variability have the potential to stabilize it. The combined effects of changes in amount and variability can reinforce or counteract each other depending on their size and the initial level of cooperation in the community. If two socially separate groups are ecologically connected through resource leakage, cooperation in one can destabilize the other. These findings provide insights into possible effects of global change and spatial connectivity, indicating that there is no simple answer as to their effects on cooperation and sustainable resource use.     

Fragmentation,Cooperation and Power: Institutional Dynamics in Natural Resource Governance in North-Western Namibia

Contemporary theoretical accounts of common pool resource management assume that communities are able to develop institutions for sustainable resource management if they are given security of access and appropriate rights of management. In recent years comprehensive legal reforms of communal rural resource management in Namibia have sought to create an institutional framework linking the sustainable use of natural resources (game, water, forest) and rural development. The state, however, ceded rights to rural communities in an ambiguous and fragmented manner, creating a number of instances of overlapping property rights and different legal conditions for different natural resources. Nowadays communities grapple with the challenge of developing institutions for these resource-centered “new commons”. This paper describes the process of local institutional development, focusing on the challenges arising from the necessity to define group boundaries, the issues arising from monitoring and sanctioning within newly defined institutions, and the ideological underpinnings of different trajectories of communal resource management.     

Spatial and Social Boundaries and the Paradox of Pastoral Land Tenure: A Case Study from Postsocialist Mongolia

Mobile pastoralists are subject to potentially conflicting needs for secure resource tenure and socially and spatially flexible patterns of resource use. This paradox of pastoral land tenure poses problems for the application of common property theory to the management of pastoral commons. The vagueness, permeability, and overlap of boundaries around pastoral resources and user groups complicate the implementation of formal tenure regimes designed to address insecure pastoral tenures and unsustainable land use patterns. A case-study from postsocialist Mongolia is used to illustrate the problem of spatial and social boundaries for managing pastoral commons. Three solutions to the paradox are evaluated: tenure formalization, rangeland comanagement, and regulation of herders' seasonal movements. An approach that develops and tests institutions to coordinate pastoral movements is recommended over formal tenure for pasturelands, which should be approached with caution in Mongolia.     

Evolution of cooperation in spatial public goods games with common resource dynamics

Investment in a common resource shared by all players is difficult to evolve despite higher returns because a non-investor (free-rider) always receives more than an investor (altruist). This situation is referred to as the Tragedy of the Commons and is often observed in various biological systems including environmental problems of human society. Punishment and reputation are effective mechanisms but require cooperator's ability to identify free-riders. Volunteering can work in anonymous public goods games but this requires voluntary participation, which is not always the case. Here, we show that the evolution of altruism is possible in anonymous and obligate public goods games if we consider the spatiotemporal dynamics of the common resource that incorporate spatial diffusion and internal dynamics of the commons. The investors' strategy to counter free-riders is to increase population density and to outnumber them with the common resource level kept as low as that of the free-riders.     

Psychological Factors Determining Individual Compliance with Rules for Common Pool Resource Management: The Case of a Cuban Community Sharing a Solar Energy System

This study focuses on individuals’ subjective reasons for complying with rules for common pool resource management. We examine the topic of individual rule compliance, which the commons literature has addressed only marginally, and outline recent empirical findings. Hypotheses are derived based on rule compliance theory and explored using data gathered in a Cuban community sharing a solar energy system. The statistical analyses reveal that compliance with rules for energy management is influenced by various factors. Depending on the particular rule, factors such as sanctioning, legitimacy, and compatibility, among others, influence the frequency of individual rule compliant behavior to differing extents.     

Port-State Jurisdiction,Extraterritoriality, and the Protection of Global Commons

Port-state jurisdiction has been used as a means of circumventing the inadequacies of enforcement on the high seas and of flag states’ ineffectiveness, but also the absence of international rules due to lack of consensus at the international level. Pressing and complex problems related to the global environment and global commons, such as depletion of fisheries, marine and atmosphere pollution, and climate change, and foot-dragging in the international community to effectively cooperate to tackle these problems have brought the concept of unilateral regulation of extraterritorial activities to the forefront. In this respect, the role of the port state, as a first point of contact for industries engaged in activities harmful to the global commons (i.e., fishing and shipping), is increasingly important. This article examines the scope and limits of port-state jurisdiction with respect to measures that may have an extraterritorial impact in the light of the law of the sea and international rules on jurisdiction. The aim of the article is to assess whether the practice of port states in exercising jurisdiction has contributed to developments regarding the exercise of (extraterritorial) jurisdiction as a regulatory tool for the protection of global commons. By identifying elements of current state practice regarding exercise of port-state jurisdiction, the article advances a framework for the most effective exercise of port-state jurisdiction for the protection of global commons with reference to the principle of common concern.     

Indigenous Knowledge of Ecological Variability and Commons Management: A Case Study on Berry Harvesting from Northern Canada

Common property arrangements govern the subsistence harvest of berries in the Gwich’in region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. Some of these arrangements, including rules for resource access, sharing information and harvest sharing, enable the Gwich’in to deal with ecological variability. The rules change in response to year-to-year variations in the abundance and distribution of the species, spatially and temporally across the region. This paper illustrates the interrelationships between ecosystem dynamics and local institutions, a neglected area of commons research.An erratum to this article can be found at     

Hardin Revisited: A Critical Look at Perception and the Logic of the Commons

With perhaps controversial implications for theory and practice, this paper suggests that the validity of Hardinian theories of the commons are dependent on the implicit rational choice assumption that resource users are aware of resource degradation. Without an awareness of the collective costs of resource use, there can be no dilemma between pursuing individual benefits and avoiding collective ruin. In such situations, the dilemma of the commons cannot be validly said to be the cause of resource depletion, and many traditional policy options to address common resource depletion may not be effective. Two reasons for the lack of awareness about resource degradation are (1) fatalistic beliefs that humans cannot harm a resource base, and (2) the growing complexity and abstraction of modern environmental problems that have obscured the collective costs of resource use from our individual and societal awareness.     

Fluctuation in the physical environment as a mechanism for reinforcing evolutionary transitions

We hypothesize a mechanism for reinforcing transitions between levels of selection, involving physiological homeostasis and amplification of variation in the physical environment. Groups experience a stronger selection pressure than individuals for homeostasis with respect to reproductively limiting variables, because their greater longevity exposes them more often to suboptimal physical conditions, and greater physical size means they encompass a larger fraction of any resource/nutrient gradient. Groups achieve homeostasis by differentiation into microcosms with specialist functions, e.g. cell types. Such differentiation is more limited in individuals due to their smaller size and shorter lifespan. Hence tolerance of fluctuation in certain physical variables is proposed to be weaker in individuals than in groups. We show that a trait providing increased tolerance (alpha) to fluctuation (V-V(opt)) in a limiting abiotic variable (V), at relative fitness cost (C), can increase from rarity if the condition alpha.mid R:V-V(opt)|>C is met. Groups also sequester larger absolute quantities of resource than individuals, and group death is less frequent, hence the population dynamics of groups cause resource/nutrient availability to fluctuate with greater amplitude than that of individuals. Increasing the amplitude of fluctuation in a reproductively limiting environmental variable is proposed as a mechanism by which a group can limit reproduction of parasitic "cheat" individuals. Enhancing physical fluctuation is frequency dependent, hence only an increase in tolerance to fluctuation can explain the group's increase from rarity. However, once groups reach intermediate frequencies, a positive feedback process can be initiated in which a differentiated group enhances physical fluctuation beyond the tolerance of any "cheat", and in so doing enhances the selection pressure it experiences for homeostasis. This may help explain the persistence of transitions in individuality, and the coincidence of some such transitions with periods of change and oscillation in global scale environmental variables.     

The effect of climate change on the resilience of ecosystems with adaptive spatial pattern formation

In a rapidly changing world, quantifying ecosystem resilience is an important challenge. Historically, resilience has been defined via models that do not take spatial effects into account. These systems can only adapt via uniform adjustments. In reality, however, the response is not necessarily uniform, and can lead to the formation of (self‐organised) spatial patterns – typically localised vegetation patches. Classical measures of resilience cannot capture the emerging dynamics in spatially self‐organised systems, including transitions between patterned states that have limited impact on ecosystem structure and productivity. We present a framework of interlinked phase portraits that appropriately quantifies the resilience of patterned states, which depends on the number of patches, the distances between them and environmental conditions. We show how classical resilience concepts fail to distinguish between small and large pattern transitions, and find that the variance in interpatch distances provides a suitable indicator for the type of imminent transition. Subsequently, we describe the dependency of ecosystem degradation based on the rate of climatic change: slow change leads to sporadic, large transitions, whereas fast change causes a rapid sequence of smaller transitions. Finally, we discuss how pre‐emptive removal of patches can minimise productivity losses during pattern transitions, constituting a viable conservation strategy.     

Can Centralized Sanctioning Promote Trust in Social Dilemmas? A Two-Level Trust Game with Incomplete Information

The problem of trust is a paradigmatic social dilemma. Previous literature has paid much academic attention on effects of peer punishment and altruistic third-party punishment on trust and human cooperation in dyadic interactions. However, the effects of centralized sanctioning institutions on decentralized reciprocity in hierarchical interactions remain to be further explored. This paper presents a formal two-level trust game with incomplete information which adds an authority as a strategic purposive actor into the traditional trust game. This model allows scholars to examine the problem of trust in more complex game theoretic configurations. The analysis demonstrates how the centralized institutions might change the dynamics of reciprocity between the trustor and the trustee. Findings suggest that the sequential equilibria of the newly proposed two-level model simultaneously include the risk of placing trust for the trustor and the temptation of short-term defection for the trustee. Moreover, they have shown that even a slight uncertainty about the type of the newly introduced authority might facilitate the establishment of trust and reciprocity in social dilemmas.     

Adapting to Regional Enforcement: Fishing Down the Governance Index

Background

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a problem for marine resource managers, leading to depletion of fish stocks and negative impacts on marine ecosystems. These problems are particularly evident in regions with weak governance. Countries responsible for sustainable natural resource management in the Southern Ocean have actively worked to reduce IUU fishing in the region over a period of 15 years, leading to a sequence of three distinct peaks of IUU fishing.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We reviewed existing public records relating to IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean between 1995–2009 and related this information to the governance capacity of flag states responsible for IUU vessels. IUU operators used a number of methods to adapt to enforcement actions, resulting in reduced risks of detection, apprehension and sanctioning. They changed fishing locations, vessel names and flag states, and ports for offloading IUU catches. There was a significant decrease in the proportion of IUU vessels flagged to CCAMLR countries, and a significant decrease in the average governance index of flag states. Despite a decreasing trend of IUU fishing, further actions are hampered by the regional scope of CCAMLR and the governance capacity of responsible states.

Conclusions/Significance

This is the first study of long-term change in the modus operandi of IUU fishing operators, illustrating that IUU operators can adapt to enforcement actions and that such dynamics may lead to new problems elsewhere, where countries have a limited capacity. This outsourcing of problems may have similarities to natural resource extraction in other sectors and in other regions. IUU fishing is the result of a number of factors, and effectively addressing this major challenge to sustainable marine resource extraction will likely require a stronger focus on governance. Highly mobile resource extractors with substantial funds are able to adapt to changing regulations by exploiting countries and regions with limited capacity.     

Size of environmental grain and resource matching

For most animals their foraging environment consists of a patch network. In random environments there are no spatial autocorrelation at all, while in fine-grained systems positive autocorrelations flip to negative ones and back again against distance. With increasing grain size the turnover rate of spatial autocorrelation slows down. Using a cellular automaton with foragers having limited information about their feeding environment we examined how well consumer numbers matched resource availability, also known as the ideal free distribution. The match is the better the smaller the size of the environmental grain. This is somewhat contrary to the observation that in large-grained environments the spatial autocorrelation is high and positive over long distances. In such an environment foragers, by knowing a limited surrounding, should in fact know a much larger area because of the spatially autocorrelated resource pattern. Yet, when foragers have limited knowledge, we observed that the degree of undermatching (i.e., more individuals in less productive patches than expected) increases with increasing grain size.     

Modeling the Pre-Industrial Roots of Modern Super-Exponential Population Growth

To Malthus, rapid human population growth—so evident in 18th Century Europe—was obviously unsustainable. In his Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus cogently argued that environmental and socioeconomic constraints on population rise were inevitable. Yet, he penned his essay on the eve of the global census size reaching one billion, as nearly two centuries of super-exponential increase were taking off. Introducing a novel extension of J. E. Cohen''s hallmark coupled difference equation model of human population dynamics and carrying capacity, this article examines just how elastic population growth limits may be in response to demographic change. The revised model involves a simple formalization of how consumption costs influence carrying capacity elasticity over time. Recognizing that complex social resource-extraction networks support ongoing consumption-based investment in family formation and intergenerational resource transfers, it is important to consider how consumption has impacted the human environment and demography—especially as global population has become very large. Sensitivity analysis of the consumption-cost model''s fit to historical population estimates, modern census data, and 21^st Century demographic projections supports a critical conclusion. The recent population explosion was systemically determined by long-term, distinctly pre-industrial cultural evolution. It is suggested that modern globalizing transitions in technology, susceptibility to infectious disease, information flows and accumulation, and economic complexity were endogenous products of much earlier biocultural evolution of family formation''s embeddedness in larger, hierarchically self-organizing cultural systems, which could potentially support high population elasticity of carrying capacity. Modern super-exponential population growth cannot be considered separately from long-term change in the multi-scalar political economy that connects family formation and intergenerational resource transfers to wider institutions and social networks.     

Mesoscopic effects in an agent-based bargaining model in regular lattices

The effect of spatial structure has been proved very relevant in repeated games. In this work we propose an agent based model where a fixed finite population of tagged agents play iteratively the Nash demand game in a regular lattice. The model extends the multiagent bargaining model by Axtell, Epstein and Young modifying the assumption of global interaction. Each agent is endowed with a memory and plays the best reply against the opponent's most frequent demand. We focus our analysis on the transient dynamics of the system, studying by computer simulation the set of states in which the system spends a considerable fraction of the time. The results show that all the possible persistent regimes in the global interaction model can also be observed in this spatial version. We also find that the mesoscopic properties of the interaction networks that the spatial distribution induces in the model have a significant impact on the diffusion of strategies, and can lead to new persistent regimes different from those found in previous research. In particular, community structure in the intratype interaction networks may cause that communities reach different persistent regimes as a consequence of the hindering diffusion effect of fluctuating agents at their borders.     

Looking back to see ahead: UNCLOS III and lessons for global commons law

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) provides valuable lessons for future formulation of law to govern global commons, areas that lie beyond the limits of national jurisdiction and to which all peoples have free and open access. Although endowed with the advantage of a certain degree of scientific certainty about the need for regulation of the ocean environment, UNCLOS III fell victim to a North‐South schism that impaired the search for consensus on important issues and undermined the final product of the negotiations. An examination of the UNCLOS III experience suggests that agreements that exclude specially affected states are unlikely to succeed, and points to a variety of advantages and disadvantages that come from linking several issues under one negotiating framework. The consensus approach to negotiation used at the Conference tends to expand the time and effort needed to reach a successful outcome, which can lead the negotiations themselves to be outstripped by technological or political developments. Finally, the UNCLOS III experience underscores the importance of global ideological and philosophical differences on the allocation of resources and environmental responsibility. Given these lessons, alternatives to the “parliamentary diplomacy”; strategy used at UNCLOS III are suggested, including a framework‐plus‐protocols approach, international coordination of national plans, regional arrangements, and strictly unilateral actions. While the comprehensive parliamentary diplomacy approach is useful because it recognizes the interconnectedness of ecosystems, in many situations one of the other approaches may increase the chance for a successful outcome. Whichever method is chosen, there is an emerging global recognition of the need for some action to be taken by the world community in combatting the destruction of the world's commons areas, which may be a positive sign for the future of environmental negotiations of this sort.     

全球和生物群系尺度土壤有机碳分布控制因子及其分异规律

土壤有机碳(SOC)是陆地生态系统碳库的核心组成部分,其动态平衡受气候、土壤、植被、地形及人类活动等的影响,但在不同的空间尺度上,这些影响因素的相对重要性和差异还不明确。为阐明不同尺度和不同土层深度土壤有机碳密度(SOCd,kg/m³土壤)的环境影响因子差异,选用全球113571个土壤剖面SOCd测量数据以及38个环境协变量数据,利用数据挖掘方法,分析了全球尺度和生物群系尺度不同土层深度SOCd的控制因子,并量化了空间自相关对相关结果的影响。研究结果表明:仅空间自相关就能解释全球尺度不同土壤深度13%-20%的SOCd空间变异,但是随土壤深度的增加,空间自相关的解释率降低。在剔除空间自相关的影响后,分析结果表明:全球尺度上,气候因素对SOCd空间变异的解释率最高,但只能解释17%-20%,这种解释率在不同土层之间没有显著差异。在生物群系尺度上,除北方森林地区,气候因素能够解释SOCd空间变异的24%-37%;而在北方森林地区,地形是影响SOCd空间变异的重要因素,对SOCd的解释率为21%-43%。这些结果表明,SOCd的控制因子在不同的尺度上明显不同。无论是在全球尺度上,还是生物群系尺度上,如果不考虑空间自相关,地形的影响会被低估,其他环境因素的影响被严重高估。为了准确计算全球与生物群系尺度上各土层SOCd分布的控制因子及其分异情况,空间自相关必须被考虑。     

Introduced species: A significant component of human-caused global change

Biological invasions are a widespread and significant component of human-caused global environmental change. The extent of invasions of oceanic islands, and their consequences for native biological diversity, have long been recognized. However, invasions of continental regions also are substantial. For example, more than 2,000 species of alien plants are established in the continental United States. These invasions represent a human-caused breakdown of the regional distinctiveness of Earth's flora and fauna—a substantial global change in and of itself. Moreover, there are well- documented examples of invading species that degrade human health and wealth, alter the structure and functioning of otherwise undisturbed ecosystems, and/or threaten native biological diversity. Invasions also interact synergistically with other components of global change. notably land use change. People and institutions working to understand, prevent, and control invasions are carrying out some of the most important—and potentially most effective—work on global environmental change.     

Grasshopper （Orthoptera： Acrididae） biodiversity and grassland ecosystems

Interesting results may arise by combining studies on the structure and function of ecosystems with that of biodiversity for certain species. Grasshopper biodiversity is the result of the evolution of grassland ecosystems; however, it also impacts on the structure and the function of those ecosystems. We consider there to be a close relationship between the health of grassland ecosystems and grasshopper biodiversity. The main problems involved in this relationship are likely to include： （i） grasshopper biodiversity and its spatial pattern; （ii） the effect of grasshopper biodiversity on the ecological processes of grassland ecosystems; （iii） the biodiversity threshold of grasshopper population explosions; （iv） the relationship between grasshopper biodiversity and the natural and human factors that affect grassland ecosystems; and （v） grasshopper biodiversity and the health of grassland ecosystems. The solutions to these problems may provide sound bases for controlling disasters caused by grasshoppers and managing grassland ecosystems in the west of China. In this paper, we introduced two concepts for grasshopper biodiversity, that is, ＂spatial pattern＂ and ＂biodiversity threshold＂. It is helpful to understand the action of the spatial pattern of grasshopper biodiversity on the ecological processes of grassland ecosystems and the effect of this spatial pattern on the health of those ecosystems, owing to the fact that, in the west of China, grasslands are vast and grasshoppers are widely distributed. Moreover, we inferred that the change in the level of component richness at each type of grasshopper biodiversity can make an impact on grassland ecosystems, and therefore, there is likely to be a threshold to grasshopper biodiversity for the stability and the sustainability of those ecosystems.     

The Emergence of New Commons

The emergence of ??new commons?? poses theoretical challenges that require empirical efforts and in-depth case studies. Three years of ethnographic work at an Ecuadorian coastal community brings us to propose the emergence of a new commons, historically born from an unstructured group of inhabitants, and refunded as a community seemingly able to convert a degraded socio-ecological system into a more sustainable configuration. To understand this process, we study how institutions and rules developed for the environmental management of strategic common pool resources (CPRs), transforming human?Cenvironment relationships. This socio-ecosystem constitutes a co-managed multi-level system of governance, developed through a community building process and a particular community based tourism model. Its analysis suggests that the balanced development of different levels of management with a firm base at the community level bringing into play new CPRs, can be key factors for the emergence of new commons.