Her Work and its Contribution to tHe tHeory and PraCtiCe of Conservation and sustainable natural resourCe ManageMent Policy Matters iuCn CoMMission on environMental, eConoMiC and soCial PoliCy issue 19 aPril 2014

POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM

4

The publication of this special issue 

emerged from discussions during the IUCN 

Commission on Environmental, Economic 

and Social Policy Steering Group meeting 

in January of 2013.  Aroha Mead and Iain 

Davidson-Hunt approached the International 

Association for the Study of the Commons 

who supported the vision and colleagues Jim 

Robson, Alyne Delaney, Gabriela Lichtenstein 

and Lapologang Magole of the IASC came on 

board to complete the editorial team. As it 

turns out most of the editors are members 

of both CEESP and IASC and we thank both 

organizations for their support in making 

this publication possible. A special thanks to 

CEESP and IUCN for providing the funding to 

print the publication and make it available 

for the World Parks Congress and also as an 

ebook available through the IUCN website. 

In addition to the chapter authors we thank 

members of CEESP and IASC who agreed 

to act as peer reviewers for the chapters 

including Drs. David Bray, Catie Burlando, 

Nathan Deutsch, Rosie Cooney and Jose 

Furtado along with some who preferred to 

remain anonymous. We also thank Mr. Marcel 

Morin of Lost Art Cartography for reproducing 

maps (pgs. 51, 52, 81, 96) for the volume 

and Ms. Patty Nelson of Nelson Architects 

for graphic design and layout. Along with 

photos provided by chapter authors we are 

also grateful to those members of CEESP 

who responded to Aroha’s request to include 

photos of Lin in the volume.

Acknowledgements

Plate 1: Elinor Ostrom with Aroha Mead, Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend and 

Taghi Farvar at the CEESP Sharing Power Conference, Whakatane, Aotearoa 

(New Zealand), January 2011. (Photo credit: CEESP)

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POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM

5

Preface

My lasting memory of Elinor Ostrom is of 

us sitting together at a picnic table outside 

the shop/garage in Taneatua (Bay of Plenty, 

New Zealand) waiting for a bus. This was 

in January 2011. Elinor had cut short her 

time at the meeting of the International 

Association for the Study of the Commons 

(IASC) in Hyderabad, India, an Association of 

which she was a founding member, to travel 

to Whakatane, New Zealand to participate in 

another conference, Sharing Power: A New 

Vision for Development. The Sharing Power 

Conference was organised by the Ngati Awa 

tribe, Te Whare Wanangao Awanuirangi, and 

the Commission on Environmental, Economic 

& Social Policy (CEESP) of the International 

Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 

Elinor was a founding member of the 

Commission’s Theme on Governance, Equity & 

Rights.

By the time she travelled to New Zealand, 

Elinor was already feeling poorly. Yet she 

insisted on joining the Conference participants 

for a field-trip as soon as she arrived after 

her long journey from Hyderabad. I therefore 

had the task of picking her up at the airport 

and driving to the Taneatua shops to wait for 

the field-trip bus that was taking participants 

for a tour of the lands of the Tuhoe people in 

the heart of the Urewera ranges. The topic 

of the day was ‘Sharing Power—indigenous 

governance of conservation areas’ and the 

‘shared power’ part of the discussion was 

centered around the ability or inability of 

those with power to transfer lands back to 

indigenous peoples unfettered.

As we waited for the bus I briefed her on our 

tribal hosts for the day, Tuhoe, and mentioned 

that of any tribe in New Zealand, they had the 

best chance of having the lands of a National 

Park located within their territories returned 

to them and that there was widespread 

support across New Zealand society for this 

to happen.  In turn, Elinor spoke of her work 

and the eight “design principles” of collective 

action for commons management discussed in 

her 1990 book, Governing the Commons—the 

work that was instrumental in earning her the 

2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. We 

began trying to match the design principles 

to the situation of Maori in general and the 

Tuhoe people in particular. I struggled to get 

beyond the principle of having clearly defined 

boundaries and the ability to exclude others. 

The bus arrived and we both tucked our 

discussion away. 

Our guides for the day were Tuhoe artist and 

activist Tame Iti and actor and activist Patrick 

‘Onion’ Orupe. From Taneatua we visited 

the burial place of the Maori prophet, faith 

healer and land rights activist Rua Kenana 

at Tupou Marae in Waimana and later drove 

through the blockade that had been put in 

place to keep government officials out of the 

Urewera National Park. The return of Urewera 

National Park to Tuhoe was part of the Treaty 

of Waitangi Settlement negotiation process 

that was currently underway. We stopped 

and talked to the Tuhoe people guarding the 

blockade and as the bus drove away we passed 

a number of police cars heading for a stand-off 

with the protestors—a day in the life of many 

indigenous peoples and part of the struggle to 

have those with power relate to communities 

as fellow citizens rather than protestors or 

marginalised peoples (names used to diminish 

their status and integrity). We then visited Te 

Rewarewa Marae in Ruatoki to hear from a 

range of Tuhoe people about their plans and 

aspirations post-Treaty settlement.

Throughout this time Elinor was quiet. She 

didn’t ask any questions in the open forum, she 

didn’t speak.  After the Marae visit I drove her 

back to the place where all of the conference 

participants converged for dinner after field-

trips into four different tribal areas (Ngati 

Awa, Te Arawa, Ngati Tuwharetoa and Tuhoe). 

As soon as the car door closed we resumed our 

discussion. 

Whereas I had thought the design principles 

for common pool resource management would 

be problematic in the NZ Maori situation 

because of the fluid nature of many tribal 

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