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

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to bridge the worlds of activism, policy 

and academia—a mixture reflected in the 

contributions.

While Lin’s work has had an impact globally, 

it is through focusing on individual countries 

that one really begins to appreciate the 

depth of that impact. Nagendra, Ghate and 

Puppala, who represent the mélange of 

academia, practice and activism that commons 

scholarship so readily evokes, report on 

the different ways in which Lin’s work has 

impacted the governance of India’s extensive 

natural resource commons, taking in both 

rural and urban environments. Similarly, the 

two papers that follow, by Pacheco-Vega and 

Merino-Perez respectively, show how Mexico’s 

commons scholars and practitioners, and 

environmental and conservation policies, 

have been influenced by Lin’s thinking. 

Pacheco-Vega looks at multiple resource types 

(water, forests, irrigation systems, small-scale 

fisheries) to highlight the range of empirical 

research from Mexico that has drawn on Lin 

Ostrom for inspiration. Merino Perez, current 

President of the IASC, provides a brilliant 

analysis of how Lin’s work has challenged the 

way we view nature-society relationships, and 

does so with an eye on changes to indigenous 

territorial management in the south of the 

country.   

While a number of the articles in this 

Special Issue are written by senior scholars 

and practitioners, as well as alumni of the 

Workshop in Bloomington that Lin founded 

with her husband Vincent, we were also 

keen to include contributions from recent 

students and younger scholars who represent 

a new generation of researchers interested 

in the broad area of natural resources and 

environmental management. Two case 

studies from Africa—Bereket’s assessment 

of woodland conservation in the Eritrean 

highlands using the Design Principles from 

Ostrom’s seminal Governing the Commons, 

and Gachenga’s paper from Kenya that 

explores how Lin’s thinking on the commons 

meshes with customary law systems of natural 

resource governance—showcase nicely the 

continued relevance of Lin’s work to those 

beginning their careers as commons scholars. 

Remaining with the academic research 

community, we continue with a piece by Derek 

Kauneckis, a graduate of Lin’s program at 

Indiana University, who expertly traces how 

her substantial body of work is informing 

current efforts to develop research tools 

and techniques of institutional analysis for 

understanding the governance of commons as 

complex systems—concluding that her work 

represents the beginning of a “new science of 

governance” that others are working hard to 

develop.

Our final three papers move away from 

academia to focus on the applied nature 

of Lin’s work; how it is being used, in very 

practical ways, to guide and inspire change 

in the way people relate to and manage their 

natural environments. They report on local, 

national and global efforts respectively. First 

we head to the boreal forest of northern 

Quebec, Canada, where Van Schie, Economic 

Development Officer for Wolf Lake First 

Nation, tells the story of the community’s fight 

to ensure that forestry on their customary 

lands is not only environmentally sustainable 

but allows for their active involvement as 

part of a new forest commons framework. 

From Canada we shift focus to Central Asia, 

where Ykhanbai and Vernooy talk about their 

experiences developing a co-management 

process in Mongolia that aims to improve 

pasture management for that country’s 

nomadic herders. Ten years in the making, 

it draws heavily upon Lin Ostrom’s work 

on commons institutions and institutional 

diversity. Lastly, we hear from Pablo Pacheco, 

current Head of the Bolivian delegation at 

the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 

who shows how Lin’s scholarship inspired 

Bolivia to argue (successfully) for local and 

indigenous collective action to be recognized 

by the CBD for the role it affords biodiversity 

conservation efforts – opening the door for 

local-level commons institutions to become 

a more integral player as part of national and 

international policy processes.

We bring our Special Issue to a close with two 

pieces. The first, written by leading commons 

scholars Arun Agrawal and Jesse Ribot, builds 

upon the lessons of our earlier contributions 

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POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM

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to acknowledge the power of Ostrom’s 

analyses and the tools that she developed—

which have helped us to better understand the 

governance of shared resources. Yet, as with all 

scholarly endeavours, the major advances that 

Lin made are not without their limitations, 

and Agrawal and Ribot offer a most useful 

critique of her design principles for commons 

institutions so that a key area of her legacy can 

be carried forward and strengthened. 

The second is a song, written and performed 

by Caña Dulce y Caña Brava, a musical quartet 

from the Tuxtepec region where the Mexican 

states of Oaxaca and Veracruz meet. The 

group plays in the regional folk style known as 

Jarocho, and wrote this song in celebration of 

Lin’s life and work. They were able to perform 

for her on her final visit to Mexico in 2012. It is 

a very fitting way to end this special issue.

In providing a platform for such a wide array 

of voices, and offering cases from so many 

different geographical and cultural contexts, 

this special issue of Policy Matters showcases 

just how important and far-reaching Lin’s 

work has been (and continues to be). As 

these diverse contributions highlight, from 

her early PhD work to the final presentations 

she gave in 2012, Lin exhibited a quality of 

thought, an ability to convey complex ideas in 

understandable and entertaining ways, and an 

optimism that enabled her ideas to make their 

mark in classrooms, local communities, and 

on the most important of policy and legislative 

stages. Our current understanding of natural 

resources management and conservation 

would not be what it is without her input, and 

the prospects for improving environmental 

policy at local, national and global levels that 

much poorer. 

We are very happy to be able to share in some 

of her achievements with CEESP, IUCN and 

IASC members.  

Enjoy!

REFERENCES

van Laerhoeven, Frank and Elinor Ostrom. 

2007. “Traditions and trends in the study of 

the commons”. International journal of the 

Commons 1

(1): 3-28.

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