POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM
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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
POLICY MATTERS 2014: REMEMBERING ELINOR OSTROM
9
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.