Elinor Ostrom Wins the Nobel – The Commons is the Future, the Future is Now!
Food & Water Watch cheered Monday (I am still smiling) when the Nobel prize in economics was awarded to Elinor Ostrom, a political economist and intellectual leader of the “commons” movement. Ostrom said it was an honor to be the first woman to win the prize – and promised that she won’t be the last.
Ostrom shared the award with Oliver E. Williamson. Both professors teach at U.S. public institutions and were recognized for their separate work on governance systems. Ostrom for her work on how community-based associations can successfully manage “common-pool” essential resources such as wild fish stocks and fresh water; Williamson for his work on why some companies grow so large.
On the policy level, Ostrom is a guiding light – she seeks to develop the field of sustainability science by developing diagnostic approaches to problem solving. Her rigorous empirical work shows that under certain conditions, when communities are given the right to self-organize they can democratically govern themselves to preserve the environment and sustain their community and economy.
photograph: John Sommers II/Reuters
Her findings gives credence to movements across the developing world where people are trying to govern the natural resources upon which they depend, but run into conflict with governments and global corporations. Likewise here in the U.S., her work is much needed to help policy discussions (like our work on fish policy) transcend the tired and baseless catch-phrase rhetoric (e.g. the tragedy of the commons) parroted incessantly by well-funded pro-privatization proponents.
ALERT: Right now, the Obama administration is set to privatize access to U.S. fish resources at the behest of an intriguing clique of privatization proponents – libertarian think-tanks, big-corporates, hedge-fund types, allied philanthropic funders, and greenwash group front-people. If they are successful, coastal jobs will be lost, ocean ecosystems will suffer, and the public trust doctrine will be negated.
If Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is truly interested in a science based, sustainable and fair approach to management of valuable public fish stocks she will avert making a policy statement in support of a privatization platform based on self-serving spin and discredited rhetoric.
Food & Water Watch is the main organization working to displace the privatization spin with a common sense commons-based solution:
Learn more and take action – Congress needs to hear your voice.
For a great introduction paper to the commons read Food & Water Watch’s own board chair Maude Barlow’s Our Water Commons, Towards a New Freshwater Narrative
Those with more than a passing interest should also read the applicable sections of this special edition of the Proceeding of the National Academy of Science.