by Glenda Price
Years ago (after the 1950s drought broke him) my father had a business helping other ranchers get rid of invasive saguaro cactus.
It was set up so the government helped with the cost, although I don’t know the details. He had two tractors and other equipment. They dug the plants up. Since the government was involved, a government fellow accompanied Dad as he analyzed one particular ranch. Dad came up with a per/acre count of cactus plants, and based his fee on that.
A couple of months later, the count and fee for that ranch had become the government rule for ALL cactus eradication projects, with no consideration of terrain, numbers of plants or any other variable. Dad couldn’t believe it.
I can see agriculturists reading this nodding their heads, because it’s such a common story.
I, therefore, have a request. Could the politicians supposedly in charge please read the scientific literature regarding natural resource management?
An ideal place to begin is with the writing/research by Elinor Ostrom (née Awan, born August 7, 1933). She is an American political economist who lives in Bloomington, Indiana, and is on the faculty of both Indiana University and Arizona State University.
She was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, which she shared with Oliver E. Williamson, for “her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.” She is the first woman to win the prize in this category.
In 1973, she co-founded A Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University with her husband, Vincent Ostrom. Examining the use of collective action, trust and cooperation in the management of common pool resources, her institutional approach to public policy, known as the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, has been considered sufficiently distinct to be thought of as a separate school of public choice theory.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said “her analysis of economic governance work had demonstrated how common resources – forests, fisheries, oil fields or grazing lands can be successfully managed by the people who use them, rather than by government or private companies.”
Her work in this regard challenged conventional wisdom by showing that common resources can be successfully managed without government regulation or privatization.
The Academy of Sciences further said Ostrom’s research brought this topic “from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention.”
Her research was conducted first in Nepal (beginning in 1988). She said, “Our findings are not unique to Nepal. Scholars have carefully documented effective farmer-designed and operated systems in many countries including Japan (Aoki 2001), India (Meinzen-Dick 2007), Bardhan (2000) and Sri Lanka (Uphoff 1991).”
Other research studied the effects of a “favorite” policy recommendation for protecting forests and biodiversity -- government-owned protected areas.
Of 163 forests analyzed, 76 were government-owned and 87 were public, private or communally owned. One of the findings was “when local users are given harvesting rights, they are more likely to monitor illegal uses themselves.”
Ostrom proposes “a policentric approach, where key management decisions should be made as close to the scene of events and the actors involved as possible.”
Hello!
I feel obligated to point out this Nobel-awarded researcher is – a woman.
Glenda Price has been a contributing editor to New Mexico Stockman magazine since 1982. Contact her at: glendaprice00@comcast.net
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