The Geography of the Commons: The Role of Scale and Space

Abstract

The ''tragedy of the commons'' is a concept familiar to students of resource management, and many academic disciplines have devoted considerable attention to its understanding and solution. Despite a long tradition of concern with issues directly related to the problem, the field of geography has been relatively silent in the commons literature, especially on the theoretic front. The present article attempts to address this shortcoming by applying geographic methodologies-particularly as related to scale and space-to an understanding of the phenomenon. The article first demonstrates the role of sociopolitical scale in defining the commons problem and then develops a typology classifying common resources into one of three categories-open access, fugitive, and migratory-based on spatial relationships between resources and resource users. The article shows that the geographic nature of the commons problem for any particular resource depends on the sociopolitical scale at which it is assessed, and suggests that solutions to commons problems should vary both by scale and by spatial nature.

Missing ecology: integrating ecological perspectives with the social-ecological system framework

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Formation of a Community of Practice in the Watershed Scale, with Integrated Local Environmental Knowledge

“…Spontaneous collaborative action can occur in the watershed scale, addressing problems outside the scope of centralized, command-and-control regulations, such as habitat destruction, where joint benefits are large enough and transaction costs are not too large [36]. Much of past research has focused on specific natural resources, making it difficult to define spatial boundaries as 'resource domains' [37]. Nevertheless, a river basin or a watershed has increasingly become a major unit of space to deal with complex human-nature interactions [38].…”

Multi-level governance for large marine commons: Politics and polycentricity in Palau's protected area network

“…This is beginning to change. There is an emerging foundation of interdisciplinary theoretical dialog regarding the relationships between physical geography, resource users, and institutional arrangements for CPR governance (e.g., Araral, 2013a,b;Brewer, 2010;Giordano, 2003). However, there remains little constructive engagement between Bloomington School institutional theorists and critical human geographers interested in the scalar dimensions of CPR governance (hereafter, institutional theorists and critical human geographers) (Poteete, 2012), arguably due to divisive tensions about core questions, values, assumptions and methodologies (Johnson, 2004;Mosse, 1997).…”