Elinor Ostrom, you were turtley right

Mother turtle laying eggs on banks of Rideau River

Elinor Ostrom, Nobel-prize winning political economist, died on June 12, 2012. That same day, a mother turtle pulled her way out of the Rideau River, and made her nest on the river bank.

 

A turtle's idea of a good nesting place is somewhere with soft, loose earth, sand or gravel. For an urban turtle, that means, say, a playground sandbox, or some freshly-turned up earth on a construction site. The turtle pictured made her nest on nice bit of fresh gravel right beside a road, just off a popular dog-walking trail.

A turtle nest can be seen as a common property resource. A long tradition in economic thought argues that such resources will inevitably be neglected, untended, and over-exploited. Turtle eggs will be dug up by dogs, trampled on by careless walkers, or harvested by people dedicated to eating local, organic produce - the tragedy of the commons.

 

"Turtle nest: do not disturb"

Elinor Ostrom questioned this conventional wisdom. Tragedy was not inevitable, she argued. Rather, communities could regulate the use of common property resources through social norms, by creating and enforcing rules for the acceptable use of resources.

 

As if moved by Professor Ostrom's spirit, the local community acted together to protect the turtle eggs. The nest was fenced off, and do not disturb signs put up. All of the dog walkers, joggers and local residents watched the nest carefully.

It was an anxious time. It looked as if perhaps some dog had been digging at the nest. It seemed as if the eggs would never hatch. But today, they did - and at least two found their way back to the water.

Baby snapping turtle, August, 2012

 

 Elinor Ostrom described how to design institutions to manage common pool resources. They have to be able to establish boundaries (the fence), monitor the use of the resource (all of the dog walkers, watching other dog walkers), have sanctions for people who over exploit the resource (the shame of being known in the local community as a turtle-nest disturber), and so on.

The turtles show that Elinor Ostrom was right - communities can manage common property resources. The real challenge is to scale up institutions for managing common pool resources - to go beyond little neighbourhoods managing snapping turtles, and find ways to solve large-scale challenges: managing parks, watersheds, the global environment.

 

Comments

[Ryan]

Two things:

1 - What I really like about Ostrom's theory is how it completely (and tangibly) obliterates the Rothbardian view of private property. We should all be grateful to Ostrom for this, since the whole idea that first-use constitutes a perpetual right to private ownership is preposterous, even if it does suit my libertarian stylings in a way. (Technically, though, no horrendous theory suits my stylings, only good theories do.)

2 - It could be that Ostrom's ideas are poorly suited to large-scale problems. The more people who hold a stake in communal property, the more likely it is that dissatisfaction with the prevailing rule structure will occur. Private property is a hallmark of advanced civilization; we need more of it, in my opinion.

[Frances Woolley]

Ryan, we actually spotted three turtles nests this year, two in public spaces, like the one shown, and one right at the edge of someone's driveway. I knocked on the door of the private property owners to say "hey, look, you have a turtle nest right beside your driveway". The door was answered by the cleaners, I suspect the message never got through.

The private property turtle nest is the only that, as far as I know, hasn't produced hatchlings - in this case, private property with externalities produced a worse outcome than communal property.

[Ryan]

What's best for turtles is natural habitat with a safe and direct passage from nest to river, whether it's private or public. I would guess that the many Ontario cottages near water are the best example of private property protecting hatchlings, since the owners of those properties like to protect turtle-friendly habitat and like to kill the snakes that threaten turtles.

We can compare private property in Ontario to collectively managed property in Bangladeshi wetlands and ask ourselves which has been comparatively better for the turtle population. This would further serve to buttress my point that collective management works well on a small scale, such as a single turtle nest, and poorly on a large scale, such as the entire native turtle population in a given area.

[Becky Hargrove]

Ryan,
Your first point put something into words that I have instinctively felt but did not know how to express. Thanks! As to the second point, knowledge skills use(value in use)commons could have local porous boundaries, recognized by individual time increments. (we had some discussion about that last year)

[Bob Smith]

"in this case, private property with externalities produced a worse outcome than communal property"

Quite possibly true, though would that be the case if some of the neighbours considered baby turtle a delicacy?

I think Ostrom's theory makes sense as far it goes. In some sense traditional methods of managing resources (private property and government regulation) are just two subsets of the the general regime she describes (they both establish boundaries, manage resources, and create sanctions). But, in practice, for such regimes to work in the absence of state compulsion (and both private property and government regulation regimes rely on the state to enforce them), you need a degree of commonality of interests and reciprocal long-term relationships within the community. Where that's possible, great, but in many (most?) instances, such regimes are not possible, or where they are, the may not be stable (what happens next year if the turtles build their nest on the soccer field - while the whole neighbourhood may like turtles, some of them may like soccer better).

I'm reminded of a similar story, with a less happy outcome, up on Lake Simcoe a few years ago. You may remember it, there was a conflict between Asian-Canadian fisherman who were perceived to be fishing illegally by the (decidedly un-Asian-Canadian) locals (whether that perception was well-founded or not, is beside the point). Given the two groups didn't interact with one another, didn't live together, and didn't have much in common (other, perhaps, than an interest in fishing), the mechanisms you describe for the turtle park would have been meaningless. So the "sanctions" adopted by the locals involved violence and intimidation. People were hurt, investigations were launched, perpetrators went to jail. All in all, a bad scene. The "community" managed the communal property (the carp), but I wouldn't recommend their practice.

[Shangwen]

Without getting too far into philosophy, one complication in this story is the difference in perception between the two parties (i.e., the turtle and the involved or uninvolved humans). This is not a Man Friday who has just floated up innocently onto the riverbank and chosen to start a family on that spot. The turtle is simply responding as efficiently as possible to its most vital instincts. The humans are the sole party whose concern for the site goes beyond the issue of immediate threat. In other words, the humans are trying to manage the site with other humans primarily in mind; I don't mean they aren't concerned for the turtle's welfare (obviously they are), but they see humans as the primary management problem.

During the Völkerwanderung this problem occurred over and over, and the debate continues about how to distinguish "migration" from "invasion" in the occupation of common resources.

[Frances Woolley]

Bob's comment brings up a couple of points that are helpful to the discussion, and addressing the issues raised by Ryan and Becky.

First, that private property/communal property are abstract ideals - real world property regimes are somewhere in between. A British farmer's "private property" rights do not allow him or her to prevent people from using centuries-old footpaths, a Canadian farmer's "private property" rights do not extend to the oil below his or her field. The question of how to build effective institutions for managing resources can't be answered by appealing to ideal types. "Privatize externalities" is a classic "assume we have an can-opener" way of solving problems - there's generally a *reason* why a given problem is an an externality, and understanding that reason is key to figuring out the right institutional regime.

Second, Bob raises acrucial point, you need a degree of commonality of interests and reciprocal long-term relationships. The design of communities is key to building those long-term relationships. Very few of the houses around turtle park have garages, and it's close enough to downtown/shops that people walk. This means that people get to know their neighbours, and build long-term relationships. The way that housing, retail developments, streets, cities etc are designed can either promote or discourage the building of long-term relationships.

Shangwen - fascinating insights, as always. I was wondering if someone was going to raise the point that turtles eat frogs, thus an artificially induced increase in the snapping turtle population could further threaten the frog population, and also the heron population, since turtles and herons compete for the same yummy - and increasingly scarce - frogs.

[Rachel Goddyn]

A lovely tribute, Frances. You made my day start with a smile.

[Frances Woolley]

Rachel, thank you!

[Jeremy Fox]

A charming anecdote to use as a starting point for a very big, complicated, and tough issue.

I'm not an economist and so don't have much to add to the great comments from various folks on the conditions needed for Ostrom's ideas to have purchase (conditions she herself recognized better than anyone, as far as I know).

I will toss out another, much less charming but perhaps complementary story, simply because it's interesting and one I'm somewhat familiar with (an economist colleague of mine worked it out): how international trade almost wiped out the North American bison (which were effectively an open access resource):

http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/how-international-trade-almost-wiped-out-the-north-american-bison/

Also worth noting that some ecologists have recently been studying how the ecology of the common property resource affects whether a tragedy of the commons occurs. It turns out whether you get a tragedy depends not just on institutions or incentives or etc., but also on the ecology of resource renewal. See for instance the chapter by Alla Mashanova and Richard Law in Micro, Meso, Macro: Addressing Complex System Couplings (2005). You can google "mashanova law" to find a PowerPoint of a talk Richard Law has given on this work. (I know this example only because Richard Law is a friend)

Presumably that's part of why this is such a broad and difficult issue: it involves considerations from fields as diverse as ecology, economics, sociology, politics...

[Tina]

The humans are the sole party whose concern for the site goes beyond the issue of immediate threat. In other words, the humans are trying to manage the site with other humans primarily in mind; I don't mean they aren't concerned for the turtle's welfare (obviously they are), but they see humans as the primary management problem.