Symposium on Management of Local Commons

In the public image of industrially advanced countries, the commons problem relates to global warming, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer and the like. In the developing countries, the daily livelihood of the poor depends more substantially and directly on the local commons: irrigation, forestry, grazing, in-shore fisheries and so on. These (restricted-access) common property resources usually involve small local communities, which opens the possibility for local-level community organizations to manage resources and resolve conflicts, as an alternative to the polar opposites of private and state control which usually hog the limelight in public policy discussion. In fact, many developing countries have a long history of balanced resource management under highly informal local community institutions. In these countries, the erosion of the local commons set in only with major demographic and institutional changes in recent years, often accelerated by private commercialization or bureaucratic appropriation of the traditional historical rights of local communities over these resources.