The scale of sustainable common-property resource use
Most of the known examples of the sustainable use of common property resources are local in scale. The local level of resource use has many advantages, including the following.
The resource is more uniform, and therefore easier to understand, when the scale is small.
Local people have a more thorough knowledge of the resource and therefore a stronger basis for knowing what rules will be effective.
Local people know each other well enough to have a foundation for trust.
Local people desire sustainable use because they have a stake in the future of local resources.
An important question for human - ecosystem interaction is whether sustainable use of common property resources is possible on a large scale. So far, the experience with large-scale use has not been encouraging. Tragedy of the commons is typical for resources exploited by multinational corporations. Because large-scale resource use is a fact of life in today’s global economy, the development of viable international social institutions to prevent tragedy of the commons is a major challenge of our time.
There are legitimate differences between local, regional, national and international interests when deciding on the use of natural resources. Government ownership of resources such as forested lands has been associated with sustainable management in some places but unsustainable management in others. Government administration has a general history of granting use rights for timber, livestock grazing or other resources to people with political influence at a price below the real value of the resource - and often without adequate attention to sustainable use. If large-scale control of resource use is unavoidable, it should be organized hierarchically so that national or global economic forces and government authorities do not exclude local participation.