Ecological Economics: Basic concepts

Lecture 07
Fig. Key concepts and dominant interpretations of power relevant to polycentric environmental governance.
Source: Morrision et al. 2019
 “Five Rights” of CPR users-
Prof. Elinor’s proposal

❑ Access – the right to enter a specified property,

❑ Withdrawal – the right to harvest specific products from a

resource,

❑ Management – the right to transform the resource and

regulate internal use patterns,

❑ Exclusion – the right to decide who will have access,

withdrawal, or management rights, and

❑ Alienation – the right to lease or sell any of the other four

rights.
 Conditions for better CPR- Prof. Elinor’s proposal

❑ Most users of a resource should be involved in devising

rules for managing the resource.

❑ There should be monitors of the resource, accountable to

the resource users, who periodically evaluate conditions.

❑ There should be mechanisms to resolve conflicts that are

responsive and low-cost.

❑ Rules for managing the resource should be adapted to local

conditions.

❑ There should be graduated sanctions for resource users

who violate the rules.
 Tools used for CRP Studies

• Participatory Approach
• Remote sensing and GIS
• Stock assessment through filed observation
• ………………………………
 Energetics and Systems (Odum 1957)

• Howard T. Odum first time in history explained

how energy and material cycles in ecosystems.

• Odum’s theory was a basis of input output of

energy and material flow in ecological and
economic system.

• Tools: Life Cycle Assessment, Material flow

analysis, Food web model………and many
more
 Hollings Adaptive Cycle (Holling
1978)
Renewal Maturity

Collapse
Growth
 Key Concept
• Holling realized that laboratory and controlled field experiments
on parts of ecological systems could not be aggregated to an
understanding of the whole.
• Holling argued, ecosystems do not have a single equilibrium state
that they prefer. Rather, they have multiple equilibriums and also
evolve over time.
• The scientists and agencies working with ecosystems must
constantly adapt their management experiments to understand a
changing system.
• Adaptive environmental management has proved to be an
effective approach to understanding and managing complex,
changing systems with large uncertainties.
• Human should be integrated in ecosystem management.