Managing Common-Pool Resource Systems: Cooperation and Reciprocity

Abstract

This article focuses on the management of common-pool natural resources and —after a brief review of two current perspectives on the environment and its care— it underscores the advantages of an interdisciplinary approach in the collective management of common-pool resources and the subsequent discussion of environmental policies. It reviews collective management of common-pool resources from the concept of strong responsibility, which questions the view of human beings as guided exclusively by self-interest, and identifies the following unavoidable requirements: congruence with local social and ecological conditions, full and relevant information, democratic decision-making processes and recognition by governments of the rights of local users to make their own rules and monitor compliance.