Preventing the “tragedy of the commons”

A recent article in the Financial Times reflects on two different perspectives espoused by Garrett Hardin and Elinor Ostrom on the management of shared resources (common-pool resources). For Hardin, the only way to manage common-pool resources sustainably would be either by government or private sector control. Conversely, Ostrom demonstrated that resource users  were in fact capable of devising enduring rules to successfully manage common-pool resources upon which they depended. The FT article may be accessed at www.ft.com.