Reading notes on "Governance of the Commons"

2025-07-03

Elinor Ostrom was the Sveriges Riskbank price¹ recipient in 2009. She worked on and developped the concept of Commons and wrote “Governance of the Commons” (GoC).

I got familiar with the idea of Commons at Ag!ssons. It’s promoted as a third way, outside of capitalism or centralized state control. A society of the Commons is a society were you have a say in the matters that concern you, you have control over the rules that restrain you. It’s not an utopian dream. We already are surrounded by examples of the Commons. I like it, to put it middly.

In a way, Ostrom’s mission was more than just theorizing Commons as an alternative to free markets, but as a more general framework that includes markets.

Ostrom is frustrated with the myopia of economic modelling with regard to actual practical existing arrangements. Things that work in practice but not in the model, are considered as irrelevant.

Ostrom likes to focus on overlooked parameters of economic models: The cost of creating and sharing knowledge, whether people follow rules. Not specifically because she likes to “gotcha” the rest of the field, but because she find in those parameters the explanations for the failures of standard models.

GoC speaks in two tongues. The first and last parts are heavy on economic theory, while the rest of the book is a very delightful list of examples of resource arrangements that work outside of markets, failed to take root, or disintegrated.

As a neophyte whose knowledge of economy is limited to Piketty, Parrique, and Nitzan, the economy part felt dense, but I enjoyed the practical examples. They are deeply inspiring.

Institutional analysis

Ostrom was close to New Institutional Economics. From what I gather from the book, it’s a theory of how people comply to rules, seen through a more general version of game theory.

An institution is a set of rules. Rules are prescriptions that either forbid, allow, or mandate an action or result².

But rules are not magic spells. Writting them down do not affect reality by itself. What affects reality is people doing things. The propensity of rules to affect people’s actual behavior depends on what Ostrom calls “levels of analysis”³⁴:

1. Operational rules
2. Collective choices rules
3. Constitutional rules

Furthermore, Ostrom names “self-organizing” the ability for all individuals to influence each level of rules.

What’s the difference between those levels of analysis? Constitutional rules are the most abstract and agreed uppon. You can’t use them as a basis for action, as they could be intepreted in many ways. They are the most often written down. Then you have collective choices, which set the means by which to attein the constitutional objectives. Collective choices can be formalized through text⁵, but not necessarily. Finally, you have operational rules. Which is how people behave within the confine of both the rules and how they are applied.

So concretely what distinguishes collective choice rules and operational rules? An example here in Geneva. As in many cities, parking space is limited, and you get fined if you stay too long in one parking spot. That’s the collective choice rules: you can’t use a public parking spot as if you owned it, you need to leave room for others. Comes this car dealer. It’s in a city-center corner where space is sparse. He sits the cars for sale in about 8 parking spots surrouding his dealership, with price and specs displayed on them. He pays fines, but the fines are so low compared to what he earns⁶, that it’s as if the law didn’t exist for him. Concretely: The opperational rules aren’t what the collective choice rules are: since the sanctions for breaking the collective rules are ineffective, the operational rules do not follow the collective rules.

Other examples involve software pirating, limited-time software free trials, etc.

Why does Ostrom care so much about institutional analysis? It’s because that’s where the Commons is a whole different thing from markets. The value creation and storage do not lie in economic exchange and capital, but rather, in the institutions themselves, the relationship between human beings, and how they shaped their physical surrounding to amplify and make sustainable the institutions, which conversely, amplify and make sustainable their environment and economic model of subsistance. This last sentence is long, but it’s very important, you may re-read it a few times.

She doesn’t say it explicitly, but Ostrom seems to think that Commons are valuable in themselves. They take a lot of time to form and they are ideally adapted to their environment.

The Farce of The Tragedy of the Commons

Ostrom’s law is as follow:

A resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory.

Ostrom’s first act in GoC is to deconstruct the concept of Tragedy of the Commons. It’s a thought exercise formulated by Garrett Harding, a eugenist maltusian A-grade hole:

Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit – in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

The idea is that absent an outside entity enforcing rules on resource usages, the natural tendency of people is to mismanage every resource to the point of destruction.

However, even the metaphor of sheeps grazing in a Commons land by itself undermine the conclusion. This is a well known historical example where herders managed to agree to rules of usage, follow them, and preserve the land, without the help of a central authority.

But Ostrom goes beyond the cheap shot, and identified many setups where this so-called unnavoidable tragedy was avoided for centuries on end. And in fact, Ostrom also identifies setups where bringing in the concept of Tragedy of the Commons was the trigger for the ruins of the Commons.

On a personal level, I’m revolted by the framing of The Tragedy of The Commons. It reflects a mindset still existing today, that absent an enlightened savant with a Political Science degree or MBA, people are helpless and incapable of understanding their environment and finding solutions to shared problem. The lesson I learned from the few decades I spent in this society is the exact opposite: it’s overconfident assholes, using their credential as a shield from any form of objections, that are incapable of understanding their environment and finding solutions⁷. And the truly best way (If, admitedly, not the only) of finding solutions to environmental problems is to integrate every actors’ understanding of the world through discursive debate and collective decision making.

Törbel in Viège

The first example in the book is the Alanya fishing community in Turkie. But I didn’t take any notes on it, so I’m going to skip it. It was a very good demonstration of an ecologically embedded Common.

So I’ll go directly to the second example: Törbel in the valley of Viège (Visp), in Valais, Switzerland. I’m Swiss, my mom is from Valais, so it’s close to my heart.

Törbel is a tiny village of 600 people who sustained a system of Commons since 1224 to manage high altitude pasture, forest, and irrigation. The first written record of the Commons dates from 1483, it’s a rule for participations of the Commons, and especially exclusion of outsiders (even if they married and settled in the village) from the Commons.

All over Switzerland, and other alpine regions, you find a rule called “The Cow Right” or “Wintering rule”. It’s a rule that say you can’t send to pasture more cows than you can feed during winter. It’s very easy to check (and therefore make opperative the collective rules): you just count the cows. And it rationalizes Commons pasture usage. Other rules exist to limit the number of cows: the size of land owned by the farmer in the valley (as opposed to the high pastures); a fungible rights share; etc.

This type of Commons isn’t a kind of extraordinary isolated phenomenon. It was and still is the rule in the alpine regions of Switzerland. 80% of Alpine land is managed through a system of Commons. Ostrom only names explicity Törbel, but I know also of the Fluss in lake Ägeri and the Bis in other Valais valleys. If the Commons lands aren’t the most productive, land quality surveys show that they are the healthiest and better managed than private property. Traditions meant to preserve Commons and make opperative the community choice rules are still in play today. You’ll find every Swiss have some sort of drive to go hike and survey their surroundings. It’s the kind of things you do to make sure people do not sneakily exfiltrate resources from the Commons in your back! So, if you want to go back to the traditional Switzerland of the lost Golden age, adopt communism I guess?

Ostrom identifies five factors for which Commons management improve over private proprety:

1. Production value per unit of land is low
2. There is strong variability in productivity (due to unstable climate or other)
3. There is little to no way of improving productivity (this means that innovation in technology isn’t an environmental factor that can change the economic relationship between participants)
4. Productive usage requires coordinating over a vaste chunk of land
5. Large group of people require to create and sustain infrastructure.

The Tokugawa Kumi

Kumis are communal lands in Japan managed as a Common. They started during the Tokugawa period (1600 - 1867), and still persist to this day.

Their management was explicitly delegated from imperial power to municipalities. The rules are set in assemblies where each “household leader”⁸ had a say. A commissary was elected⁹ to watch the Commons land to prevent missapropriation.

The communal land was an exclusionary zone where no one was allowed until a specific date when everybody would gather and participate in the harvest. The harvest lasted one day: a lot of people working together gets thing done quickly. Once the harvest completed, it would be shared equally between each household.

Outside of the harvest date, the commissary – or the sake sherif as I like to call it – had a duty to stop anyone who trespassed. He could expel people from the communal land (of course) and fine the trespassers. The fine was paid in sake bottles, half going to the commissary. A minor infraction would call for a small fine, while repeat offenses or grave infractions would incure larger fines or punitions¹⁰.

Works great! But there are limitations: In some seasons, the crops would be ripe way too early. Resulting in the harvest – if held to the pre-approved date – failing. One time, it was so bad that the whole village decided to just go and do the harvest early, breaking the commonly agreed rules. What happened then? I actually forgot! But it either was overlooked, or the fine was so small as to be negligeable.

Another example I’ve more details on is the Yamanaka 1930 defection. People would readily pilfer the Commons land, but it was in 1930, during one of the worse financial crisis that Japan experienced, and the infractions were overlooked with a nod. The crisis was seen as exceptional, and the community was ready to accept lower yields if it meant that the poorest (which were the defectors in this case) would not die of starvation.

But this indulgence was only possible because the commissary was local, and knew that the defectors (the one harvesting before the commonly-agreed time) were in need. This local and deep understanding of the situation is primordial for rule-bending to work.

The fines are not here to punish, but rather to show participants that their commonly agreed rules are applied: If someone breaks the rule they will be punished. And as the contravenent, when you get caught, you not only are dissuaded from breaking the rules, but the fact that you got caught shows that the system is effective at catching rule breakers, and it’s unlikely that there are others doing the same. This is why a small fee makes sense: the point is not to dissuade, but to show that defection is detected.

The Huertas

Huertas (means “garden” in Spanish) are irrigated valleys in Span and Portugal. Ostrom focuses on the Valencia, Benacher and Faitanar ones.

Huertas exist since at least 1435 and continue to this day. They started in the al-Andalus period, and survived the Reconquista. They are self-organized.

The region surrounding Valencia has very variable anual rainfall. One wet year can be followed by several dry years. This means that water needs to be rationed and equitably distributed, otherwise individual farmers may just lose all their crop. In this context, when water is scarse, it may be tempting for upstream farmers to withdraw more water than their alloted share, in order to irrigate their whole field, at the expense of downstream users, who then would have no water at all to irrigate theirs.

The irrigation system is setup so that everyone gets a given share of water on a schedule. When it’s time to toggle the sluice gates to drive water to another plot, both the currently active user and the next meet at the gate to toggle it. If we take for granted that people would favor their own individual gain over the common good¹¹, they both have inverse preferences. So they do what humans do best: defer to pre-approved rules when in a situation of conflict, and generally the sluice gate is switched at the exact approved time.

It’s also possible to visually check when a farmer is ready or not to take in water. Someone who is readying their plot in an unexpected timeframe would give themselves out immediately.

The huerta has a few agents out to monitor the sluice gates, but they are far from enough to monitor everyone. Yet the huertas only have a 1/12500 infraction rate. Basically no one breaks the rule, despite the huge insentive and the little formal monitoring. That’s thanks to mutual monitoring.

To go back to Valencia climate: the huertas work as a risk mutualization system to damped the cost of droughts. Instead of having one person get all the water and everybody else left dry, the rotation system equally distribute the water accross the whole valley. That means that instead of every but one farmer starving, we have a little diet, but everyone live to see another day. This is an alternative to insurances, which imposes the accumulation of capital and means of importing food from other regions.

The Zanjeras

Zanjeras in Philippines are my favorite Common.

As a lot of Ostrom’s examples, it’s a cooperatively managed irrigation system. 45% of irrigated land in Philippines are managed through Zanjeras, for about 5700 different Zanjeras.

How to create a new canal when there is no assets in the country? You create a zanjera and emit “atar” which are like stocks, but with duties attached.

As an atar holder, you must:

1. Provide the material for the initial build and maintenance of the irrigation infrastructure
2. Provide your physical labor as well.

Of note is that the “material” is mostly wood, mud, and banana tree leaves.

Unlike your everyday stock, the atar has not just rights attached, but also obligations.

Your right is of course the access to the water from the irrigation system. This allows starting up new infrastructure with 0 finances.

Zanjeras elect a “maestro” who’s job is to motivate the atar holders to participate in the work to maintain the infra. Philippines’ weather will damage irrigation infra, and it takes a lot of work to keep it running. They also elect a cook, because it’s always easier to motivate folk with free food (true even in the richest country on earth)

Zanjera takes in average 39 days of work per member per year to maintain.

“In nature” contributions have advantages:

1. You don’t need financial infra (banks, money, safe, saving, etc.) and all associated costs.
2. You know exactly where your contribution go (can’t be misappropriated by the maestro, you know exactly what you are working on, corruption is impossible)

The Biang-ti-daga zanjera configuration allocate land around the irrigation canal¹² equally to each member, except the most downstream plot. That goes to the maestro.

Why that? So that they are motivated to get the water to the very end of the canal, and therefor feed all the plots of land!

Zanjeras form federations, so that downstream coops can help upstream coops they depend on.

Upstreams tend to leave more water than necessary to downstreams.

In federated setups, the amount of water a zanjera gets is fairly close to the amount of work their member put in. With a slight skew, explained by the reluctance to renegotiate contracts.

The California aquifers

The California aquifers is the OG Ostrom doctoral thesis. It particularly interests here since it’s an example of a Commons system built live before her eyes. The time travelling machine was requisitionned by the history department, so Ostrom couldn’t see why or how Kumis were formed, nor how the alpine Commons came to be.

The context: The aquifers (undergroud water reserves) pumped in California for industrial and agricultural uses were getting lower and lower. That meant both more expensive pumping, and a risk of total collapse¹³ or salt contamination on the costal regions.

If you were to replace the water capacity of the aquifers by water towers, it would have had an insane cost (I didn’t note the exact values, but that was like hundreds of millions of not billions, dude)

It was actually difficult to get to a working Commons system. Initially, the pumping rules were based on three different standards. Which standard applied depended on the “renewal rate” of the water, and no one knew about this renewal rate, it required a long survey and expertise. So the users didn’t know on which side of the pumping rule they fell, and depending on this “renewal rate” they either lost it big time, or gained it big time, so no one had any interest to sue to prevent others from overexploiting.

Another aspect is that the aquifer users were diverse: various industries, such as oil, but also agriculture, and municipal water distribution for human consumption.

One day though, the largest user, the city of Pasadena started a lawsuit, judging that others aquifer users were overexploiting. But no one knew how the lawsuit would end, they could be compelled to stop using water as much as gaining massive new pumping rights. So, in the end, everyone was compelled to sit at the table and find a compromise rather than rely on the outcome of the lawsuit, since that was a clear lose-lose-lose situation.

In the end, all but 2 parties in the lawsuit landed on a settlement. In this settlement, everyone would reduce proportionally their extraction so that the total water extraction was under renewable levels. They created a “regeneration district” to manage that, and setup rules: everyone had to declare their water usage, and they would mutualize the cost of geologic studies. The two dissenting parties settled a few years later.

Ostrom characterizes this as a happy ending: users predicted that keeping as usual would lead to a disaster, and managed to avert it thanks to the creation of a new resource management structure. But was the negotiation fair? How much did the interestts of the oil industry weight against human needs?

Ostrom then cites other aquifers in California where similar institutions were created. She says that the simple fact of creating a model of institution allows others to replicate them. If it works for them, it should work for us, right? She links this with the concept of “path dependency”.

In the context of new institutional economics, Ostrom says that the creation of new institutions can be modelled similarly to changes in institutions. An “append” operation on an empty set of rules, vs the same “append” on a non-empty set.

The failures of the Commons

All isn’t roses in GoC. Ostrom talks about a few places where people tried to self-organize resource management systems, but failed. And places where existing resource management organizations collapsed. She cites the San Bernardino aquifer, where the setup of a regeneration district failed. Because in this case, the regeneration district was a top-down project people felt imposed on, rather than bottom-up organization which carry much more legitimacy and trust in users.

She also cites the Izmir and Bodrum cases: Fishing communities in Turkie where, unlike in Alanya, no one managed to impose rules on fishing to prevent fish population collapse. Ostrom cites the heterogeneity in the technologies used, and the background of the fishers (mix of amateurs and pro, from different regions, various frequency and level of dependence on fishing)

In fact, trust is the keystone of Commons Management. You are willingly sacrificing your own personal gains while leaving open the ability for others to take advantage of the resource. You need to be damn sure that the other participants comply, otherwise you’ll just be the turkey at christmas. Ostrom doesn’t go into how to build trust. But generally speaking: explicitly and deliberately exposing vulnerability is the first step, the second step is to not exploit that vulnerability; while reciprocating. Bottom-up allows for much more opportunities to build trust.

The Mawella beach

This gets a whole section because it’s a fascinating case.

Mawella is a small costal village in Sri Lanka, living off fishing. One particular fishing method was based on very large nets that several people would drag accross the beach to catch fish.

Those nets are called “madella”, they are 800m long, they are costly to produce, and maintenance requires about 8 people.

In fact, madella ownership is divided in 8 “shares” usually held by the maintainers of the madella. Those shares are technically transferable, and technically have monetary value. But it is traditionally transimitted to family or as endowment in wedding. And it requires the approval of the 7 other shareholders, it’s just good sense to be in good terms with your future coworkers.

To highlight the similarity with the Zanjeras atars. Here as well, we have a form of capital that combines rights with obligations. It’s not enough to own a share of the madella to profit from it; you have to contribute personally to it through your own labor by taking part of the madella upkeep, otherwise, you won’t catch much with your net full of holes.

Finally, owning a madella share is more than just owning the material. I’ll explain. The fishing village setup a schedule for fishing. Since you actually have to go through the whole beach with the net for fishing, and the best time is at morning, the villager coordinated to avoid overlaps or conflict when going to fish with the madella. Having a madella, by itself, allows you to hop on the schedule.

The schedule is also a way to regulate access to the resource to avoid overfishing: a Commons.

All of this was going well, until 1933. This is when a new law regulating the madella share trade came in. This law formalized the madella registration system and forbade any form of discrimination in selling shares, it also limited the number of madella allowed.

Ok, I lied. It was fine in 1933, the change itself wasn’t an issue. The real change came with the modernization of Sri Lanka: between 1938 and 1941, an ice factory and new roads were built. This greatly increased the buyer pool for fishers. And the price of fish increased by a factor of four (4).

So a lot of people suddenly had an eye for madella: fishing = fish = $$$. And the share prices went up. People built more madellas (remember how this is illegal? Well, the law wasn’t applied), but the scheduling system was kept up. As a result, the number of fishing slots per year per share fell. To the point that if you only had one madella share, you’d have to wait several years to be allowed to use it. Subsistance on fishing became impossible. You would need at least 6.5 shares to live from fishing, but 58% of fishers had less than 6.

In 1930, there were 20 madellas, and in 1945 there were 71.

People bought shares not to fish, but with the perspective to resell them at a higher price. What is commonly known as speculation. Share ownership concentrated in the hands of owners from outside the village. They would hire people rather than work themselves the madella.

The village attempted to petition the local constabulary to apply the law¹³. This in 1940, 1942 and 1945. But they were ignored. It’s only in 1946, when the petition was not only supported by the small owners, but also the larger village owner (as opposed to the remote ones), that the constabulary did deign apply the law. But there were already 71 registered madellas, way too much, and they didn’t revoke any madella license.

Middling ending? No, it doesn’t end here. In 1964, a daring disruptive innovative entrepreneur named David Mahattea managed to get his madellas added to the registry, in exchange for political favors. And the example inspired others, and quickly, 24 new madellas were added¹⁴.

The result is that there is just too much madellas. The final count is around 100 nets, while only 20 is really necessary to cover the fishing year. Thankfully, this didn’t lead to a fish population collapse, as the schedule stayed in place. But in practice, there are 80 madellas that sits iddly. To an economist¹⁵ like Ostrom, this is capital sitting at 20% capacity that hasn’t much purpose, she calls it “overcapitalization”. To me, it’s transparent that it works as a market gateway, so that no new fisher can enter the market without overinvestment, preventing competition. As Warren Buffet would put it, a moat.

It’s also a good lesson on what Ostrom considers to be a Common. It’s not just about a resource management system that prevents depletion, but also about all the culture around it to make it sustainable, not just in ecological terms, but also economical terms for the people depending on it.

The Mahaweli development programme

As an aside, Sri Lanka is a large insular country of 19 millions people. Of a size similar to that of Ireland, or West Virginia. Since its independence in 1972, the country politics is split between two sections with very similar policies, but relient on ethnic resentment as a polarizing method: Tamil vs Sinhalese. From what I read about it, I understand that Sri Lankan politic is mostly based on personal favors and massive amount of corruption.

Geographically, there is a very wet south-western region, and a central high land, with several rivers radiating from it down to the sea. The east and north are aride in comparison. The massive amount of water carried by the rivers are an opportunity for irrigation in the drier regions.

That said, let’s go back to Ostrom. The Mahaweli (named after the largest river in the country) programme is an industrialization project started in 1961 with giant dams, new water channels, and irrigation facilities, with the goal of settling people in the newly irrigated area.

In fact there are archeological remains of irrigation infrastructure dating from the 12th century around the Mahaweli river.

While the physical infrastructure was indeed built, less can be said of the agricultural system.

The goal was to grow paddy rice. There was enough water to get two harvests, sustaining families on a much smaller plot of land. But only a fraction of the production was realized¹⁶.

The upstream farmers used too much water, not leaving enough water for the double harvest to the downstream farmers. Why use too much water? Because it was effectively free, and it had one advantage: Flooding the field would kill weed, while the rice didn’t care much. This spared the farmers the tedious work of weeding. This meant less water downstream, and no double harvest.

But that’s not an issue, the al-andalu, the primitive Swiss and the Japanese managed to organize to improve collective outcomes. If medieval people can do it, why not Sri Lankans in the XXth century? For Ostrom, the reason is to be found in the institutions around the Mahaweli project. It was a state-driven centralized institution, with static rules that harldy could be changed. The government hired a few people to monitor water usage, but it was far from enough to monitor everyone, the irrigation bassin is freaking huge. And they had no means of sanctioning frauders. Also, the law pretty much made it illegal for the farmers to self-manage. And in the end, the farmers failed to build relations and couldn’t create any organization to regulate water distribution and improve collective outcomes.

Now, Ostrom characterizes this as an incidental outcome. But is it? Developmental projects are always more than just “developping”, it’s also about what kind of infrastructure we are building. The goal in this specific case was to increase centralized power, and it is incompatible with the kind of distributed institution Ostrom recommends for developping Commons.

Ostrom gives five reasons the Mahaweli project didn’t develop effective Commons:

1. A large number of farmers.
2. Little long-term tie to the land (as it was a colonization project)
3. Ethnic and cultural diversity.
4. An opportunity for the wealthier to control the water by bribing the monitors.
5. Missing physical collective control over the infrastructure.

I contest points (2) and (3). What maters isn’t uniformity, but the existance of shared understanding (shared culture helps for it, but it is only a factor). The tie to the land doesn’t mater as long as the actors are capable of having long term plans.

The Left bank of the Gal Oya

After the middling results of the Mahaweli project, another irrigation developmental project happened in Sri Lanka, on the left bank of the Gal Oya. The Gal Oya is a river (“Oya” means river in Sinhala) at the south east of the island. There was a similar “state engineers vs farmers” dynamic, with a kind of elitist disregard for the farmers (which was readily reciprocated). Here is what Ostrom has to say on the functionaries:

The hiring was based on qualifications and grades at school. Promotion was based on seniority, and there weren’t any connection between the professional and non-professional sectors. The functionaries identified themselves strongly with the profession of civil engineer, their prestige came from building new infrastructure, rather than valorizing and preserving them. [emphasis mine]

Ostrom is summarizing a report, and I’m summarizing that summary, translated to French and back to English again, the report is available at the Internet Archive at:

Web archive link to usaid report

It’s accessible and fun to read. I’ll make it much less accessible and fun to read, but shorter. So read on! :)

The farmers in the region were ethnically diverse: Tamil downstream, and Sinhalese upstream. But the real split was between the authorities and the farmers, and building an effective irrigation system requires to build trust between the authorities and the farmers. Creating not only water channels, but channels of communication and decision making.

The development project was codesigned with the Agrarian Research and Training Institute (ARTI) and Cornell University between 1980 and 1985. The Gal Oya bassin already had a period of development in the 1950s, and it was fully irrigated, but, at the time, the infrastructure was in complete dissaray, and most of the water would leak before reaching the fields. The farmers were constantly fighting over water access, in fact, murder was a frequent occurance in the region.

ARTI started by organizing the farmers. They used “catalysers”, or Institutional Organizers (IO). The IOs were Sri Lankan fresh out of university, who followed a six week formation on organizing. Most of them were of agriarian origin. The university background allowed them to effectively work with the engineers, and the agrarian background with the farmers.

Once formed, they were posted in the region and built rapport with the farmers by asking what problems they encountered. They then led the farmers to create small neighbourhood councils of about 15 people. The farmers would identify problems with the irrigation infrastructure and organize sorties to fix them. The problems they couldn’t fix by themselves, they could summarize and delegate to the state engineers.

They then developped regional councils to which the neighbourhood councils would send delegates. They would identify the larger works necessary to improve irrigation and bring them to meetings with the engineers. Before, the engineers couldn’t care less about the requests from the farmers. But now, they readily listened: the requests were the result of contradictory deliberation, it came with a solid list of arguments and mass backing from all the farmers¹⁷.

The result was staggering: In a region plagued by murder and distrust, a large cooperative organization was born, people from diverse ethnic groups started working together and even defend each other from outside troublemakers, within six months, the harvest for 300 famillies doubled!

For my own personal benefit, I’ll list down the organizational structure of the project:

• Field channel organizations: 12-15 farmers, no schedule, self-organized
• Distribution channel organization: 100-300 farmers. General Assembly (GA) with all members, and comitees of delegates from the field channels
• Zone Councils: Spans the few thousands farmers, which are free to attend.
• Project Councils: Includes the engineers and debates strategic decisions.

The Nova Scotia fishing zones

Nova Scotia is a Canadian province located on a peninsula in the Atlantic.

The Nova Scotia fishers had setup extralegal rules for themselves. Certain technologies were limited to certain zones depending on the marine life. And the sea was divised in zones reserved to specific fishers. They would enforce this through mutual monitoring. When outsiders were breaking the rules, they could back each others on communication channels. To quote Ostrom:

Territories were split between fishers based on their specific fishing technologies, to reduce externalities that technologies can impose uppon others. [emphasis mine]

This was effective and prevented population collapse in fisheries.

In the 1980, the Canadian central government, eager to foster more efficient fishing technologies, but, especially, convinced that the Tragedy of the Commons compelled them to intervene, completely undid this. They financed large thrawlers and imposed central fishing registrations. This completely undid the pre-existing system, disempowered the local fishers, who knew best the ecosystem and how to manage it, and led to population collapse (of course) and also ruined a lot of fishers to the benefit of large corporations.

Commons as an aspirational model for society

The book doesn’t end there, but I just don’t understand the rest of my notes. So here is my horribly uninformed take.

The Commons presented in the book show both their power and weakness.

Commons can replace financial systems. They work as insurance by mutualizing risk without capital, as in the huertas. They work as bank without debt, by associating rights to resource access with obligation of upkeep, as for Zanjeras.

Commons are not uniform, quite the opposite. They are grown organically, and they both reinforce and are reinforced by natural systems and changes humans make to the world.

Commons demonstrate that local knowledge have power in itself, and that existing organizations, even when not formally recognized have immense value. I link it to the Chesterton fence. Institutions have more value the longer they have been in existance. Because they evolved to incorporate a complex set of rules that allows their survival, and themselves allow their modification to further their survival.

Ostrom notes that Commons can reinforce and foster other Commons: Maybe one system established successfully can be re-used fully or in part somewhere else? Or multiple rules mixed according to the situation?

This leads us to Doughnut economics. A framework to evaluate an economic system and a set of policy options to put together an economic model that evolves within the limit of prosperity and sustainability, tailored for the local environment.

It shows how Commons are built as bottom-up organzations. How they can grow to fairly large sizes and federate. Demonstrating that it is indeed possible for large organizations to exist without debilitating corruption.

It also shows how vulnerable Commons are. External forces can just step in and declare the Commons a nuisance or illegal. Sometimes through force – as for the Mawella example – sometimes ideologically – as for Nova Scotia fisheries. But if people recognize the existing institutions as valuable, they will fight for it, and it might repel the external actors.

Commons build trust and collaboration. It can diffuse ethnic tensions as in the Gal Oya left bank.

Why don’t we see more Commons popping up? The choice in technological evolutions are delegated to centralized entities whose priority is to increase their power. As a result, the environment is less welcoming to decentralized organizations.

But this is a purely political choice, not a technological fatality. Our current day technological landscape follows decades of policy designed to concentrate technical power, delegate social organization choices to giants. No shit they have outsize power. But that’s only because the state enforces that power. Finding a better life, refounding the Commons, is as simple as reducing this enforcement. We are propping up a doomed model to no gain to ourselves.

The basis of decentralized power, and a dignified life for everyone are already here. The technology for a sustainable management of resource is here and usable. What is stopping us is a system that prioritizes destroying any possible alternative.

You don’t need a wild imagination or long studies to see that a better system is possible. It is already here in some parts of our economy, and some parts of the world. The future is here, it’s just not equally distributed.