Session 9 – 11.08.2010 Institutions for managing human-environment systems

This session provides an opportunity to explore the institutions -- the rules, norms, incentive structures, expectations, etc. -- by which people seek to govern or manage human-environment systems for sustainability. The authors of the book are grappling with several tensions here, as will be apparent in the readings. One of these concerns assumptions about the goals of human actors (hedonistic, communitarian, idealistic, etc.). Another concerns the place of rationality -- however broadly defined -- in individual and social decision making. Still another concerns the role of the state and its relation to other actors in the governance of human-environment systems. Finally, we are struggling to integrate our views on management problems that arise in the context of highly asymmetric externalities (eg. I release pollutants that hurt you much more than me) and those those that arise in the context of more symmetrical resource commons (we are both grazing the same pasture). Because our guest speaker, Elinor Ostrom, has been a leader in the study of institutions for the governance of resource commons, I suggest that we focus our discussions in the seminar session itself on that dimension of institutions, and reserve our reflections on cases of asymmetric pollution mostly for the web site.