Riassunto analitico
This research considers the production and reproduction of common-pool resources (CPR). Those specific typologies of goods such as fisheries and forests are difficult to measure since there is not a point of equilibrium inside the market. The main issue when considering common goods, it is their reproduction over time, therefore their sustainability. The common-pool resources are outside the standard logic that characterizes the competitive market of exchange goods where both, the demand and the supply curve meet. In this context, how people work together and cooperate to both govern a specific common good and determine specific outcome can be challenging to measure precisely when historical, cultural and economic reasons affect the human interconnections. Group of people come to agreements and define rules in order to elaborate instruments that allow governing the common goods. The human interactions occur within institutions which must be considered as the essential element that drives the management and guarantees the sustainability of the CPR. In other words, how people coordinate within a group of actors determines the entire institutional actions. The unit of analysis is the Social-Ecological System (SES) which is a scheme composed by the group of users (Actors), the totality of rules defines by the actor group (System of Governance) and the common good provided by the nature which its confines are defined by the institutional process (Environmental Common). The SES has been determined by the SESMAD (Social-Ecological System Meta-Analysis Database) which is an international database updated continuously by case studies that analyze natural resources and are coded following a protocol of standardization. The choice of the SES as an alternative unit of analysis allows investigating eco-systems which are different for cultural, historical, economic reasons thanks to the SESMAD protocol of standardization. Therefore, SES can be studied focusing on the institutions which work and interact by bottom-up mechanisms showing those similar elements that can explain the reasons for the intervention.
The objective of this research is to provide a comparison test among different SES trying to asses which are the variables that are more crucial in the production and reproduction of common goods. Two case studies concern about water within the SES’s institutional process are measured against a benchmark about SES’s performance in the reproduction of common-pool resources. The process of benchmarking allows understanding which mechanisms that are inside the SES’s structure can be discussed as an element of success or unsuccess of the sustainability of the common-pool resources.
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