Monday 30 November 2009
The economy Nobel prize for a social scientist!
By Stephane Dupas, Monday 30 November 2009 à 15:04 :: Persons
This year's economy Nobel Prize was awarded to two American academics who have pioneered research into how individuals co-operate and share common resources, and work together within companies, Elinor Ostrom, professor of political science at Indiana University, and Oliver Williamson, professor emeritus at the Haas School of Business.
Not only is Ostrom the first woman to be awarded this prize, but she also represent a school of thought that is not used to such honours.
An article of the Guardians explains that in her classic work Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Ostrom shows that under certain conditions, when communities are given the right to self-organise they can democratically govern themselves to preserve the environment.
The Guardian's article also shows that the work of Ostrom is very important in terms of environmental governance, which is one of the driving line of the IMAGINE initiative.
"In a nutshell, Ostrom won the Nobel prize for showing that privatising natural resources is not the route to halting environmental degradation.
In most economics classes the environment is usually taught as being the victim of the "tragedy of the commons". If one assumes, like many economists do, that individuals are ruthlessly selfish individuals, and you put those individuals onto a commonly owned resource, the resource will eventually be destroyed. The solution: privatise the commons. Everyone will have ownership of small parcels and treat that parcel better than when they shared it.
Many environmental experts also reject the tragedy of the commons argument and say the government should step in.
Ostrom says the government may not be the best allocator of public resources either. Often governments are seen as illegitimate, or their rules cannot be enforced. Indeed, Ostrom's life work looking at forests, lakes, groundwater basins and fisheries shows that the commons can be an opportunity for communities themselves to manage a resource."
IMAGINE Seminar, Arc-et-Senans (FR)