Communal-level resource management successes and failures comprise
complex interactions that involve local, regional, and (increasingly)
global scale political, economic, and environmental changes, shown to
have recurring patterns and trajectories. The human past provides
examples of long-term millennial and century-scale successes followed by
undesired transitions ("collapse"), and rapid failure of collaborative
management cooperation on the decadal scale. Management of scarce
resources and common properties presents a critical challenge for
planners attempting to avoid the "tragedy of the commons" in this
century. Here, anthropologists, human ecologists, archaeologists, and
environmental scientists discuss strategies for social well-being in the
context of diminishing resources and increasing competition.
The contributors in this volume revisit "tragedy of the commons" (also
referred to as "drama" or "comedy" of the commons) and examine new data
and theories to mitigate pressures and devise models for sustainable
communal welfare and development. They present twelve archaeological,
historic, and ethnographic cases of user-managed resources to
demonstrate that very basic community-level participatory governance can
be a successful strategy to manage short-term risk and benefits. The
book connects past-present-future by presenting geographically and
chronologically spaced out examples of communal-level governance
strategies, and overviews of the current cutting-edge research. The
lesson we learn from studying past responses to various ecological
stresses is that we must not wait for a disaster to happen to react, but
must react to mitigate conditions for emerging disasters.
