FISHERIES, FORESTRY, AND AGRICULTURE IN THE THEORY OF THE COMMONS

When we examine the interaction of economic activities with the natural environment, one of the more crucial issues concerns the organizational characteristics of the social institutions that manage the natural environment, in conjunction with their behavioral and financial criteria, which would realize the patterns of repletion and depletion of the natural environment and the levels of economic activities that are dynamically optimum from the social point of view. The dynamically optimum time-paths generally converge to the long-run stationary state at which the processes of economic activities are sustained at levels that are at the optimum balance vis-á-vis the natural environment. The problem we face now concerns the organizational and institutional arrangements for sustainable economic development.

Such an organizational framework may be provided by the institutional arrangements of the commons, as has been demonstrated in terms of a large number of historical, traditional, and contemporary commons in McCay and Acheson (1987) and Berkes (1989), for example.