Sustainability Language

Governance, Ethics & Risk

Common pool resource

A resource that is difficult to exclude people from but finite in use, such as fisheries, irrigation systems and communal forests.

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Definition

A common pool resource is a natural or human-made resource from which exclusion is costly and whose use is subtractable — one user's withdrawal diminishes what is available to others. Garrett Hardin's 1968 'tragedy of the commons' framed such resources as doomed to overuse; Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons (1990) showed communities can sustain them through self-designed governance rules.

References

Overview

What it means

The concept explains why unowned resources degrade — and under what institutional conditions they do not.

How it is used

Ostrom's design principles (clear boundaries, local rule-making, monitoring, graduated sanctions) guide community management of fisheries, forests, water and grazing lands.

Why it matters

It is the theoretical basis for community-based natural resource management and a core reference in debates on the global commons.

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