Jonathan D. Rosenbloom

Defining Nature as a Common Pool Resource

One of the many ways in which we attempt to study resource use and conservation is to define natural resources as “common pool resources.” Yet in a broad sense we can understand nature more generally as a common pool resource with which we maintain a special relationship. This definition incorporates several legal, behavioral, and ecological concepts that seek to capture the intricate and complex place where nature and the governance of nature collide. Once we apply the common pool resource definition to nature, we commit to viewing nature through five distinct and specific lenses that are embedded in the common pool resource framework. This chapter explores these commitments in an effort to establish a foundation for related research on how these common pool resource-specific lenses may influence the management of nature. The chapter begins with a short background on common pool resources and the understanding of them in the legal literature. The chapter then turns to five conceptual commitments we make by labeling nature as a common pool resource. An exploration of the commitments reveals that they have both intended and unintended consequences on the way we view nature. Those consequences, in turn, have both positive and negative implications for the management of nature. Further, regardless of whether the commitments help facilitate positive or negative approaches to nature management, each commitment places limiting and potentially harmful constraints on the broader perspective with which we should view nature. The chapter concludes by raising the question of whether this limited perspective fully considers pertinent characteristics inherent in nature and whether we should think more broadly when defining nature.

The Cost of Federalism: Ecology, Community, and the Pragmatism of Land Use

If there is a victim of federalism, it is undoubtedly the community. Localities, in contrast to the federal government, have a very real stake in the quality of ecosystem functionality, because localities rely on ecosystem services as the beneficiaries of those services. When local governments regulate land uses to prevent degradation of important local ecosystems, they regulate from a purposes that non-local governments simply do not have. This book chapter examines the exercise of federal control over environmental issues and its potential assault on the merits of community. The chapter explores whether imposed homogeneity or sameness at the federal level defeats the benefits of self-identifying communities through land use controls and, if so, whether that is a trade-off we are willing to accept. Our objective is to help clarify the impact of federal regulation on local land use control and to more completely articulate how federal regulation detaches a community from its local ecosystem.

Town, Gown and Place-Based Sustainability: Collaborating in the Shared Space

The locational and spatial circumstances of town and gown present opportunities to advance sustainability. This essay examines these areas of opportunity by proposing collaborative frameworks between town and gown. In what we describe as “place-based collaborations,” we identify three areas for productive collaboration by two mutually compatible institutions. Part I of this essay introduces the impacts of the sustainable curriculum and other projects that implement the educational mission of the institution, including the more progressive notion that pedagogical strategies for engaged learning, combined with the introduction of sustainability in the curriculum, may serve as drivers for nested sustainable practices. Part II considers the special relationship that towns may foster in their nested universities by recognizing shared space. Part III illustrates interaction and collaboration possibilities that build on the intellectual capital occurring in educational institutions.