Providing Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services through Common Pool Resource Management as Hybrid Institution: On Eco-Net Advances and Payments for ESS in Cultural Landscapes

Abstract

In many rural areas the management of natural resources is confronted with the tragedy of the common problem; not only historically but also in modern times. Especially where biodiversity loss appears and ecosystem services (ESS) decline, the lack of public management might be related to inappropriate in-stitutional setups. Two distinct directions of thought prevail on the subject. On one hand, proponents of property rights and minimal state intervention eagerly analyse the feat of modern institutions and view private property and payments for ecosystem services (PES) as solution. On the other hand, com-mon pool resource management (CPM) has regained interest because nature is not a straight commodity and cooperation in ESS provision is needed (partly also to facilitate PES). In this paper, the two aspects are combined in a hybrid institution. We suggest a new way of approaching institutional ques-tions in ESS provision as synthesis of private and publically controlled ESS provision. It is contemplated as ESS governance of local eco-nets given the potential for inclusion of public management. In principle, the result is a con-trolled framework of land sharing between farm land (private ownership) and communally managed land (public ownership). Some land is devoted to hedges, wetlands, etc. Land is an immobile resource and can be used for EESs based on planned species prevalence, whereas communities compete also for labour which can move (or not). Governance is acting in competing consti-tuencies and is a mean to control the regulating entities (public ESS manage-ment). At a meta-level we combine the need for public management with ad-vantages of a competitive neo-classical framework. This contribution to CPM investigates a model of a group whose well-being is based on ESS provision in How to cite this paper: Nuppenau, E.-A. (2017) Providing Biodiversity and Ecosys-tem Services through Common Pool Re-source Management as Hybrid Institution: On Eco-Net Advances and Payments for ESS in Cultural Landscapes. Natural Re-sources, 8, 478-512. a cultural landscape. By statutory regulations, land (field margins), is ex-tracted from farms for ESS; in particular a leader (called reeve) guides far-mers. Two institutions are compared: (1) labour in public land for ESS based farming (i.e. it is controlled by public authority), or (2) it can migrate seeking higher rents in neighbouring communities.