A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability …

1 A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems Elinor Ostrom Science 325, 419 (2009);. DOI: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. If you wish to distribute this article to others, you can order high-quality copies for your colleagues, clients, or customers by clicking here. Downloaded from on March 20, 2012. Permission to republish or repurpose articles or portions of articles can be obtained by following the guidelines here. The following resources related to this article are available online at (this information is current as of March 20, 2012 ): Updated information and services, including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online version of this article at: Supporting Online Material can be found at: A list of selected additional articles on the Science Web sites related to this article can be found at: #related This article cites 21 articles, 11 of which can be accessed free: #ref-list-1.

2 This article has been cited by 11 article(s) on the ISI Web of Science This article has been cited by 19 articles hosted by HighWire Press; see: #related-urls This article appears in the following subject collections: Sociology Science (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published weekly, except the last week in December, by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. Copyright 2009 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science; all rights reserved. The title Science is a registered trademark of AAAS. SPECIALSECTION. it can address the inherent heterogeneity in who within a community (25). As the flow of ideas 17. E. L. Rezende, J. E. Lavabre, P. R. Guimar es Jr., meets whom. This application can be extended to among seemingly unrelated fields increases (a P.)

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6 Jiang, L. A. N. Amaral, 274, 505 (2007). alities among seemingly different systems that, 31. H. Ohtsuki, C. Hauert, E. Lieberman, M. A. Nowak, Nature Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B 274, 1931 (2007). despite their disparate nature, may have similar 10. M. Kondoh, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 105, 16631 441, 502 (2006). processes of formation and/or similar forces act- (2008). 32. I thank Bersier, P. Buston, J. E. Cohen, J. Dunne, ing on their architecture in order to be functional. 11. J. Bascompte, C. J. Meli n, E. Sala, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. M. A. Fortuna, R. D. Holt, P. Jordano, T. Keitt, J. Lavabre, 102, 5443 (2005). R. M. May, J. Olesen, D. Stouffer, G. Sugihara, Although we have only begun to understand how J. N. Thompson, J. Tylianakis, and two anonymous 12. S. B. Otto, B. C. Rall, U. Brose, Nature 450, 1226 (2007). changes in the environment affect species inter- 13.

7 J. N. Thompson, The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution reviewers for comments on a previous draft. P. Jordano, actions and ecosystem dynamics through analyses (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005). A. Aparicio, and M. A. Fortuna provided material for of simple pairwise interactions, network think- 14. J. Bascompte, P. Jordano, Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 38, Fig. 1. Funded by the European Heads of Research 567 (2007). Councils, the European Science Foundation, and the ing can provide a means by which to assess key European Community Sixth Framework Programme 15. J. A. Dunne, R. Williams, N. Martinez, Ecol. Lett. 5, 558. questions such as how overfishing can cause (2002). through a European Young Investigator Award. trophic cascades, or how the disruption of mutual- 16. J. Memmott, N. M. Waser, M. V. Price, Proc. R. Soc. isms may reduce the entire pollination service London Ser.

8 B 271, 2605 (2004). PERSPECTIVE. users (fishers), and governance systems (orga- nizations and rules that govern fishing on that A General Framework coast) are relatively separable but interact to produce outcomes at the SES level, which in turn feed back to affect these subsystems and their for Analyzing Sustainability of components, as well other larger or smaller SESs. Scientific knowledge is needed to enhance ef- Social-Ecological Systems forts to sustain SESs, but the ecological and social sciences have developed independently and do not combine easily (2). Furthermore, scholars have Elinor Ostrom1,2* tended to develop simple theoretical models to analyze aspects of resource problems and to pre- A major problem worldwide is the potential loss of fisheries, forests, and water resources. scribe universal solutions. For example, theoretical Understanding of the processes that lead to improvements in or deterioration of natural resources predictions of the destruction of natural resources is limited, because scientific disciplines use different concepts and languages to describe and due to the lack of recognized property systems have explain complex social-ecological systems (SESs).

9 Without a common Framework to organize led to one-size-fits-all recommendations to impose findings, isolated knowledge does not cumulate. Until recently, accepted theory has assumed that particular policy solutions that frequently fail (3, 4). resource users will never self-organize to maintain their resources and that governments must The prediction of resource collapse is sup- impose solutions. Research in multiple disciplines, however, has found that some government ported in very large, highly valuable, open-access policies accelerate resource destruction, whereas some resource users have invested their time and systems when the resource harvesters are diverse, energy to achieve Sustainability . A General Framework is used to identify 10 subsystem variables do not communicate, and fail to develop rules and that affect the likelihood of self-organization in efforts to achieve a sustainable SES.

10 Norms for managing the resource (5) The dire predictions, however, are not supported under con- he world is currently threatened by con- tems (SESs). SESs are composed of multiple ditions that enable harvesters and local leaders to T siderable damage to or losses of many natural resources, including fisheries, lakes, and forests, as well as experiencing major subsystems and internal variables within these subsystems at multiple levels analogous to orga- nisms composed of organs, organs of tissues, self-organize effective rules to manage a resource 1. Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47408, USA. 2 Center for the Study reductions in biodiversity and the threat of mas- tissues of cells, cells of proteins, etc. (1). In a com- of Institutional Diversity, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ.