Draft

Portfolio theory of commons: Household Risk Adjustments and Performance in an uncertain world

Anil K Gupta

The search for ethically responsible and scientifically precise alternatives for socially disadvantaged groups in high risk environment requires a multi disciplinary, multi market/multi institutional approach.  Various groups of rural households diversify portfolios of their economic enterprises within a range defined by the ecological endowments. The access to factor and product markets, kinship networks, intra and inter household risk adjustments, public and private relief systems and finally common property resources or common pool institutions determines the composition and evolution of portfolios of different enterprises (Gupta, 1981, 1984,1985). There have been some studies on the role of commons in risk adjustment vis-à-vis private and open access resources (Gupta 1982, 1985, McKean 1985, Biswajit 1983, Jodha 1985, Agarwal 1990, Gupta and Ura 1990, Braden 1985, Buzdar ,1988 etc.). A coherent theoretical framework however, remains to be developed.

The Austrian School has rightly questioned the dilemma of pricing resources according to equilibrium outcome or utility consideration (Buchanan,1982). Human decisions are considered to be spontaneous, creative and dynamically subjective (Kirzner 1982). The theory of Chaos provides a way of dealing with apparent randomness in the behavior of natural and social phenomena by looking for the order at different levels.  A worldview in which synchronization or simultaneity rather than sequential or causal chain reaction explains human choices is characteristic of eastern societies (Peat, 1987). The search for sustainable development by definition was pursued along very different criteria in societies that have a history of thousand of years compared to societies, which may have much shorter history.

Sustainability of using natural resources in an uncertain world, in which disadvantaged households may have control over very few institutions, requires understanding of cultural boundaries of consciousness. The understanding of emic rules over etic rules requires distinguishing cultural and value codes. Tolerance of good turns with bad ones sometimes in a random order has become an integral part of survival ethic in peasant societies. Study of institutions that generated this ethic becomes a necessary part of understanding the portfolio adjustments under risk and uncertainty.

Management of risks is sometimes like a game of musical chair or snake and ladder (Gupta, 1987).  Randomization to deal with uncertainties, as we shall see later, has been an ancient way of dealing with the problem of sustainable resource use. In fact there are examples where certain tribes converted a problem of risk into uncertainty just in order to use the rule of randomization in resources use and there by prevent excessive exploitation of the natural resource. But, these patterns emerged not just in the parameters of evaluating and managing resources but also in determining the outcome of playful performance (Richards 1989). The adjustment with risks, the contention here is, does not require meeting just the needs of survival but also of fun, liveliness and synchronicity (i.e. doing things together irrespective of what and why). 

Performance of a music concert or a drama requires a coordinated simultaneous act with the message being always different though the concern, pedagogy and instrumentalities remain same or similar.

The rules of performance cannot be derived by aggregating the rules of drama or music. These rules can be understood by looking at the basket of preferences (ranging from aesthetic, spritual to material and political) that social groups have. Thus same performance need not click with all types of audiences .A technically imperfect musical performance may some time leave a more lasting impression on the audience than a technically perfect performance but unable to move the audience.

How does this metaphor help us in seeing the working of social institutions in action in high-risk environments? . In case of Bhutan , a Buddhist society , a butcher (of game and domestic animals) and a consumer of meat (compelled by the environmental compulsions of say a mountain region ) become part of the same moral persona and enact a role which by any other logic  is difficult to comprehend . The killer of animals is held in lower esteem but not the eater. The killing is still a taboo (Gupta and Ura, 1990). We thus begin to see the way performance of normative roles without generating guilt generates logic of day-to-day living.  Conservation ethic is quite compatible with such ‘corridors’ of convenience.  Pursuit of rationality from narrow economic perspective often masks the overlapping layers of consciousness held in common by the peasant societies.

We provide a discussion on risk, resources, skills, rights and collective responsibility in part one of the paper.

We draw upon the eco-sociological framework for analysing the household adjustment with risks and the role played by commons in it in second part. We also look at the interactions between the access, assurances, abilities and attitudes with ecological resources, institutions, technology and culture in an eco-institutional framework. This provides two levels of analysis of household choices, vis-à-vis resources managed under different property regimes.

One, the interaction of access to and assurances from commons vis-à-vis resources under private, open access and public control.

Second, the analysis of rules, rituals and rational order is attempted in the context of randomization and/or portfolio adjustments over, space, time and sector.

The theory of playful portfolios to deal with risks and commons implies a multi level, multi market and multi institutional analysis of the household choices.   The purpose, it is suggested, is not to understand in a reductionist framework how the rules and roles of different actors in a performance are obtained. Instead the purpose is to understand the playfulness that underlies human inventiveness while dealing with a performance in which a sum is not only more than the parts but is also distinguishable from other sums of the same parts.

The policy implications are drawn not for generating prototype institutions for managing common property resources, but working towards a political order and Eco-institutional framework in which the order can only be seen at a particular level of analysis by providing conditions conducive to playfulness.   The limits of rationality defined by the causal chain mechanisms have to be recognised if order at a higher level of consciousness and social purpose of life has to be discovered in the holistic or organic worldview.

The paper emphasises need for departure from single resource, single institution, single level analysis (for multilevel analysis, also see Ostrom, Picht and Feeny 1988). The paper is organised in three parts.  In part one a brief review of literature is presented to understand the relationship between risk, resources, skills, vis-à-vis private, public and common resource markets providing ingredients of individual and collective portfolios.  In part two, we discuss the three level analysis of risks, adjustments, institutional emergence and portfolio diversification vis-à-vis common property institutions.  In part three, we list the questions, which need to be pursued further.

PART ONE

Risk, Resources, Skills, Rights and Collective Responsibility:

The role of risk in emergence of institutions to manage common pool resources or properties has not received adequate attention. For instance a recent state -of-art review on institutions by Ostrom, Picht and Feeny (1989) had only one index entry and a couple of pages on the subject. Societies have evolved many ‘rational’ and apparently not so rational ways of making sense of the uncertainties, which cannot, by definition, be predicted. Adjusting and adapting with risks requires not merely resources but also skills (economic, cultural and political). The skills and resources are by themselves insufficient if assurances about (a) using resources now or in future or (b) others’ behaviour vis-à-vis one’s own, are not available (Gupta, 1985).

Gardner (1985) recalled the confession by Buchanan (1982) that there are aspects of human action that cannot be subjected to explanation in an operationally meaningful theory of economics. 

The creative and spontaneous element of decision making (Kirzner 1982) requires markets and property rights to be treated as a part of indigenous institutions.  Each human actor is believed to be an entrepreneur, speculator, and acting man’ who makes changes regarding future.  The endowments, preferences and technology are believed to be generally known to everyone.  Instead, Gardener adds “each individual has his own particular subset of knowledge.  This produces a local knowledge monopoly, but the very act of using that knowledge tends to breakdown the monopoly by diffusing the knowledge on which it is based” (1985; 1041).  

Hudson (1980) looks at the unpredictability in human choices differently.  He refers to the turning points or what he calls as ‘successful / failed watersheds ‘ as enigmatic or intriguing moments when people rush into actions which one would find it difficult to explain by conventional ‘standpoint of statistical social modeling’. One of the problems with traditional forecasting methods was that these were based on “surprise - free” dimension.  History in fact was interesting because there are surprises.   

He adds: 
People are interesting because there behaviour can depart from normal patterns as well as conform to them.  And theories are interesting because they provide a cohesive way of viewing highly diverse phenomena, sharpening the edge of other theories by clarifying the conditions under which different models of behaviour prevail (1980:26).  

He uses binomial model to analyse the trade off between success and failure under risk and argues that redundant resource does not always add to the safety margin of a social system. He shows that additional resources do not necessarily provide greater insurance against risk.  

He adds “there is a natural human impulse to add redundancy to systems that are subject to failure.  Yet catastrophic events can often be traced to failure in a series of safety systems-in the crash of a wide body jet due to a patchwork correction of faulty cargo door design, in the combination of malfunctions and errors leading to nuclear plant accidents, in the breakdown of warning devices that should have prevented train and ship collisions.  At first glance, one might say, “Let’s correct the problem by adding more warning and backstopping devices”.  But the binomial model tells us something else: that sometime redundant safety features do not help.  And when they don’t, they can actually increase the danger of catastrophic breakdown.  The system comes to rely on the additional features, when in fact they may be no more reliable than the average of components already installed. (1980:22). 

He decries the tendencies of solving problems by adding new system components, which may themselves be prone to failure. The same additional resource can cause greater risk in some cases and adds security in other cases depending upon the probability of failure of each component, number of components and proportion of the number of the components, which are needed at any particular point of time.  Thus, he “adds if a person is walking a thin edge between success and failure, it will often pay to drop out of conventional forms of social and economic participation”.  When the system is relatively intolerant of failure one may have to let go several risk taking activities at once.  Same logical applies to the addition of spheres of opportunities; “it pays to increase them in lumps, because more often than not the addition of a single new element constitutes a libaility rather than extra safety margin.  For people who are socially disadvantaged, participating in very few spheres of social opportunities, having lack of influence to get a second chance if they fail once and having high probability of failure in any given sphere of opportunity becomes a way of life.

It is for this reason, Hudson observes:

When disadvantaged people drop out of the social and economic mainstream, they are often judged irrational, because specific opportunities for self-advancement can almost always be identified.  What the binomial model suggests, however, is that spheres of opportunity may have to be clustered and offered in a comprehensive package to improve a person’s net chances for overall success.  Added one at a time, such opportunities can easily constitute a “pure liability”. as seen in the case of redundant airplane engines. 

It is in this context that one has to understand why disadvantaged people choose a portfolio with fewer components likely to fail. The social policies, Hudson notes, are typically directed to reducing the prospects of failure in various spheres of social    opportunities.  The binomial model draws attention to another factor and which is the tolerance that society has for failure in a specific spheres of individual performances.  “A small failure of generally little consequence can occur at a threshold of tolerance with results for out of line with the average effects of the precipitating events”.  

The theory of choas (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984) and   Hudson’s understanding explain how “ A straw can break the camel’s back”.  

While dealing with risks Richards (1989) shows how in the harsh environmental and economic conditions faced by many poor families in the tropics, “even to reproduce the status quo is often a brilliantly innovative achievement”.  He shows that many times technical perfection in a musical performance may not move the audience, whereas technically imperfect performance could be greatly appreciated. Referring to Stones  (1982), he highlights how performance as a metaphor implies sensitivity “to, the timing, turn taking, how to begin and end, how to cue, enters and exits, how to cope with mistakes and broader notions of harmony, togetherness and the social and spiritual auspices under which music takes place”. (1989:42).  Similar skills may have to be shown by a yak herder or cattle herder trying to coordinate their movements across altitudes, seasons, pastures, etc.

Literature on common property resources has generally ignored the implications of clustering of opportunities, redundancy of rules, and inappropriateness of segmented analysis of survival options of disadvantaged households.

While dealing with various strategies of risk adjustments used by Peruvian peasants Guillet (1981) shows the inter linkages between upland and low land, crop and livestock variability among micro eco zones, differentiation along vertical and horizontal coordinates of mountains.  One of the interesting dimensions that he highlights is what he calls as “polyvalency” - a mechanism for reducing risk based on the need to control variability across sectors of the economy.  Thus, a clustering of migration livestock transportation breeding craft and several other activities have been termed by Feder (1971) as a means of spreading risks across space and sectors.   This is similar to what Hudson had suggested earlier as clustering of spheres of opportunities or what we have called as portfolio of enterprises, opportunities and strategies (Anil K Gupta (a) 1984,(b) 1985).  Creation of social relations and networks (Anil K Gupta 1984, Box 1989, Richards 1985) or means for obtaining information, resources, incentives for dealing with risks singly, jointly in different resource markets.  Guillet (1981) compares the investment portfolio of peasants with that of professionals like us.  The portfolio dimensions brings in the complexity but also a greater order in the perspective on household survival under risk by manipulating access to private and public common resources. 

Reviewing lessons from various attempts to manage risks  (Clark 1980) observed that uncertainty or variability in the natural system was initially seen as a source of risk/hazard.  Without exception assumption was that removal of variability would be an unmitigated good such that risk would be reduced and performance improved.  However, the experience showed,

.the decreased frequency of variation in the system was accompanied by increased vulnerability to and cost of variation when it finally broke lose from managerial controls. The management efforts had changed the kinds of risks encountered, but not the fact of risk.  More often than not, management shifted the risk  structure from a sort  people were accustomed to dealing with to one they had never  before experienced(1980:7).

He underlines that merely an increase in knowledge or control is unlikely to reduce unpleasant surprises in resource management.  He suggests need for learning to design such resource management system that can better cope with failure guaranteed by our ignorance and inherent variability of resource of systems.  The suggestion for uncertainty tolerant management system is similar to what Weick (1987) called self-designing system. 

Clark observes:
If knowledge is incomplete, if the future is uncertain, then mistakes and surprise are inevitable.  The categorical imperative is to recognize such mistakes, to learn from them, and to modify future actions accordingly (1980:13).

The retrospective rationality is after all not all that bad.  It helps us generate psychological satisfaction in the wake of material and cultural dissatisfaction. The purpose of institutions is not just to provide a rule book for managing a set of resources. Often one set of rules may be nested in another type of institutions. 

Breaden (1985) recognises that individuals when are dependent upon others for using a resource do look for assurances about others’ behaviour.  The restraint, he adds,

will be exercised voluntarily only if the future is not discounted so heavily that the short term gains of defection out weigh long term gains possible from conditional cooperation by a critical mass of participants. A positive prospect that others may reciprocate provides a favourable incentive for voluntary restraint, but these fall rapidly as the number of participants increases or discount rate increases. 

The studies on collective behaviour have emphasised primarily the variables which deal with either group size, monitoring, frequency of interactions, nature of reciprocity, the choice of discount rate, the extent of tolerance by the group of free riding, the ratio of return that an individual gets as a fraction of total group gain or loss, cost of preventing free riding vis-à-vis the loss due to free riding as a part of total group gain etc.  However, most of these interactions have been pursued primarily in a single resource market, say, fisheries, forestry or grazing, etc.  While the need for multi level on multi market approach has been recognised (Gupta 1985 in Ostrom, Picht and Feeny 1988) the framework still looks at the rules that cover behaviour in segmented resource markets.

Survival of Commons under Stress

I have earlier shown that a common property resource may be managed better in a high risk environment not because it was needed less but because it might have provided only a small share of the total livelihood requirements of a sizeable group of the households (Gupta,1985) .

To illustrate let us assume there is a village having three groups of households.  Group-one owns primarily cattle, land and receives income from inward remittances (from people employed elsewhere).  Group-two owns cattle and sheep, some land, family members are engaged in crop related activities and labour on others farm, public employment works etc.  Group-three has primarily landless people or marginal producers having very small land holding if at all, owns primarily sheep, gets majority of the income from labour , also pursues crafts and lives in separate settlements outside the main village due to caste and other social factors.

The portfolio of activities of each group is different and so is different their respective vulnerability. The proportion of biomass they get from commons, as a function of total biomass requirement will also vary.  However, the attitude towards commons would not be judged merely by the access and the assurances available about future returns from present investment and others behaviour vis-à-vis one’s own, or the skills or abilities of groups to convert resources into investments. The attitude will also be governed by the timing of the availability of biomass from commons and difference between the threshold quantity of biomass necessary for survival during the lean period and the total biomass available from the commons during this period.  The threshold value will be determined differently for different groups depending upon the availability of biomass from private or other open access resources.

The catchment area from which group one, two and three draw their biomass would also be different.

+-----------¦
¦   G-1 +---+---------------+
¦    +--+---+----+          ¦
+----+--+---+    ¦      G-3 ¦
¦G2+--------+----------+
+-----------+

Catchment of Biomass for a pastoral community
comprising three Groups

The group three would migrate to much longer distances than group one due to technological reasons (sheep dominant portfolios) and differential access to private resources.  The domain from which they will draw the biomass may overlap partly.  Thus group one and group three may supply restrained towards commons for very different reasons. In both the cases the critical resource availability over time may not be synchronized.  In case of group three the vulnerability is high and therefore, dependence on a resource regime (in this case CPR), which provides only marginal share of requirement, is low.  In the first case the vulnerability is low and the dependence is also low.  In case of group two the dependence may lie somewhere in between.

Even though the environmental risk and uncertainty may be same for all the three groups, their response to commons would be influenced by the importance that CPR has in their portfolio besides other background factors influencing their attitude and expectations.

In case of group one the inward remittances may reduce the vulnerability by providing a regular flow of income and thus change the bidding behaviour vis-à-vis commons.  The cultural congruence between different groups would act as a background variable in so far as the criticality of availability of biomass from CPR is concerned.  In a drought year everybody may decide to be indifferent to the commons because the biomass may not meet more than a few days need of the three groups.  Alternatively, group three and group two may migrate out leaving behind group one to use the CPR resources in the lean season.  There is a possibility that group one may decide not to violate the sanctity of commons either because of religious reasons or respect for future availability of resource to the other groups as well as to the members of the same group.  In either case there could be several variations in dealing with risks and institutions may emerge to regulate cultural, economic, psychological, and social expectations of people from each other within the groups as well between groups.

We have come across instances where village leaders may decide to auction the commons to the highest bidder even though there may be reservations for group three type of people belonging to lower caste.  The argument may be that bid price offered by the group three would be very low and therefore collective income of the village would come down.  In case the collective income is in- vested for such common properties, which are used by everybody equitably, the inequity of the auction mechanism may be tolerated.  On the other hand, if the common good created serves only some groups more than others there may be resistance.  The degree of resistance would of course vary depending upon the extent of inequity and intra-group solidarity.  There are examples where experience of very strong conflict between groups one and three have led to the emergence of very high solidarity in group three for managing a group based common pool institution (Pastakia, 1990). 

There are also examples where the group one dominating the local level panchayat (quasi legal administrative authority elected by village members) may hand over the commons to forest departments or other public authorities for its closure and the regeneration. 

In the process group one ensures that group three would lose access to the CPR in the short term. When the resource regeneration has taken place, the usufruct may be disposed off in market. And the surplus so generated may be used for creating a public or common good in the village, which may or may not be of much use to group three.  The group three may lose access in the long term also. The group one and group two may collude because of economic and social reasons.  In some cases on caste and cultural considerations group two may also align with group three. The commons may survive without necessarily any gain in the livelihoods prospect of the group three.

Risk and redundancy

We have argued that probability of an institution generating cooperative behaviour may depend upon, among others, at least three factors:  a) The proportion of value added by the institution invested in risk and guarantee funds, b) The proportion invested on diversification of use of common resource or value added product, and c) the extent of transfer pricing being followed by the group members.  It is obvious that further distribution of risk fund or diversified resources among various poolers would further influence the emergence of cooperative behavior (Gupta 1984,1985). The degree of redundancy generated may also influence, as mentioned earlier, the incentives for cooperation among various groups having different portfolios. 

The redundant resource will insure the portfolios of different groups differently depending upon the importance of the redundant resources in the respective portfolios.  The variability in returns from each enterprise in the portfolios of three groups would influence their incentives to economise the use of respective resource. Whether the returns from enterprise dependent upon commons say livestock, co vary or contra vary with the returns from other enterprises would influence the portfolio variance as distinct from enterprise variance. We have suggested that an enterprise may be discounted differently depending upon the property regime governing its use. Lesser the control over cash flows from an enterprise, higher may be the discount rate. Further, a negative return enterprise may be kept in the portfolio if its presence (a) reduces the portfolio variance by generating externality (as in case of manure for crops but which has no market value say in some hill areas or trees in some of the agroforestry systems), (b) meets certain cultural needs (some varieties of rice though with very low return are grown because they are required for certain rituals and religious occasions or an old cow is not culled due to religious taboo on cow slaughter ) and (c) provides opportunity for renewing certain skills which otherwise may get lost or weakened .

The trade off between redundancy in resource use to deal with future uncertainties vis-à-vis optimal scarcity leading to emergence of rules for regulating present resource use has to be made very carefully.  Too much of redundancy may confuse and too little may cripple (Gupta1985). Sometimes scarcity in resource use is compensated by redundancy in cultural or psychological sub set of living. Some times the regulation of CPR is done through regulation of managing private resource. Gills and Gamtgard (1981) provided an example of regulating private resource to protect the commons.  In other words scarcity in one sub system can influence sufficiency in other systems.  In addition to redundancy, randomization has also been used for regulating collective behaviour for managing commons.

Risk , redundancy and randomization

In a paper on Musical Chairs, Snake and Ladder on Management of Risks, I asked a question as to why did children all over the world (particularly the developing world) play games that involve development of randomization skills. How did one contrast evolution of this skill in the process of evolving human consciousness in past with the trend towards development of strategic choice or only-one-best solution games in the developed world or metropolitan culture.  Does it provide some clue to the increasing tendency of dealing with nature through control rather than coexistence spirit?  With the increase in individualization of risk assessment and response the collective choice options even if more sustainable seemed to have been ignored (assumption here is that collective choice would accommodate the use of randomization or other such rules to either constrain the use of resource or its distribution which is unlikely to be the case with individual rationality). Legitimacy to this ignorance was provided by an ethics, which justified the precedence of individual survival over collective survival as suggested in the dominant philosophy of triage.

MCKEAN (1985) provides an example from Japan where grass bundles were tied and allotted randomly to the people harvesting it from the commons so that no one tried to make too large a bundle for one’s own use.  Gupta and Ura (1990) found that in some mountain villages people drew the turn for getting water for irrigation from a mountain stream by drawing lotteries.  Gerlach and Palmer (1981) provide an instance of a tribe in Africa, which had a water point near a settlement.  The tribe knew the time when the animals would come to drink the water.  The rationale response in the short run might be to hunt the animals when they came for drinking water with the assumption that animals might not learn.  And they may continue to come at the same time. Or even if animals learnt and started randomising their arrivals the tribe could fix turn of various members and kill the animals without much uncertainty.  However, the tribe did not follow any of these alternatives.  The leader of the tribe threw a stone tied to a sling after rotating it for a while. The tribe went for hunting in whichever direction the stone was thrown.  This may even be just opposite to the direction where animals might be found much more.  By randomising the search the extent of damage to the ecological system was minimised.  And at the same time the group learned to live with heavy catch on some days with no catch on other days.  The ethics of concern for ecological balance and cultural code generating happiness over failure due to fun and success due to gain was an important key to understand emergence of randomization as a rule for resource management in such contexts.

Strategic Diversification for Survival of Commons

Lest an impression is created that I am emphasizing the role of randomization over strategic resource planning under all conditions, let me state cases where ecological conditions require strategic adjustments in resource use over space, sector and time.

Buzdar (1988) provides explanation of multi enterprise, multi resource or eco-niche based survival strategies.  The interaction between private and common resources across altitudes in North Pakistan resembles the experience in Swiss Alpines (Netting 1972) and Bhutan (Gupta & Ura, 1990).  The agricultural land and animals are owned in this case individually where as water and pastures are owned collectively.  No single altitudinal level or eco-niche has the potential to provide the survival needs of the villagers. All families required access to different micro environments to reduce the risk of bad years and effectively schedule resource use over time and space. No single activity was sufficient either. 

The bundle of rights emerged to manage properties under various regimes or rules.  It has been shown that individual strand of this bundle may be distributed among state, owners, users, creditors, labourers etc.  (Ciriacy- -Wantrup 1963).

Buzdar provides examples of coordination among various pastoralists who must regulate the entry and exit in the village such that presence of the animals coincides with the fallowing of the fields.  This in turn requires that individual cultivators grow crops, which mature, in the same time.  The fines are imposed for keeping animals longer in the village or brining them back early.  Aggarwal (1990) observed a similar practice in Bunakha village of Bhutan.

Cooperation and diversification

Bromley (1986) describes a matrix of positive reciprocity, altruism, free rider and negative reciprocity to explain incentives for cooperation in a group.  However, the framework needs improvement to deal with multi market multi institutional exchanges.

Questions have been raised about the factors which guaranteed that an institution once evolved continue to play the role of coordination, provision of information and determination of pooling and distribution rules (Biswajit 1983).  Birkes (1985) argues that fisherman fish for money and not biomass, implying that their strategies for catching different fishes evolve in response to market demand for each specie . He could also have enriched the analysis by looking at the portfolios of fisherman going for high value low quantity species vis-à-vis low value high quantity species.  The co-variance or contra-variance of quantity, value and risk involved in fisheries vis-à-vis other investment opportunities may have to be looked into to further understand the response to commons.  McCay (1984) argues that they could also be a tragedy of commoners instead of just the commons.  Smith (1984) asserted that CPRs were always accompanied by triage.  While one may dispute this contention there is no doubt that equity proves to be elusive in the study of commons when one searches it in any one resource market.  Perhaps organising inequity in different resource markets or systems provided a mechanism of balancing the respective portfolios.  Thus, owners of livestock may use commons more than the landowners. The latter may use livestock dung as manure or fuel much more compared to the former. Shah and Ballabh (1986) have argued that in a group action stake of each member in the resource needs to be established.  We would modify it to suggest that the stake should be established in different resources. And these stakes need not follow same parameters or the rules in each resource market or system.

Sahlins (1974) had described how pooling and redistribution function could continue if some rent was extracted by the decision centre for sustainable development particularly in high-risk environments.  But we have to establish linkages between macro political economic regimes and micro and macro levels eco- sociological institutions. Analysis of common property institutions in isolation of private properties, open access resources, and cultural codes would serve only limited purpose.

The ethical basis of this framework needs careful analysis because the Eastern worldview does differ from the Western perspectives.  Within Eastern perspectives, the ethnic and tribal differences have to be accommodated.

The discontinuities, disorder, chaos, apparent in resource relationships has provided basis for individual and collective innovations.  The search for sustainable solutions to decline of commons calls for an equally optimistic trust in human inventiveness and an eye for variability.  Will global efforts accommodate local frameworks is a question that will answer perhaps several of the above questions.

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