CIPEC - Breaking News

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced today (Oct. 12).

Ostrom is the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. She is co-founder and senior research director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at IU.

She is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics, which has been awarded since 1968. She shares the award with Oliver Williamson, Edgar F. Kaiser Professor Emeritus of Business, Economics and Law at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her award recognizes her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.

"Elinor Ostrom has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized," the Academy said in announcing the prize. "Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories. She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterizes the rules that promote successful outcomes."

Ostrom said she was "flabbergasted" to get the news this morning that she received the Nobel Prize. "It was a fantastic surprise and a thrilling one," she said. "I'm very appreciative."

"This is fantastic news," said IU President Michael A. McRobbie. "Professor Ostrom has won widespread recognition from around the world for her very original research and scholarship. For her to win the Nobel Prize is fully appropriate."

Ostrom said she knows Oliver Williamson, her co-recipient, and is pleased to share the award with him.

In addition to her positions at Indiana University, Ostrom is founding director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University.

An IU faculty member since 1965, she co-founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis with her husband, Vincent Ostrom, in 1973. She served as president of the Public Choice Society from 1982-84 and president of the American Political Science Association in 1996-97. She was the first woman to chair the Department of Political Science in 1980-84.

Ostrom received her B.A. at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1954; her M.A. at UCLA in 1962; and her Ph.D. at UCLA in 1965.

She and Williamson will split the $1.4-million award that goes with the Nobel Prize for Economics, and each will receive a gold medal and diploma from the Swedish king on Dec. 10, which is the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.

Professor Ostrom receives Germany's Reimar Lüst Award

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University political scientist Elinor Ostrom is one of two recipients of the 2009 Reimar Lüst Award for International Scholarly and Cultural Exchange, which recognizes humanities and social-science scholars for contributions to cultural and academic relations with Germany.

Valued at 50,000 euros, the award is granted jointly by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The other winner this year is Roland Recht, professor of medieval and modern European art at the Collège de France in Paris.

Ostrom is the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and co-founder and co-director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University Bloomington. She is one of the world's leading scholars in the field of institutional analysis, specializing in the study of collective goods such as groundwater resources, fishing grounds and forests or grazing land. In her analyses, she emphasizes that local institutions should be considered alongside state regulations or market mechanisms in addressing problems of the resource economy.

Ostrom has been responsible for inviting many German guest researchers to the United States. She will continue a joint research project with Konrad Hagedorn from Berlin's Humboldt University.

The award is named for Reimar Lüst , the former president of the Humboldt Foundation. Two awards are granted each year, and the award winners are invited to Germany to meet colleagues and exchange ideas. Ostrom will lecture on "Collective Action and the Commons" June 19 at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management in Germany.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables more than 1,900 researchers from all over the world to spend time researching in Germany each year. It maintains a network of approximately 23,000 scholars from all disciplines in 130 countries worldwide, including 41 Nobel Prize winners.

The Fritz Thyssen Foundation promotes research and scholarship at universities and research establishments, focusing on the fields of the humanities and biomedicine.

To speak with Ostrom or Fischer, please contact Nicole Todd, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, at 812-855-7704 or stodd (at) indiana.edu, or David Bricker, IU Media Relations, at 812-856-9035 or brickerd (at) indiana.edu.

"Sustainability" issue of Research and Creative Activity features the work of CIPEC's Tom Evans

Why conservation efforts often fail

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Modern conservation techniques have brought us the resurgence of American bald eagles, sustainable forest harvests and the rescue of prized lobster fisheries. So how can modern conservation strategies also have wrought such failures, from the catastrophic loss of Guatemalan forests to the economy-crippling Klamath River salmon kill in 2006?

In this week's special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (online), Indiana University political scientist Elinor Ostrom and colleagues argue that while many basic conservation strategies are sound, their use is often flawed. The strategies are applied too generally, they say, as an inflexible, regulatory "blueprint" that foolishly ignores local customs, economics and politics.

"We now ridicule the doctors who long ago used to tell us, 'Take two aspirin and call me in the morning' as a treatment for every single illness," said Ostrom, a member of the National Academy of Sciences. "Resource management is just as complex as the human body. It needs to be approached differently in different situations."

In her own contribution, Ostrom proposes a flexible "framework" for determining what factors will influence resource management, whether that resource is forest, fish... even air. Ostrom edited the special issue with Arizona State University's Macro Janssen and John Anderies.

"What we are learning is that you shouldn't ignore what's going on at the local level," Ostrom said. "It may even be beneficial to work with local people, including the resource exploiters, to create effective regulation."

Modern conservation theory relies on well established mathematical models that predict what will happen to a species or habitat over time. One thing these models can't account for are the unpredictable behavior of human beings whose lives influence and are influenced by conservation efforts.

The framework is divided into tiers that allow conservationists and policymakers to delineate those factors most likely to affect the protection or management of a given resource.

The first tier imposes four broad variables: the resource system, the resource units, the governance system and the resource users. The second tier examines each of these variables in greater detail, such as the government and non-government entities that may already be regulating the resource, the innate productivity of a resource system, the size and placement of the system, the system's economic value and what sorts of people use the resource -- from indigenous people to heads of state. The third tier digs even deeper into each of the basic variables.

"I admit it's ambitious," Ostrom said. "It lays out a research program for the next 15-20 years."

Applying Ostrom's framework, policymakers are encouraged first to examine the behaviors of resource users, then establish incentives for resource users to aid a conservation strategy or, at least, not interfere with it.

Ostrom's framework could also serve to normalize the effects of political upheavals that occur regularly at both national and state/provincial levels. It also accommodates non-political changes that may come with economic development and environmental change. In short, the framework's flexibility would allow the resource managers to modify a plan without scrapping the plan entirely.

"Government is short-term," said former Indiana State Forester Burnell Fischer, now a clinical professor at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs. "Governors come and go, appointing new staff and creating new policies for state resource management. We never had much time to study problems, so with regard to sorting out problems, we usually go for some kind of short term analysis or just make a decision based on local experience."

Ostrom is the co-director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at IU Bloomington. She and special issue co-editors Janssen and Anderies are also affiliated with the Arizona State University School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

Ostrom's research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation.

Emilio F. Moran Awarded Distinguished Professorship

Emilio Moran

As an anthropologist, Emilio Moran has always been concerned with how people and the environment interact in complex and sometimes unanticipated ways. His more than 30 years of scholarly study of that interaction have put him at the forefront of a new interdisciplinary field: environmental anthropology. "When we think of pioneers in ecological/environmental anthropology, Dr. Moran is certainly one of them," says Robert E. Rhoades, Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. "He is addressing some of the most challenging theoretical issues that anthropology needs to address and is doing so with great rigor."

Moran's extensive work in the area of global environmental change has brought him international recognition. While studying Amazonian populations and land use in Brazil, his work with local communities led him to focus on the social causes of tropical deforestation. His research on the changing ecosystems of Amazonia has become a model for interdisciplinary collaboration, helping bridge the gap between the social and biophysical sciences. "Indeed, in many ways he has been instrumental in not only defining and expanding our contemporary understanding of what ecological anthropology is, and should be, but also in setting standards for large-scale, integrative social science," says Jeanne Sept, vice provost for academic affairs and dean of the faculties at IU Bloomington.

Moran is one of only a few anthropologists worldwide who have addressed the importance of the human dimensions of global environmental change. His research into the human causes and consequences of environmental change ultimately debunked some long-standing myths about human interaction with the environment, such as the idea that the soils of the humid tropics are uniformly poor or that human population growth drives deforestation. He is also widely recognized as one of the first social scientists to integrate the use of satellite remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) into anthropological research. His use of remote sensing and GIS to help map changes over time in land-use practices added new technologies to traditional research methodologies, providing new insight into the dynamics of human-environment interaction.

Moran's ability to obtain funding for his work is unmatched among his peers. In the past 15 years at IU, his research has received more than $18 million in external grant funding-an extraordinary figure for a social scientist. His research has been supported by most major grant agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Social Science Research Council. His publication record reflects his remarkable productivity, with seven books and monographs, 12 edited and co-edited volumes, and 144 research articles to his credit. He has also served on the editorial boards of 16 national and international journals and presses.

Moran has received numerous awards and honors. In 1985, he was elected as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989, and in 1999 was elected as a Linnean Society of London Fellow. Most recently, in 2002, he received the prestigious Robert McC. Netting Award from the American Association of Geographers in recognition of his work to bridge geography and anthropology. He is also a Fellow of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology.

Despite the demands of his intense research agenda, Moran has remained committed to educating the scholars of the future. He has established two internationally recognized research centers on the IU Bloomington campus, both of which he directs: the Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change (ACT) and the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC). The centers, which are funded through external grants, serve as training grounds for young researchers studying global environmental change.

"Emilio Moran is more than an outstanding scholar. He is an institution builder and educational leader," says Gary D. Libecap, Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Corporate Environmental Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "In a time of concern about global environmental change, he is bringing new insights and approaches for our understanding of the processes involved, the adaptations required, and ways in which societies can mitigate harmful effects." His colleagues who formed the committee nominating him for distinguished rank summed up his talents: ". . . it is his ability to successfully blend analytical constructs across spatial science, population studies, ecological and environmental studies, as well as anthropological perspectives and empiricism that makes his contributions to knowledge so profound and important."

Ostrom and Nagendra Receive Cozzarelli Prize

Elinor Ostrom and Harini Nagendra, research associates of the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC) at Indiana University Bloomington, have been awarded the Cozzarelli Prize from the Editorial Board of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) for their December 2006 article "Insights on linking forests, trees, and people from the air, on the ground, and in the laboratory." The Cozzarelli Prize is an annual award that recognizes recently published PNAS papers of outstanding scientific excellence and originality. The award is named for PNAS's late Editor-in-Chief Nick Cozzarelli, whose "motto was 'Blast ahead,' as he encouraged researchers to push the envelope of discovery."

The article provides an overview of findings from a long-term interdisciplinary, multiscale, international research program that analyzes the institutional factors affecting forests managed under a variety of tenure arrangements. The program analyzes satellite images, conducts social-ecological measurements on the ground, and tests the impact of structural variables on human decisions in experimental laboratories. Evidence from all three research methods challenges the presumption that a single governance arrangement will control overharvesting in all settings.

Dr. Ostrom is co-director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University and founding director of the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University.

Dr. Nagendra is the Asia research coordinator for CIPEC and adjunct fellow with Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment in Bangalore, India. CIPEC staff Joanna Broderick, editor, and Sean Sweeney, remote sensing specialist, aided in the technical aspects of creating the article. The majority of funding during the many years of research that provided the data for this article and more recent support for writing the article came from the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and a Branco Weiss Fellowship. See http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/potn-pa2022007.php for information about all 2006 Cozzarelli Prizes. Links to articles require subscription to PNAS.

National Science Foundation Awards Grant to CIPEC, January 2007-December 2009

CIPEC started a new three-year project to examine the process of reforestation in Indiana (USA) and the state of São Paolo (Brazil) in January 2007. This project, awarded by the NSF Human and Social Dynamics competition, will address how the interactions between actors at different levels (local, state, federal) contribute to changes in land-use decision making that result in forest restoration and protection.

Both Indiana and São Paulo share a long history of settlement from the early 19th century that included rapid deforestation trajectories followed by rural-to-urban migration processes. Forest cover in both states has increased since the time of peak deforestation, albeit more dramatically in Indiana than São Paulo thus far. Major differences exist in the rates and timing of deforestation and restoration within and between the two states. These differences depend on the legal contexts of land tenure and creation of conservation areas and easements, and on the role of various actors in the process of conservation and restoration.

Research has examined factors contributing to deforestation across a number of ecosystem types. This project will examine the neglected question of what factors contribute to a decline in the rate of deforestation and what dynamic feedbacks and forces eventually lead to a process of reforestation. Forest Transition Theory suggests that shifts in civil society and government regulations make the transition from deforestation to reforestation possible. We will expand this theory to determine how the dynamics of deforestation and reforestation changes are affected by both local-level stakeholders and state and federal agents of change. Agent-based models of land-cover change will be developed that incorporate complex forest dynamics and actors at multiple management levels.

The project will contribute to an understanding of how regions transition from being dominated by deforestation to reforestation and restoration. It will also contribute to the methodological development of agent-based models of land-use change coupled with complex models of forest dynamics in two types of ecosystems.

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) Awards Collaborative Research Grant to CIPEC

This four-year research project is an expansion of a study undertaken in 2002-2003 with CIPEC and IAI funding. The new project will compare and evaluate coffee farmers' adaptations to market shocks and climate change processes in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Part of the research will explore the impacts of local and national initiatives to improve incomes from coffee, as well as the roles of NGOs. Catherine Tucker of CIPEC will work with co-investigators Edwin Castellanos (Universidad del Valle de Guatemala), and Hallie Eakin (University of California at Santa Barbara).

The initial stage of research in Honduras was carried out in 2006 by Catherine Tucker and a multidisciplinary team of graduate students and Honduran scientists. The Honduran coffee institute (IHCAFE) has provided logistical support; it appears likely that a collaborative arrangement will be arranged for the next three years of the project. Given the importance of coffee for the national economy, the project has generated broad interest among coffee-growing organizations and the media in Honduras. During the fieldwork, Tucker was interviewed for a radio program that discusses current events and issues. The program was broadcast throughout western Honduras. "La Prensa," one of Honduras' largest newspapers, then interviewed M. Moreno, a Honduran scientist involved in the project. She has also been asked to write an article for the paper. Study results are expected to reveal the types of adaptations and program initiatives that prove most effective for coffee farmers under current volatile market and climate conditions.

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Last Updated: 14 June 2009
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