Content Courtesy: Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA)

Variously described as “Common Pool Resources”, “Common Property Resources”, “Common Lands”, “Open Ground” etc; “Commons” have been an important and inseparable part of humanity. They have been life support systems and have impacted various cultures, traditions, organisations and environments. They are essential for the livelihood requirements of the poor to be met. It is common knowledge that "Commons" are of ecological, social, cultural, religious, sporting and recreational value. Issues related to “Commons” have drawn attention of the academia, practitioners, policy makers, and researchers. It is significant to note that Prof. Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist, won the Nobel Prize this year for her work on the subject.

FES and IRMA jointly announce this case competition in order to encourage and propagate interest among research scholars having focus in this area the case competition is organized as a part of the 13th Biennial Conference of The International Association for the Study of the Commons, “Sustaining Commons: Sustaining Our Future”, to be held at Hyderabad, India, during January 10 – 14, 2011.

Theme: Governance of the Commons

Theme focuses on illustrations of local community initiatives for improved governance and management of natural resources in response to privatization and centralization of government control on natural resources including common lands, forests, grazing lands, rivers, ponds, tanks, lakes etc.

Case should cover the following aspects:

• Context
• Triggers for local community initiative
• Involvement of different stakeholders
• Response of the administrative apparatus
• Enabling or disabling policy initiatives
• Motivation and mechanisms for sustaining the initiative
• Scale up possibilities
• Implications for theory, policy and programmatic action

Who can participate?

This case competition is open to doctoral and post-doctoral research scholar (s) having interest in the theme and registered with any university or institution. The case should be original and should not have been either presented / published or being considered for presentation / publication elsewhere.

Communication related to this case competition should be addressed to casecompetition@irma.ac.in

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