Common Pool Resources (CPR) are featured with the aspects of ‘rivalness’ or subtractability and excludability where, the extent of one person’s use of the resource diminishes the resources benefits for other users, and where the exclusion of a user from using the resource is difficult to achieve respectively ( Ostrom, Gardner, Walker, & Walker, 2011 ). Pasture, fisheries, forests, and irrigation systems are common examples of such resources. The difficulty in excluding users, and their ability to decline there benefits when used, makes such resources susceptible to dilapidation often referred to as the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ ( Schelhas & Molnar, 2012 ). Excludability poses a challenge for an individual to invest in CPR because others will share the returns and benefit even if they did not share the cost. Continuous use of CPR by individuals and their failure to contribute to CPR management leads to degradation of CPR’s quality. Classic examples of tragedies affecting CPR include the depletion of local and regional fisheries, and destruction of the tropical forests.
To counter such activities, CPR scholars have focused their attention to understand the nature and dilemma of CPR, and conditions under which all stakeholders can jointly management of CPR successful, hence the subject Sustainable Development of Common-Pool Resources ( Ostrom, et al., 2011 ). Dr. Elinor Ostrom, 2009 Nobel Prize winner and a famous scholar on CPR management contributed through coming up with research programs and centers and researched on how local communities around the world have devised institutions to management CPR’s ( Ostrom, 2014 ). The objective of the paper focuses on the value of CPR to society, measures the society should take to increase their value and a specific discussion on the value of wildlife and a comparison to human-oriented consideration.
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The value of wildlife broadly been ignored and under-rated for a long time, the international community has considered wildlife limited to aspects such as aestheticism and for tourist attraction only. Failure of the international community to recognize the general economic significance of wildlife through consumptive uses—as a food source for their great potential in nutritional values, and non-consumptive uses where they are studied, watched and recorded without killing them. Society may view wildlife in their adversarial way in that; they may view wildlife as predators to their livestock, crops, or even make human beings a casualty themselves. In addition, underdeveloped countries still view wildlife industry as an informal sector, which is not registered, neither described nor known in many ways, inability to recognize wildlife as educational, aesthetic, ethical, and aesthetic in nature, thus; limiting economic rationale of wildlife ( Chardonnet, Clers, Fischer, Gerhold, Jori, & Lamarque, 2012 ).
Consequently, in order to increase the value of wildlife, the global society should change the perspective of viewing wildlife. Wildlife should be considered in terms of their production and occupy the sense and relevance that domestic animals are viewed. There should be global recognition to the importance of wildlife and increased community-based participation on natural resources management programs to sensitize on the significance of wildlife. The economic importance of wildlife should be analyzed as income generating industry that contributes to the world’s GNP amounting to billions of United States dollars ( Chardonnet, et al., 2012 ). Additionally, Programs should be put in place, documented so that the expenditure of individuals who participate in wildlife-associated recreation estimated. Such economic perspective will assign value to wildlife so that policy makers, government and corporate bodies to continually push for the agenda. Lastly, nutritional, ecological, educational, and aesthetic values that wildlife brings to human kind should be cherished, rather than feared as potential harmful predators and pests.
In my Opinion wildlife/ animals have been given too much attention, animal right movement are purporting that there is minimal difference between humans and animals, only that humans are more intelligent than animals ( Thorndike, 2017 ). Conservatives have agreed that biological diversity is valuable and extinction of species should be avoided as much as possible hence putting too much concern on wildlife.
In the wake of increasing human population and the pressure related to non-human species such as wildlife, conventional efforts should ensure a balance between conserving nature while considering human needs. Developing countries however, have populations that depend on extraction of natural resources; as a result, conservatives may argue that instrumental value should be attached to certain species. The question of whether intrinsic value can be attached to human beings or wildlife is very controversial, theories whether non- human have value independent of humans has been long criticized by environmental pragmatists ( Thorndike, 2017 ). An ideal situation would require an appropriate human relationship towards the rest of the natural environment including wildlife. A coexisting environment should be the driving force for attaching value to wildlife, at the end of the day; humans deserve to live same as wildlife.
Conclusively, resources such as forests, fisheries, irrigations stems, rivers, lakes, grazing areas offer some common pool of resources that are vital for human survival, devising ways to ensure that there is a sustainable use so that human kind is not affected. As earlier mentioned, the difficulty in excluding users, and their ability to decline there benefits when used, makes such resources susceptible to dilapidation. Huge amounts of investments should be channeled towards CPR, the ever-increasing use of these natural resources for economic development has brought up a heated debate on common property resources management and has since gained ground since Hardin’s concern of ‘tragedy of commons’ in 1968 ( Thorndike, E. (2017 ). For efficient management of CPR’s a system of co-management, that should involve institutions of administration collaborating will institutions to ensure that natural resources are optimally and sustainably managed.
References
Chardonnet, P., Clers, B. D., Fischer, J., Gerhold, R., Jori, F., & Lamarque, F. (2012). The value of wildlife. Revue scientifique et technique-Office international des épizooties , 21 (1), 15-52.
Ostrom, E. (2014). Sustainable development of common-pool resources. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development .
Ostrom, E., Gardner, R., Walker, J., & Walker, J. (2011). Rules, games, and common-pool resources . University of Michigan Press.
Schelhas, J., & Molnar, J. (2012). A Common-Pool Resource Approach to Forest Health: The Case of the Southern Pine Beetle. In Sustainable Forest Management-Current Research . InTech.
Thorndike, E. (2017). Animal intelligence: Experimental studies . Routledge.
