Elinor Ostrom did gain her Nobel for asking that very interesting question - if the Tragedy of the Commons is inevitable then how come we have commons that have survived? In the absence of Hardin’s only two solutions, capitalist ownership or socialist regulation that is?

The answer being that sometimes - time and place dependent - social pressure and mutual agreement can do the job.

Every Thursday at noon, outside the west door of Valencia’s cathedral, nine black-cloaked figures – one wearing a banded cap and with a ceremonial harpoon by their side – gather for their weekly meeting, as they have done for hundreds of years. This is the Tribunal de les Aigües (Tribunal of Waters) – a water court that may be the oldest institution of justice in Europe.

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The tribunal was of special interest to Elinor Ostrom, winner of the Nobel prize for economics in 2009, who considered it an ideal example of “the commons”, where communities around the world have devised rules for sustainably sharing and managing their scarce resources, from waterways to fisheries to forests. It is a direct counter to the mistaken idea of the “tragedy of the commons”: the belief that, left to our own devices, self-interest will necessarily drive us towards overusing shared resources. Examples like Valencia, as well as the water boards (waterschappen) in the Netherlands that manage canals and Bali’s subak system that has functioned to share water among rice farmers for the last millennium, reveal this to be a myth.

Ostrom’s question - the difficult part always being asking the interesting question - shows that this answer will work. Sometimes. 11 old farmers sitting outside a cathedral will work on a small and tightly knit community of farmers. Who’s cleared their section of irrigation canal, who is taking more than their fair share of water etc. But, time and place dependent:

Valencia’s water court may even hold lessons for the parched countries of the Middle East. More than a decade ago, leading Palestinian hydrologist Abdelrahman Al Tamimi suggested they should “import and adapt the model of the Tribunal of Waters … not only to resolve conflicts between farmers, but to reduce tensions between Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians”. Without such mechanisms, he believed, there was little chance of developing the grassroots trust and dialogue to manage water scarcity effectively. “We can fight for water or cooperate for it – it depends on us,” said Tamimi. “The first step is to trust each other.” The current conflict has only heightened the need for long-term water collaboration.

The entire Jordan watershed is not, quite famously, the sort of tight knit community which can be ruled and judged by 11 old farmers. The social pressure simply isn’t there. Thus we are back to Hardin’s two possible solutions.

The very absence of the necessary community tells us that the community solution will not work. QED.

Of course, it’s possible to wonder why anyone bothers reading social science research if they’re not willing to understand the answers given in social science research.

Tim Worstall