Common asset trusts to effectively steward natural capital and ecosystem services at multiple scales

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111801 Get rights and content

Highlights

Integrated private and common property regimes are needed to manage natural capital (NC).

Common Asset Trusts (CATs) are effective institutions for integrated NC stewardship.

Effective CATs are based on Ostrom's 8 core design principle for commons management.

We describe existing CATs and propose a national CAT for Costa Rica.

CATs can facilitate public/private partnerships (PPPs) to invest in natural capital.

Abstract

Ecosystems (natural capital) produce a range of benefits to humans. Natural capital is best thought of as common property since many of the ecosystem services it helps produce are non-rival and/or non-excludable. Private property regimes and markets alone are ineffective and inappropriate institutions to manage them sustainably. These systems can be better managed as commons, using more nuanced private and community property rights and Common Asset Trusts (CATs), with legal precedent in the Public Trust Doctrine. Effective CATs embody a generalized version of Elinore Ostrom's eight core design principles for sustainable commons management: (1) shared identity and purpose; (2) equitable distribution of contributions and benefits; (3) fair and inclusive decision-making; (4) monitoring agreed behaviours; (5) graduated responses; (6) fast and fair conflict resolution; (7) authority to self-govern; and (8) collaborative relations with other groups and spatial scales. Here, we describe a few existing and proposed systems that approximate effective CATs. We also suggest how Costa Rica can transform its existing payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme into a national CAT. Finally, we describe how CATs can facilitate more fair and effective public/private partnerships (PPPs) to invest in natural capital and ecosystem services.

Section snippets

Property rights regimes

Society's most pressing challenge today is to create a sustainable and desirable future. How we manage our private and collective resources will determine the quality of the world that future generations inherit. Conventional economic markets are relatively efficient at managing simple (rival, scarce, and easily excludable) goods and services (Fig. 1), where markets determine the price such that the marginal cost of producing a good equals its marginal benefit.1

Common Asset Trusts (CATs)

Trusts are widely used and well-developed legal mechanisms designed to protect and manage assets on behalf of specific beneficiaries. Extending this idea to the management and protection of natural capital, such as the atmosphere, oceans, and ecosystems more broadly, is a straightforward extension of this idea. Common Asset Trusts (CATs) are based on the integration of the public trust doctrine and community property rights as described above. In essence a CAT is a collection of agreements and

Costa Rican NCAT: investing in natural capital stewardship

The 24 year old Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme of Costa Rica has become its flagship conservation program and has inspired the creation of similar schemes in many parts of the world (Salzman et al., 2018). Considering the experience and success of this PES scheme, we believe it is time for Costa Rica to again take the leadership in proposing innovative ideas for natural capital management, by redesigning this program to reflect the new national and international context, as well as

Public/private partnerships and CATs

Common property and private property are not mutually exclusive, given the complexity of ecosystems. We need more nuanced and multifaceted property rights regimes to build successful CATs. For example, the existing and proposed PES systems in Costa Rica engage private farmers that are producing public benefits on land with a mixture of property rights regimes. We can think of CATs as an institutional mechanism to manage complex assets that benefit both public and private interests.

A key piece

Conclusions

Common Asset Trusts (CATs) are effective institutional structures for managing and monitoring complex natural capital assets in ways that are consistent with Ostrom's 8 design principles. Versions have been successfully implemented at various scales. We have proposed to expand these applications to better manage natural capital and ecosystem services as common assets and showed how, for example, Costa Rica may again lead the way by implementing a national CAT to manage all of its terrestrial

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.