Common-pool resources
Common-pool resources are material resource (or a collection/pools of) that are not in the public domain nor privately owned, but accessible by a network/community under certain conditions. The concept is mainly applied to consumables. Examples: a forest, irrigation system, fishing grounds.
The following is remixed from Wikipedia|Commun-pool resources.
Common property systems
A common property rights regime system is a particular social arrangement regulating the preservation, maintenance, and consumption of a common-pool resource. Resource systems like pastoral areas, fishing grounds, forest areas are storage variables. Under favorable conditions, they can maximize the flow without harming the total storage volume and the entire resource system. Different from the resource system, the resource unit is the amount that an individual occupies or uses from the resource system, such as the total amount of fish caught in a fishing ground, the amount of feed consumed by livestock in pastoral areas. A resource system allows multiple people or enterprise to produce at the same time, and the process of using common-pool resources can be performed simultaneously by multiple occupants. However, the resource unit cannot be used by multiple people or enterprises at the same time.
To make use of existing laws, common-pool resources may be owned by national, regional or local governments as public goods, by communal groups as common property resources, or by private individuals or corporations as private goods. A new proposal of the management of CPR is to develop autonomous organizations that are not completely privatized and controlled by government power, which led and supervised by the community to manage common-pool resources in addition to directly through the government and the free market. In general, there are four variables that are very important for local common-pool resource management: (1) characteristics of the resource; (2) characteristics of the resource-dependent group; (3) institutional model of resource management; (4) the relationship between groups, external forces, and authorities.The government, market and interest groups are all considered as external forces that have an impact on CPR management system. The community is responsible for supervising and administering CPR under an autonomous management system, the characteristics of a community can affect how CPR is managed.[7] (1) the size of the community. The level of cooperation decreases as the number of community members grows; (2) Allocation mechanism for CPR. Encouraging the exploitation of the least used resources and reducing the exploitation of the most used resources will effectively increase the rate of resource supply and reduce the rate of resource consumption and individual demand. (3) Group identity. When people in a community have a strong sense of group identity, it helps to manage CPR within the community.
Protocols
Common pool resources face problems of congestion or overuse, because they are subtractable, rivalrous. Structurally, it consists of a core resource (e.g. water or fish), which defines the stock variable, while providing a limited quantity of extractable fringe units, which defines the flow variable. While the core resource is to be protected or nurtured in order to allow for its continuous exploitation, the fringe units can be harvested or consumed. Thus, they are not open access resources. Having observed a number of common pool resources throughout the world, Elinor Ostrom noticed that a number of them are governed by common property protocols — arrangements different from private property or state administration — based on self-management by a local community. Her observations contradict claims that common-pool resources must be privatized or else face destruction in the long run due to collective action problems leading to the overuse of the core resource (see Tragedy of the commons).
Management (in traditional terms) or stewarding (in OVN terms) is required for the stock variable to continually regenerate the fringe variable, as long as the stock variable is not compromised, providing an optimum amount of consumption. However, consumption exceeding the fringe value reduces the stock variable, which in turn decreases the flow variable. If the stock variable is allowed to regenerate then the fringe and flow variables may also recover to initial levels, but in many cases the loss is irreparable.
Distinctions
The difference between pools of shareables and common-pool resources is that the former is a collection of material resources under various property regimes shared across a network/community, using rules that are specific to every item, or to every category of items, depending on their respecting property regime. For example, someone can put a personal drill in a pools of shareables, i.e. make it available for use by others while maintaining ownership, for a limited duration, under specific terms of access/use that are decided by the owner. Resources in a common-pool resources are not owned by individuals in the traditional sense and are governed by a generic set of rules that apply to all items, with specific rules that relate to the properties of items. For example, the rule can say that everyone has access under certain conditions, but for costly equipment for example, one needs to present credentials that pertain to safe and secure use, or one needs to contribute to maintenance.
See also commons and Nondominium