Will central government decide or cooperation in the region?

There are calls from various sides for more control over spatial planning. The national government must then determine more where housing and forests will be built. And decisions about a data center with consequences for the power supply should not be left to a city council, it is heard. The need for area processes, as a kind of new land use plan, is therefore pointed out everywhere.

This raises the question of why the central government should play such a major role in this. Can the residents of an area not be able to achieve good management of space and the environment themselves? To answer that question, the publications of Elinor Ostrom, the first female winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, are still relevant. Ostrom was not trained as an economist, but studied political science. She worked from Iowa in that quintessential American tradition that wonders why you actually need a government, people might also be able to do it themselves. To this end, she conducted many studies with peoples who do not have a strong government and who manage their common natural resources themselves through social rules.

Eight design principles about joint management
Ultimately, she formulated eight design principles, which are still useful when you think about joint management, such as with cooperatives or the old market grounds. Some are obvious, such as the need to have a clear picture of what you actually want to manage together and the need for joint decision-making processes in which all stakeholders can participate. That decision-making must then provide rules that prevent some people from misusing the common property. For example, by catching more fish or using water than they are entitled to or by using more emission space than is allowed. 

I once came across a good example during a walk along Groesbeek: the inhabitants used to make sure that you did not pick blueberries before a certain date. Because if someone starts too early, more go and everyone has semi-ripe berries. Other design principles are from those agreements and the result: rules for monitoring and for resolving conflicts within the community. And of course, such possibilities for self-determination of an area must be recognized by the authorities at a higher level.

No direct interest of residents
Such constructions work well in smaller communities, where people know each other and there is social control. Ostrom proved that in those cases the assumption made by economists is not always correct, that joint ownership quickly leads to overexploitation. 'Lin' Ostrom was also a practical person in this. "A management arrangement that works in practice can also work in theory", was her adage. By coincidence I once had lunch with her at a conference through mutual contact and even then the conversation was not lacking in illustrations from practice.

The collectives of farmers in Dutch nature management are a good example of good communal management that may well serve as a basis for area management. However, recent situations such as on Schiermonnikoog or near the Buytenland van Rhoon also show that it is not so easy for people to jointly exploit the area in such a way that the highest value is created and the environmental limits are not (any longer) exceeded. In addition, for some environmental tasks there is no immediate interest among residents in doing something about it, because the effects only occur elsewhere and much later. It is therefore no wonder that there is quickly a call for control of space from the government.

Searching for the ideal combination for the region
Nevertheless, there is much to be said for allowing the stakeholders to arrive at an optimal solution at the regional level. After all, those stakeholders will have to take it further in the future. They also have far more knowledge of the area and the future plans of individual farmers than a remote central government could ever have. The search is therefore for an ideal combination of central and decentralized. It takes two to tango, the Americans say, both parties are necessary and responsible. But that dance is difficult and how it can best be performed is not yet so clear. Perhaps the area processes will yield new design principles in the coming years.

Krijn J. Poppe

Krijn Poppe worked for almost 40 years as an economist at LEI and Wageningen UR and now holds a number of advisory and management positions. For Boerenbusiness he dives into his bookcase and discusses current developments on the basis of studies that have become classic.

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