Conference: Who controls natural resources?

PORTLAND – Whether it’s forests, fish, game or the air we breathe, natural resources are controlled by everyone and no one.

The quandary, described as “the tragedy of the commons” by environmentalist Garrett Hardin in 1968, describes how a public resource is abused |as each individual uses what he needs without thought for his impact on the whole.

Industry and government leaders must find solutions to this problem as they tackle long-term planning for Maine’s natural resources next Monday at a forum called the Blaine House Conference on Natural Resource-Based Industries.

On Friday, a panel of scholars from colleges and universities statewide gathered at the University of Maine School of Law to start the process with a discussion of the big picture: Strategies Maine might use to protect and manage its common resources.

“There is no one-size-fits-all remedy to the tragedies that affect these resources,” John Duff, director of the Maine Law Institute said by way of introduction Friday.

Privatization of public resources is often promoted as the perfect solution. But all six panelists said Friday that for all its imperfections, resource sharing is often better than cutting off access.

“You don’t want to enclose large areas if you don’t need to. You don’t want to enclose large oceans if you don’t need to,” said Tom Tietenberg, a professor of economics at Colby College in Waterville.

Americans are particularly protective of their rights to public resources. Our nation was founded as a rejection of the old world system in which a king or a baron laid claim to all the forests and fields, said James Acheson, professor of anthropology and marine sciences at the University of Maine in Orono.

Historically, Americans have accepted constraints only when a resource becomes so degraded there is no other solution, such as the strict pollution legislation approved in the 1970s, and the groundfishing regulations debated earlier this week by the New England Fisheries Management Council.

Maine’s lobster industry reached a low point decades ago, and is only now finding solutions in a successful community management program, according to Acheson.

Unless the people who have to sacrifice for the resource regulations stand to benefit from the results, a resource management program will struggle, Acheson said, comparing the self-regulating lobster program with federal clean-air laws that need constant enforcement.

“If you violate the lobster conservation laws, you don’t just have to deal with the warden, you have to deal with your neighbors,” he said,

Disputes arise in the best of management schemes, however, because it is almost impossible to ensure both fairness and economic success with natural resource regimes. As the current dispute over the number of days a fisherman should be allowed to work the sea illustrates, parceling out access to a communal resource is a tricky proposition.

In Alaska, fishermen have gotten into fistfights over the allocation of permits – a process that Tietenberg called “political dynamite.”

Whether by cooperation or coercion, compromises are inevitable, said Guillermo “Ta” Herrera, an assistant professor of economics at Bowdoin College in Brunswick.

“They don’t have to be pretty, but they have to work,” he said.

And without law enforcement, even a well-designed solution can be worse than the problem, he said.

Permits can end up concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy or influential users – precisely what many small-boat fishermen complain is happening in the Atlantic, resulting in a negative impact on a community’s culture, if not its economy, said Tietenberg.

And a natural resources management scheme must balance the cultural concerns with biological realities, said Jim Wilson, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Maine in Orono.

Wilson said natural resource managers often overestimate their own understanding of the natural world, and science alone – without the knowledge of the people who live with, and use, the resource – can’t keep up.

“We have to keep learning because the system is always changing and doing nasty things,” he said, citing the groundfish example.

Today, the public, frustrated with decades of the erosion of individual access, is driving efforts to protect public property. David Vail, a professor of economics at Bowdoin, cited Maine’s infatuation with conservation easements, and the successful efforts of snowmobilers to protect their trails.

Maine needs to develop a “master plan” for providing this sort of public access to all of the natural resources that support the state’s economy, he said, noting that next week’s conference will provide such an opportunity.

The conference will begin at 8:30 a.m. at the Civic Center in Augusta and is open to the public. For more information, visit the governor’s Web site at http://www.maine./gov/governor/baldacci/news/events.