Description
Describes how the communities of Los Angeles' West Basin worked together to solve a collective action problem. The communities shared a groundwater resource for drinking and industrial uses. But the communities found themselves in a pumping race that was overusing the groundwater. The communities found a way to work together and collaborate rather than compete. Elinor Ostrom studied this as a graduate student and later in her book, Governing the Commons.
15 minutes
Keywords
- Los Angeles,
- Elinor Ostrom,
- groundwater,
- Tragedy of the Commons,
- common-pool resource
Disciplines
Publication Date
March 20, 2020
Citation Information
Erik Edward Nordman. "Sustaining the Commons: LA Groundwater" Sustaining the Commons (2020) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/erik_nordman/57/
Creative Commons license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY International License.