Ostrom and the Global Commons: Elements of a Theory of Polycentric Global Climate Governance

The recent IPCC Working Group III contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report, dealing with the highly contested large-scale issue of climate change mitigation, is dedicated to Elinor Ostrom, as her work “provided a fundamental contribution to the understanding of collective action, trust, and cooperation in the management of common-pool resources, including the atmosphere” (p. xiii). The paper questions and analyzes the assumed applicability of Ostrom’s theory of (originally) local commons management for the large-scale case of global commons governance. It identifies three pillars of potential relevance for future climate mitigation policies: (1) Ostrom’s general critique of some standard assumptions affecting the overall problem-solution-framing and the corresponding mitigation options, (2) Ostrom’s idea of an evolving polycentric governance order enhancing mutual learning and trust-building on and in between multiple scales, levels and jurisdictions, (3) Ostrom’s locally derived design principles being partly applicable to the challenging organization of global commons governance.