Elinor Ostrom, the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, will give a conference on 22 June at UNESCO (10 am, Room XI) on “Sustainable Social-Ecological Systems: analysis, management and governance”.

Invited to UNESCO by the Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB), Elinor Ostrom will present her work and the cooperation launched between the MAB and the IFRI (International Forestry Resources and Institutions), a research network on forest governance founded by Ostrom in 1992. This cooperation project involves setting up a joint interdisciplinary research program to assess biosphere resources as sustainable social-ecological systems. This conference forms part of the Nobel Prize winner’s visit to France, from 20 to 24 June, during which a tribute will be paid to all her work.

Elinor Ostrom was the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics, which she was awarded together with Oliver Williamson for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons. Through studies of natural resource management, in particular fish stocks and pastures, she demonstrated that common property can be efficiently managed by pools of users. In general, her work presents collective action and auto-organisation as a third path, between privatization and State control.

Elinor Ostrom is a professor of political science at Indiana University (Bloomington, US) where she co-founded with her husband, Vincent Ostrom, the Workshop in Political Theory and Public Policy. She is also Director of the Centre for the Study of Institutional Diversity at Arizona State University.

Source: UNESCOPRESS