Paper in Ecological Modelling
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Our paper Simple Movement Rules result in Ideal Free Distribution of Mobile Pastoralists has been published online first in the journal Ecological Modelling. The paper is available through the journal website. Here is the abstract:
While open access to common-pool resources has been equated with a tragedy of the commons, we have found that mobile pastoralists in the Logone Floodplain in Cameroon are sustainably managing open access to common-pool grazing resources. We have described this pastoral system as a self-organizing complex adaptive system (CAS) in which mobile pastoralists distribute themselves over common-pool grazing resources without central or collective decision-making. We have found evidence of management of open access in the form of an ideal free distribution (IFD). Here we discuss the results of an agent-based model (ABM) simulation and show how pastoralists are able to achieve an IFD with relatively simple movement rules. We describe this system as an Emergent Commons (EC).