Together with Lance Robinson, Ryan Unks, Chelsea Hunter, Gunnar Dressler, and Jürgen Groeneveld, we organized a four-day virtual workshop on Synthesizing Research on Pastoral Governance of Common-Pool Resources hosted by SESYNC. Because of the pandemic, we could not meet in person - I Zoomed in from my basement - but hopefully in the future we may be able to synthesize in Annapolis. 

The goal of the workshop was to synthesize research on pastoral governance of common-pool resources, i.e., to describe and explain the diversity, dynamics, and sustainability of pastoralists’ property regimes. We are using an iterative, recursive, and abductive approach in which we go back and forth between concepts from theoretical models, comparative analysis of empirical case studies, historical analysis of empirical cases, simulations with agent-based modeling, and questions and concerns from policy-makers and practitioners. The starting point for the workshop was the idea that conventional models of the commons do not match well most pastoral systems and that we need to develop an alternative model.