Interview with Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom  “We can’t just sit
around waiting for the global solution,” says Dr. Elinor Ostrom
regarding climate change. “There is a lot that can be done at a
household level, at a community level, at a regional level.”
Ostrom, professor at the University of Indiana in Bloomington
and the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economic
Sciences (2009), opposes the pessimistic argument that assumes
that human beings have become a plague on the planet, condemned
to exhaust the resources that provide their support, and that
the only possible way to stop environmental devastation is
through privatization or autocratic regulations. According to
Ostrom, there is a third way to reach a solution, which is the
creation of cooperative institutions organized and governed by
the same citizens that need to utilize these common resources
and that would commit to do it in a sustainable manner,
respecting their recovery time.  “Having studied a lot of farmer
managed irrigation systems, I’