Graduate students affiliated with the Center for Behavior, Institutions, and the Environment (CBIE) organized an interdisciplinary panel at the 16th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) to present follow-up work to the graduate student workshop “Breaking the Code: Synthesizing Coding Efforts for SES Research“.

The conference took place in July 2017 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Collaborators included CBIE affiliated graduate students Ute Brady, Elicia Ratajczyk, Sechindra Vallury, Cathy Rubiños, Mady Tyson, Hoon Shin, Skaidra Smith-Heisters, and former ASU post-doc Michael Bernstein, as well as other emerging social and natural science scholars from various U.S., Canadian, and European universities.

Panel presentations outlined issues such as defining success in resource management (success for what and for whom?); dialogues between coding variables and frameworks in case studies of Common-pool Resources; the lack of inclusion of variables deemed to be important for SES analysis in resource database; and overcoming barriers for ‘commons’ scholars to share their data and research findings in a more consistent and easily accessible manner. The panel presentation also included suggestions as to how some of the identified problems related to SES governance may be addressed.

The ASU-CBIE team presented their work on the incorporation of coding variables into the structure of the Robustness Framework, which is now publicly accessible at a Wikisite that functions both as a portal for scholars interested in learning about common pool resource (CPR) methodologies and a forum for feedback on these variables. In doing so, the team aims to advance a common set of variables for SES analysis to foster better cross-comparisons of case studies involving natural resources and biodiversity preservation efforts.

The panel presentation was well attended and generated many interesting discussions with the potential for future collaborations. The team’s research efforts will certainly expand beyond their successful presentation at the IASC.