Page 255 - Changing Living Spaces
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11


                  The Neverlake: Water and Land Management
            11
                  in a Dry and Soilless Place: A Micro Case

                  in the Long Run (Classical Karst from
                  the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century)


                  Aleksander Panjek               Gregor Kovačič
                  University of Primorska,        University of Primorska,
                  Slovenia                        Slovenia

                             © 2024 Aleksander Panjek and Gregor Kovačič
                  https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-399-9.253-283



            Presentation of the Research Question and Štanjel
            In recent environmental history, humans are a necessary and decisive fac-
            tor, while nature is an active subject in it. This immediately raises the fun-
            damental question of the environmental and social sustainability of the
            use of natural resources by human communities in the long run. In the
            social sciences, as well as in historiography, the question of whether col-
            lective forms of exploitation can be sustainable has been present at least
            since the publication of Hardin’s article on the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’
            (1968), in which he gave his well-known negative answer. Numerous re-
            searches have attempted to confirm or refute this assumption, includ-
            ing the famous study by Elinor Ostrom (1990), which shows that effec-
            tive and sustainable methods of managing ‘common pool resources’ are
            possible, provided that adequate institutional frameworks are enacted
            among the direct users. Along these lines, Jesper Larsson (2016) has re-
            cently emphasized the importance of mutual control and dispute reso-
            lution among beneficiaries of the commons as important levers for en-
            suring the sustainability of its use. Anthropological studies also refute
            the assertion that peasants would be unable to manage natural resources
            sustainably. James Scott (1998) argues that ‘vernacular knowledge of lo-
            cal ecosystems’, based on practice and experience, can ensure even better
                  Murayama, S., Ž. Lazarević, and A. Panjek, eds. 2024. Changing Living
                  Spaces: Subsistence and Sustenance in Eurasian Economies from Early Modern
                  Times to the Present. Koper: University of Primorska Press.


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