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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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