Exploring human-nature interaction on the coastal floodplain in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta through the lens of Ostrom’s social-ecological systems framework

Abstract This study diagnoses temporal and spatial variations in the performance of different social-ecological systems (SES) in coastal floodplain management in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta. We go beyond common pool resource management problems and address the management of local public goods. In the assessment, we consider recent developments in the framework initially developed by Elinor Ostrom. The main variables of the framework that we use are resource systems, the environment, the governance system and actors. The focal SES is defined based on guiding questions relating to the definition of the key problem, system boundaries, and action situations. According to our results, the performance of resource systems and the environment deteriorated in 1960–79 compared to the performance prior to 1960. The condition…