- Resource System
- Rainforest ecosystem and associated watershed
- Resource Units
- Floral and faunal resources
Historically the Huaorani Indian society encompassed an area of 20,000 km2 in the Ecuadorian Amazonian region bordered on the north by the Napo River and the south by the Curaray River. The case study involves a historical time period predating first contact with outsiders in 1958 and catalogues an action situation involving an unknown number of individuals organized in small groupings of one to two extended families with a seminomadic movement pattern of cyclical relocation to certain areas every three to four months. These family units depended on domestic crops, gathered wild fruits, nuts and tubers, as well as hunted game and fish. Forest resources are both stationary and transient in nature.
The original case study author focused on the Huaorani’s common property regime and institutional performance. The case study has subsequently been used in comparative analyses regarding Ostrom's Design Principles (see bibliography).
Brady U, Arizona State University.
. 2001. The Common Property Regime of the Huaorani Indians of Ecuador: Implications and Challenges to Conservation. Human Ecology. 29(4):425-447.
. 2010. A Review of Design Principles for Community-based Natural Resource Management. Ecology and Society. 15(4):38.
. 2016. Explaining success and failure in the commons: the configural nature of Ostrom’s institutional design principles. International Journal of the Commons. 10(2):417–439.