Herbicide Resistance Management: A Common Pool Resource Problem?

Herbicide resistance is often viewed as a complex problem in need of innovative management solutions. Because of the transboundary mobility of many weeds, resistance to herbicides is also viewed as a community-scale issue. Consequently, the idea of greater coordination among resource users – especially growers – is often promoted as a management approach. Recently, scholars have framed herbicide resistance as a commons problem in need of collective action. Specifically, social scientists have explored the utility of adopting bottom-up community-based approaches to help solve the growing problem of herbicide resistance through a framework for interpreting the commons known as common pool resource theory. This article analyzes how herbicide resistance fits – and fails to fit – within common pool resource theory and offers an updated conceptual framework from which to build future work. We argue that the application of common pool resource theory to herbicide resistance management is underdeveloped and approaches based on this theory have shown little success. The relevance of common pool resource theory for informing herbicide resistance management is less settled than existing scholarship has suggested and other frameworks for approaching transboundary resource problems – such as co-production of knowledge and participatory action research – warrant consideration.