Press Release

USAID-Funded Researcher Wins Nobel Prize

Elinor Ostrom, a researcher under a USAID-supported Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP), was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics.  Ms. Ostrom, the first woman to win the prize for economics in its 40-year history, received the award on October 12 for her work demonstrating that common property can be successfully managed by communal owners. 

Ms. Ostrom's principal work centers on how communities manage natural resources such as wildlife, grazing lands, and forests. Though the approach in recent decades has been to regulate or limit the use of such resources or privatize them, her research finds that common property is often very well managed by the people who use it.

That concept has proven no truer than in Namibia where the Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) Program represents one of the preeminent conservation efforts in Africa, if not the world.  Namibia is at the forefront of CBNRM practice, serving as an example for other nations and receiving recognition world-wide.

From 1993–2008, the United States Government, through USAID, was proud to support Namibia’s CBNRM program.  Over the 15 years of its participation in the program, USAID provided over $41 million of support through its partners to Namibia, for the development of communal conservancies.  Today almost 60 registered conservancies account for over 13 million hectares of conserved land in Namibia which generate revenues exceeding N$40 million each year for their communities.  Looking back over what has been accomplished, the United States could not be more proud of the progress and positive impact of this initiative. 

Ms. Ostrom shares the $1.4 million Nobel Prize with Oliver Williamson, a professor in the graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. The Nobel committee cited Williamson "for his analysis of economic governance.

Ms. Ostrom received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1965. She is past president of the American Political Science Association, which honored her in 2005 with the James Madison Award; and past president of the International Association for the Study of Common Property. In 2008 she won the William H. Riker Prize in Political Science.

For further information, please contact Acting PAO Emily Plumb at 295-8500, or Information Assistant, Roger Lyners, at 229-801 (ext. 226).