Governing the commons on an Aegean island: The management of water resources on Sifnos, Greece

This chapter showcases a little-known example of a locally devised system of equitable and sustainable access to scarce water resources in Poulati, an area in the Cycladic island of Sifnos, Greece. The system was established in the Byzantine era, was allowed to persist under the Venetians (1207-1617) and the Ottomans (1617-1821), and is still practised today, albeit under threat from the growth of tourism. The system consists in a set of rules, formal and informal, rationing local farmers’ access to water, regardless of the location of springs and cisterns, which often lie within the boundaries of private plots of land. The chapter, drawing on fieldwork, traces the past and present of the Poulati system, describes its workings, assesses its performance in the light of Elinor Ostrom’s “design principles of long-surviving, self-organized resource regimes”, and concludes with a reflection on threats to the system’s survival in a rapidly changing context.