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Capacity building for geo-information provision: A public goods perspective
developments in public goods theory can contribute (i) to a new taxonomy of the regional
(and global) GDI resources underlying these application domains, (ii) to a more focused
development of geo-information policy as well as (iii) to a better design of modalities for
their provision through institutional, organisational and individual capacity building.
In Section 2, we review the traditional definition of a public good and summarize recent
critiques to this standard definition, as well as a more relevant (expanded) definition.
We introduce the notions of regional and global public goods and review some new
insights on “aggregation mechanisms” for their supply. In Section 3, we show that GDI
fundamental data and technological resources, seen through the lens of recent
developments in regional (and global) public goods theory, may be considered as
intermediate regional (and global) public goods, albeit with variable publicness in
consumption, in provision and in distribution of benefits. We also highlight recent policy
recommendations to render some of the GDI resources more public in consumption. In
Section 4, we show that local individual, organizational and institutional capacity
building is the only aggregation mechanism for the supply of ‘weakest link’ GDI
institutional, organizational and human resources.
2. An overview of recent developments in public goods theory
Standard economic texts define public and private goods in terms of their position in a
two dimensional continuum, described by the qualities of rivalry and excludability.
Rights of ownership can be clearly attached to private goods. Hence they are excludable;
they can be produced and distributed according to demand. They are also rival in
consumption. One person’s enjoyment of the good may reduce or completely exhaust the
good’s utility for others. Rights of ownership to private goods are transferred through
market transactions against the payment of the good’s market price. Goods that can be
purchased in a supermarket are examples of private goods. See Kaul et al (1999).
Public goods have the opposite properties. They are non-rival in consumption and nonexcludable.
Hence they elicit consumer behaviors that include the temptation for freeriding
- enjoying the benefit for free once the good has been provided by somebody else
- as well as unwillingness from the consumers’ side to reveal their levels of demand.
Public goods suffer from underprovision because markets are unable to supply nonexcludable
goods. They are labeled market failures and are set aside for government
intervention e.g. through tax incentives for businesses or direct government action.
Typical examples of public goods at the national level include public health and defense.
Few goods qualify as purely private or purely public. Many have mixed properties. A
club good for example has non-rival properties but can be excluded through a
membership & fee regime. Private TV broadcasting is a club good. Private and public
goods are closely related to the notion of externality. Externalities are spill-overs of
private or public activities into the public domain.
These basic premises of traditional public goods theory have recently been severely
questioned for their lack of relevance and practicality in today’s globalized world by
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