This paper examines the eight design principles, which were first put forward by Elinor Ostrom and are based on her work on stable local common pool resource management. The author asks whether Ostrom’s design principles are sufficient to govern resources on a global level, and if not, what modifications should be applied. The paper notes the challenges of framing issues facing global commons today, such as climate change, and draws an analogy between the risks of emerging technologies and the problems of common pool resources. The paper presents new design principles along with a critical analysis of the challenges of scaling up Ostrom’s design principles from local to global commons. These challenges include:

investing in science in order to understand the resource and its interactions with users
independently monitoring the resource and its utilisation
ensuring stakeholder deliberations and defining the significance of scientific results
integrating scientific analysis with stakeholder deliberation
facilitating participation of lower level actors
engaging a variety of institutional forms in decision-making and planning for institutional adaptation and change.