This article presents a framework for analysis of socio-ecological systems (SESs). The framework is used to identify 10 subsystem variables that affect the likelihood of self-organization in efforts to achieve a sustainable SES. It helps predict how communities will behave in relation to natural resource management, not for how conservation affects human welfare. Ostrom questions the commonly accepted notion that people will not self-organize to protect natural resources and that governments must impose sanctions in order to prevent ecological destruction. Garrett Hardin famously laid out this theory in the Tragedy of the Commons. Olstrom argues that there is empirical evidence against this theory, but social scientists and natural scientists lack a common framework with which to analyze the issue. Though it is tempting to simplify systems in order to more quickly understand them, gaining a thorough understanding of each system’s unique complexity is critical to understanding how users in the system will protect or exploit natural resources.