Thecommons are thecultural andnatural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit.[1] Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values (social practice) employed for a governance mechanism.[2]Commons can also bedefined as a social practice[3] of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.[4]
The Digital Library of the Commons defines "commons" as "a general term for shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest".[5]
The term "commons" derives from the traditional English legal term forcommon land, which are also known as "commons", and was popularised in the modern sense as a shared resource term by the ecologistGarrett Hardin in an influential 1968 article called "The Tragedy of the Commons". As Frank van Laerhoven andElinor Ostrom have stated; "Prior to the publication of Hardin's article on the tragedy of the commons (1968), titles containing the words 'the commons', 'common pool resources', or 'common property' were very rare in the academic literature."[6]
Some texts[citation needed] make a distinction inusage betweencommon ownership of the commons andcollective ownership among a group of colleagues, such as in a producers' cooperative.[7] The precision of this distinction is not always maintained. Others conflate open access areas with commons; however, open access areas can be used by anybody while the commons has a defined set of users.
The use of "commons" for natural resources has its roots in European intellectual history, where it referred to shared agricultural fields, grazing lands and forests that were, over a period of several hundred years, enclosed, claimed as private property for private use. In European political texts, the common wealth was the totality of the material riches of the world, such as the air, the water, the soil and the seed, all nature's bounty regarded as the inheritance of humanity as a whole, to be shared together. In this context, one may go back further, to the Roman legal categoryres communis, applied to things common to all to be used and enjoyed by everyone, as opposed tores publica, applied to public property managed by the government.[8]
A commons failure theory, now calledtragedy of the commons, originated in the 18th century.[9] In 1833William Forster Lloyd introduced the concept by a hypothetical example of herders overusing a shared parcel of land on which they are each entitled to let their cows graze, to the detriment of all users of the common land.[10] The same concept has been called the "tragedy of the fishers", when over-fishing could cause stocks to plummet.[11] Forster's pamphlet was little known, and it was not until 1968, with the publication by the ecologistGarrett Hardin of the article "The Tragedy of the Commons",[12] that the term gained relevance. Hardin introduced this tragedy as a social dilemma, and aimed at exposing the inevitability of failure that he saw in the commons.
However, Hardin's (1968) argument has been widely criticized,[13] since he is accused of having mistaken the commons, that is, resources held and managed in common by a community, with open access, that is, resources that are open to everyone but where it is difficult to restrict access or to establish rules. In the case of the commons, the community manages and sets the rules of access and use of the resource held in common: the fact of having a commons, then, does not mean that anyone is free to use the resource as they like. Studies by Ostrom and others[14] have shown that managing a resource as a commons often has positive outcomes and avoids the so-called tragedy of the commons, a fact that Hardin overlooked.
It has been said the dissolution of the traditional land commons played a watershed role in landscape development and cooperative land use patterns and property rights.[15] However, as in the British Isles, such changes took place over several centuries as a result of landenclosure.
EconomistPeter Barnes has proposed a 'sky trust' to fix this tragedic problem in worldwide generic commons. He claims that the sky belongs to all the people, and companies do not have a right to over pollute. It is a type of cap and dividend program. Ultimately the goal would be to make polluting excessively more expensive than cleaning what is being put into the atmosphere.[16]
While the original work on the tragedy of the commons concept suggested that all commons were doomed to failure, they remain important in the modern world. Work by later economists has found many examples of successful commons, andElinor Ostrom won theNobel Prize for analysing situations where they operate successfully.[17][14] For example, Ostrom found that grazing commons in theSwiss Alps have been run successfully for many hundreds of years by the farmers there.[18]
Allied to this is the "comedy of the commons" concept, where users of the commons are able to develop mechanisms to police their use to maintain, and possibly improve, the state of the commons.[19] This term was coined in an essay by legal scholar, Carol M. Rose, in 1986.[19][17][20]
Originally inmedieval England the common was an integral part of themanor, and was thus legally part of theestate in land owned by thelord of the manor, but over which certain classes of manorial tenants and others held certain rights. By extension, the term "commons" has come to be applied to other resources which a community has rights or access to. The older texts use the word "common" to denote any such right, but more modern usage is to refer to particular rights of common, and to reserve the name "common" for the land over which the rights are exercised. A person who has a right in, or over, common land jointly with another or others is called acommoner.[21]
In middle Europe, commons were kept for relativelysmall-scale agriculture, especially in southern Germany, Austria, and the alpine countries, and some of these still exist.[9] Some studies have compared the German and English dealings with the commons between late medieval times and the agrarian reforms of the 18th and 19th centuries. The UK was quite radical in doing away with and enclosing former commons, while southwestern Germany (and the alpine countries as e.g. Switzerland) had the most advanced commons structures, and were more inclined to keep them. TheLower Rhine region took an intermediate position.[22] However, the UK and the former dominions have till today a large amount ofCrown land which often is used for community or conservation purposes.
Today, the commons are also understood within acultural sphere. These commons include literature, music, arts, design, film, video, television, radio, information, software and sites of heritage.Wikipedia is an example of the production and maintenance ofcommon goods by a contributor community in the form of encyclopedic knowledge that can be freely accessed by anyone without a central authority.[25]
Tragedy of the commons in the Wiki-Commons is avoided by community control by individual authors within the Wikipedia community.[26]
The information commons may help protect users of commons. Companies that pollute the environment release information about what they are doing. The Corporate Toxics Information Project[27] and information like the Toxic 100, a list of the top 100 polluters,[28] helps people know what these corporations are doing to the environment.
Mayo Fuster Morell proposed a definition of digital commons as "information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned or shared between or among a community and that tend to be non-exclusive, that is, be (generally freely) available to third parties. Thus, they are oriented to favor use and reuse, rather than to exchange as a commodity. Additionally, the community of people building them can intervene in the governing of their interaction processes and of their shared resources."[29][30]
Examples of digital commons areWikipedia,free software andopen-source hardware projects.
Following the narrative of post-growth, the digital commons can present a model of progress that guide commoners to build counter-power in the economic and political field.[31] Being able to digitally share knowledge and resources through internet platforms is a new capacity that challenges the traditional hierarchical structures of production, allowing for a higher collective benefit and a sustainable management of resources. Non-material resources are digitally reproducible and therefore can be shared at a low cost, contrary to physical resources which are quite limited.[31] Shared resources represent in this context data, information, culture and knowledge which are produced and accessible online.[32] In accordance with the "design global, manufacture local" approach digital commons may link the traditional commons theory with existing physical infrastructures.[33] It further connects with the degrowth communities since transformations in use-value creation by employing new technologies, decoupling society from GDP growth and lowercarbon dioxide emissions, are envisioned.[33] Moreover, as a decentralized approach, there is a strong emphasis on inclusion and democratic regulation which has led Commons as an alternative, emancipatory and emerging form of social organization that goes beyond democratic capitalism.[34] Accordingly, through the cooperation of diverse stakeholders and the equitable distribution of means of production, technological development becomes more accessible and bottom-up projects are fostered in communities.[33]
Urban commons present the opportunity for the citizens to gain power upon the management of the urban resources and reframe city-life costs based on their use value and maintenance costs, rather than the market-driven value.[35]
Urban commons situates citizens as key players rather than public authorities, private markets and technologies.[36] David Harvey (2012) defines the distinction between public spaces and urban commons. He highlights that the former is not to be equated automatically with urban commons. Public spaces and goods in the city make a commons when part of the citizens take political action.Syntagma Square in Athens,Tahrir Square in Cairo,Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv, and thePlaza de Catalunya in Barcelona were public spaces that transformed to an urban commons as people protested there to support their political statements. Streets are public spaces that have often become an urban commons by social action and revolutionary protests.[37] Urban commons are operating in the cities in a complementary way with the state and the market. Some examples arecommunity gardening, urban farms on the rooftops and cultural spaces.[38] Participatory studies of commons and infrastructures under the conditions of the2008 financial crisis have emerged.[39][40]
Silvia Federici articulates a feminist perspective of the commons in her essay "Feminism and the Politics of the Commons".[41] Since the language around the commons has been largely appropriated by theWorld Bank as it sought to re-brand itself "the environmental guardian of the planet", she argues that it is important to adopt a commons discourse that actively resists this re-branding.[42] Secondly, articulations of the commons, although historically present and multiple have struggled to come together as a unified front. For the latter to happen she argues that a "commoning" or "commons" movement that is effectively able to resist capitalist forms of organizing labour and our livelihoods must look to women to take the lead in organizing the collectivization of our daily lives and themeans of production.[42]
Women have traditionally been at the forefront of struggles for commoning "as primary subjects of reproductive work". This proximity and dependence on communal natural resources has made women the most vulnerable by their privatization, and made them their most staunch defendants. Examples include:subsistence agriculture, credit associations such astontine (money commons) and collectivizingreproductive labor.
Scholars such asDavid Harvey have adopted the termcommoning, which as a verb serves to emphasize an understanding of the commons as a process and a practice rather than as "a particular kind of thing"[3] or static entity. Some authors[43] distinguish between the resources shared (thecommon-pool resources), thecommunity who governs it, andcommoning, that is, the process of coming together to manage such resources. Commoning thus adds another dimension to the commons, acknowledging the social practices entailed in the process of establishing and governing a commons.[1] These practices entail, for the community of commoners, the creation of a new way of living and acting together,[44] thus involving a collective psychological shift: it also entails a process of subjectivization, where the commoners produce themselves as common subjects.[45]
Based on a research project by the Environmental and Cultural Conservation in Inner Asia (ECCIA) from 1992 to 1995, satellite images were used to compare the amount ofland degradation due to livestock grazing in the regions of Mongolia, Russia, and China.[46] In Mongolia, where shepherds were permitted to move collectively between seasonal grazing pastures, degradation remained relatively low at approximately 9%. Comparatively, Russia and China, which mandated state-owned pastures involving immobile settlements and in some cases privatization by household, had much higher degradation, at around 75% and 33% respectively.[47] A collaborative effort on the part of Mongolians proved much more efficient in preserving grazing land.
The widespread success of the Maine lobster industry is often attributed to the willingness of Maine's lobstermen to uphold and support lobster conservation rules. These rules include harbor territories not recognized by the state, informal trap limits, and laws imposed by the state of Maine (which are largely influenced by lobbying from lobster industry itself).[48] The case of Maine lobster fisheries reflects how a group was able to restrain access to a resource from outsiders, while regulating the communal use in an effective manner. This has allowed the local communities to reap the benefits of the rewards of their restrain for decades.[49] Essentially, the local lobster fishers collaborate without much government intervention to sustain their common-pool resource.[49]
Acequia is a method of collective responsibility and management for irrigation systems in desert areas. In New Mexico, a community-run organization known as Acequia Associations supervises water in terms of diversion, distribution, utilization, and recycling, in order to reinforce agricultural traditions and preserve water as a common resource for future generations.[50] The Congreso de las Acequias has since 1990s, is a statewide federation that represents several hundred acequia systems in New Mexico.[51]
In the late 1980s, Nepal chose todecentralize government control over forests. Community forest programs work by giving local areas a financial stake in nearby woodlands, and thereby increasing the incentive to protect them from overuse. Local institutions regulate harvesting and selling of timber and land, and must use any profit towards community development and preservation of the forests. In twenty years, some locals, especially in the middle hills, have noticed a visible increase in the number of trees, although other places have not seen tangible results, especially where opportunity costs to land are high. Community forestry may also contribute to community development in rural areas – for instance school construction, irrigation and drinking water channel construction, and road construction. Community forestry has proven conducive to democratic practices at grass roots level.[52]
Many Nepalese forest user groups generate income from the community forests, although the amount can vary widely among groups and is often invested in the community rather than flowing directly to individual households. Such income is generated from external sources involving the sales of timber from thinned pine plantations such as in the community forest user groups of Sindhu Palchok and Rachma, and internally in Nepal's mid-hills' broad leaf forests from membership fees, penalties and fines on rule-breakers, in addition to the sales of forest products. Some of the most significant benefits are that locals are able to use the products they gather directly in their own homes for subsistence use.[53]
Hunting wildlife territories in James Bay, Quebec; located in the northeastern part of Canada, provide an example of resources being effectively shared by a community. There is an extensive heritage of local customaries that are used to effectively regulate beaver hunting in the region.[49]
In the Stockholm region, green spaces are predominantly owned and managed in either private or municipal forms,allotment gardens being the most common form. The system provide cultural ecosystem services to lot holders, as well as the offer of vegetables, fruits, and ornamental flowers. The majority of allotment land in Stockholm is owned by the local municipality, and leaseholds are set for extended periods of time (up to 25 years). The local allotment association makes the decisions about who gets land rights. Only residents of multifamily homes inside the municipality were permitted to sign contracts, signifying a commitment to the original goals of allotments, which were to enhance the health of city dwellers in outdoor settings. Land is organised and managed cooperatively; outside enterprises are not involved in any way.[54]
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