Commons: Old and New -- On Environmental Goods and Services in the Theory of Commons (original) (raw)
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Environmental protection in the theory of commons
The modern and largely academic and urban initiated concern with environmental protection of landscapes, species, watersheds, biodiversity, ecosystem-services etc. are framed by a language suggesting that the main concern is the protection and preservation of precarious resources of common interests for mankind.
Protected areas and traditional commons: values and institutions
Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography, 2006
The modern, largely academic and urban-initiated concern with the environmental protection of landscapes, species, watersheds, biodiversity, ecosystem services, etc. is framed by a language suggesting that the main concern is the protection and preservation of precarious resources of common interest for mankind. Thus the values deserving the attention of environmental protection seem to be very different from the concerns shaping the evolution of traditional commons: the control of, access to and extraction of resources seen as limited but essential for the survival of local communities. This article explores the theoretical differences and similarities of the two types of interests driving the concern for preserving values. It will be suggested that a basic difference lies in the distinction between values where there is rivalry in appropriation and values where there is non-rivalry. Further, it will be argued that in designing new institutions for managing protected areas, an understanding of traditional commons and how the new values to be protected are different from and interact with the old values will be important in order to achieve sustainability of resource use within the protected areas. Instituting regulations of environmental protection can be seen as creating new types of commons.
Methodological Approaches to the Question of the Commons
Interdisciplinary work in the social sciences is generally held to be desirable, but in practice it has proven rather difficult. This is because, while the themes studied by social scientists are often similar, the intellectual histories, the questions that are considered salient, the field research methods, the ways in which theories are applied to empirical observations, and even the approaches to systems of knowledge vary widely from discipline to discipline. As a result, economists, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and geographers often fail to make their analyses and even their assumptions comprehensible to the others. Many do not even try. In this issue we put together four articles (including this one) to illustrate some of the methodological differences within the social sciences. We highlight in particular the divisions between economics and anthropology, and, anchoring ourselves to issues of the local environmental commons, we explore the possibilities of bridging some of these divisions. Economics and anthropology are seen as extremes along the social science continuum, and interdisciplinary work bridging their differences has been especially challenging.
Commons, collective actions and landscapes: A short introduction
Acta geographica Slovenica
In the face of worldwide population growth, increasingly intensive agriculture, depopulation of marginal and less favoured areas, and growing rural-urban migration, two contrasting trends are becoming more pronounced: land abandonment on one hand and intensification of agricultural land on the other hand. Considering the complexity of mentioned issues, which result in landscape impoverishment, biodiversity loss, and a decline in crucial ecosystem services, it is essential to prioritise sustainable governance and management of landscapes and natural resources. Alternative approaches are needed to address these challenges. In this special issue, we focus on the potentials of commons and collective actions in sustaining landscape management and natural resource governance. The term "commons" refers to the way communities collectively manage local resources. Collective action refers to the coordinated efforts and cooperation of a community.
Agriculture and Human Values, 1990
Ron Herring teaches political science at Northwestern University. His concern with environmental issues emerges from work on land systems, agriculture, and land reform in South Asia, some of which has appeared as land to the Tiller (Yale, 1983). He is currently organizing work on the environment through the SSRC.
What does right to landscape mean? An analysis through the concept of commons.
In this paper I will analyse and question the idea of “right to landscape” firstly by focusing on the concepts of common good/commons/common pool resources. Regarding the distinction among the previous three terms, I will take inspiration from the work by E. Ostrom (1990; 2009), by considering how she changed the idea of commons and the management of CPRs, after the great debate that the topic crated in the sixties (see Hardin 1968). The analysis of old and new commons shows that there is a specific idea of state, society, politics embedded in the different approaches in analysing and managing landscape. Furthermore, the management of landscape is related to a philosophical idea of state, values and democracy (Olwig, 2003; 2013). Nowadays the political implications of the concept of commons/common good are various. Through the concept of commons, several authors question the liberal theory of state in the management of land, and the fact that private property was often considered the only solution for both poverty’s problem and management of CPRs (see Caffentzis 2004; Hardt and Negri 2009; Harvey 2011; De Bollier 2012; Angelis 2013;). The literature on the concept of commons is currently thriving, and in this paper I focus on the specific relationship between landscape and commons (see also Menatti, 2013; 2014). In the contemporary era the main issues relative to commons are the exhaustion of natural resources and the safeguarding of cultural and natural heritage (both material and immaterial). I state that one of the ways to safeguard landscape is to consider it a common good and also a possible human right. The question is not trivial and it is open to debate. I will analyse in this respect the Unesco document called Florentine Declaration on Landscape (http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/943/). But it is important to remind that already in the European Landscape Convention landscape is characterised as common good (ELC: Preamble). The Unesco Convention clearly starts from these premises and tries to give a wider and more universal (but not homologated) definition of landscape. Relying upon a concept of landscape that is holistic, historical, dynamic, multicultural and adaptive, it encourages intergovernmental, transnational and public-private cooperation. And by stating that: “landscape is a common good, the right to landscape is a human necessity” it opens the debate for a new range of theoretical possibilities. The literature about this topic is scarce, although the book edited by the Cambridge Centre for Landscape can be considered an important precursor (see Egoz, Makhzoumi, Pungetti 2013). The crucial point analysed in the recent literature is the link between human rights and landscape. The right to landscape does not concern only conflict zones or native areas but, also and more comprehensively, everyday landscapes and environments that are threatened and damaged. In such a way thinking about landscape can be transformed into thinking about the ‘right to landscape’, for everyone and every society. On these bases I will argue how the idea of landscape as human right can implement and complete the debate about landscape and common good/commons.
Evolutionary Perspectives on the Commons: A Model of Commonisation and Decommonisation
Sustainability
Commons (or common-pool resources) are inherently dynamic. Factors that appear to contribute to the evolution of a stable commons regime at one time and place may undergo change that results in the collapse of the commons at another. The factors involved can be very diverse. Economic, social, environmental and political conditions and various drivers may lead to commonisation, a process through which a resource is converted into a joint-use regime under commons institutions and collective action. Conversely, they may lead to decommonisation, a process through which a commons loses these essential characteristics. Evolution through commonisation may be manifested as adaptation or fine-tuning over time. They may instead result in the replacement of one kind of property rights regime by another, as in the enclosure movement in English history that resulted in the conversion of sheep grazing commons into privatized agricultural land. These processes of change can be viewed from an evolu...