World Commons Week

During the Covid 19 Pandemic, there have been countless calls for the creation of “global public goods” or “global commons” issued by a variety of actors with sometimes diametrically opposed views, as if the two notions had the same meaning. And indeed, even today these notions are still often used as synonyms and interchangeable, leading to an amalgamation of concepts. The meaning and implications of using one notion or other notion (global public good, global commons) is never examined. We believe that, contrary to the dominant view, it is urgent to put an end to this confusion which is not only of a semantic order and has huge economic and social implications. In this talk, we start by recalling what constitutes the notion of “Global Public Good” and by extension the content of what can be called the GPG approach. Then, by difference we present the notion of common good and the commons based approach. Finally, in a concluding section, we present some of the most significant initiatives taken during the covid-19 pandemic, designed and deployed to producing and distributing health products as common goods. Our overall ambition being to highlight that the deployment of the commons based approach that we are calling for, is not a utopia, as it is already moving on.

This is a special IASC World Commons Week event in that it is a shout-out to our wonderful and highly energetic IASC Early Career Network. 

As stated on the IASC ECN webpage: The Early Career Network (ECN) is a self-organised collaborative effort of early-career IASC members. We support and promote the next generation of scholars and practitioners with interests in sustainable governance and management of commons, or other forms of shared resources.The ECN welcomes all interested and motivated early-career IASC members. Although there is ambiguity about who is considered to be in “early career”, we define early career as somebody who is working towards a degree at Master or Ph.D. level or has finished their highest degree less than 10 years ago.

For this event, we will have three ECN speakers giving 15-minute lightning talks on their current commons relevant research.

Across the islands of Hawaiʻi, diverse community groups are caring for lands and waters in a thriving multi-faceted commons.  Their work provides ecosystem restoration, reinvigoration of Native Hawaiian stewardship practices, and cross-generational education, while building resilience in the face of climate change. I will share a larger mapping effort or census of community managed territories within Hawaiʻi, along with stories from interviews and case studies of individual groups and their varied work to care for cultural sites, agricultural systems, coastal areas, and entire mountain to sea land divisions.  Underlying many of these community efforts is restoration of decision-making power and relationships (often familial) to lands and waters that have sustained communities for centuries. This seminar connects organizations engaged in land back efforts on the island of Kauaʻi through a community land trust, Kīpuka Kuleana, and across the Hawaiian archipelago, their growth and challenges with the work of partners seeding land returns across the U.S. continent and the Pacific.  What lessons do these cases offer collaborative efforts to care for and govern the commons, and for restoration of justice, in these shifting times?  

The African Union’s Agenda 2063 is Africa’s blue print and master plan for transforming Africa and delivering on its sustainable development goals. It envisages a 50 year long term trajectory.

Over the 50 year plan period Africa’s urban population is projected to grow exponentially. Already over 40% of Africa’s population live in urban areas. In the coming years, urbanisation will be one of the most profound transformations that the African continent will undergo: the number of cities is expected to double and, by 2050, Africa’s cities will be home to an additional 950 million people, over half of its total population.

The impact of such rapid urbanisation on Africa’s economic, social and, above all, environmental, landscape is likely to be profound. It entails serious challenges in planning, managing and financing urban growth to limit negative externalities, with potential devastating adverse consequences on urban common pool (natural) resources.

Intense and rapid urban population growth in the context of weak and under-resourced state centric governance systems that is characteristic of Africa’s land use planning and regulatory frameworks will – almost inevitably – precipitate the onset of the “tragedy of the commons” as well positioned urban residents jostle to appropriate what they can for themselves at the expense of sustainable management of common pool resources.

Drawing on the author’s experience, this paper explores the role that local residents (and other house owner) associations can play in co-management of urban common pool resources. Local residents associations have cropped up in many African cities, primarily as a coping mechanism in the face of an alarming shortage of, or deterioration in, municipal services coupled with weak common pool (natural) resources management and regulatory systems.

The paper endeavours to apply Ostrom’s design principles for the management of common pool resources to the co-management of urban common pool resources in the context of an African urban setting. The paper argues that polycentric governance systems, in which local residents (and other house owner) associations play an active co-management role alongside municipal and national government actors presents a practical and cost effective mechanism for managing urban common pool resources in the face of rapid and – often uncontrolled – urban growth.

This is a special IASC World Commons Week event that celebrates the longstanding partnership that exists between the IASC and Indiana University’s Ostrom Workshop.

This panel discussion will feature reflections looking back at the history of commons governance at the Ostrom Workshop with the help of both the founding Program Director of the Commons Program, Prof Bill Blomquist, who will joined by the newest Ostrom Workshop Program Director, Prof Diana Ojeda who recently joined IU from the Universidad de los Andes. Ostrom Workshop Exec Director Scott Shackelford will moderate this discussion.

Collaborative governance has the potential to foster co-creative solutions to rural issues. Many rural areas around the world have deteriorated due to rapid and encroaching urbanization and globalization. By supporting and facilitating collaborative governance processes, rural areas can be revitalized and able to cope with external shocks and disturbances.  In this presentation, arguments built upon a social-ecological systems framework are developed to explain how institutions can be designed to foster collaboration and, hence, system robustness. A critical case study of a rural revitalization project undertaken at a traditional village in Hong Kong, Lai Chi Wo, is conducted to elaborate the theoretical logic and its practical relevance.  The Lai Chi Wo experience was awarded the Special Recognition for Sustainable Development in the 2020 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, in recognition of its contribution to the development of a viable model for rural revitalization in the peri-urban setting.  Through this case study, we identify and decipher mechanisms through which institutions can impact and condition collaborative processes and outcomes.

The discourse on power stands as a focal point among commons scholars, particularly in the context of informing endeavors to shape a more just and sustainable future. However, critiques of commons theory contend that institutional analysis, by its focus on methodological individualism, tends to overlook social relations of power. It is accused of simplifying intricate, politically charged power dynamics into issues of institutional design.

Contrary to this perspective, I posit that institutional analysis holds a unique vantage point for generating innovative theoretical and empirical insights on the role of power dynamics in commons governance. In this talk, I will highlight recent strides in institutional analysis that delve into the nuanced power dynamics among resource users to uncover concealed agendas and motivations that drive resource management decisions. I will advocate for synergies between institutional analysis and feminist political ecology to capture the interactions between power dynamics and institutions. A pivotal aspect of my discussion will center on the need to examine uncoordinated strategies or micro-politics, often termed “everyday politics.” Delving into the realm of everyday politics adds a pragmatic dimension to our understanding of commons governance. In scrutinizing the uncoordinated strategies that emerge organically among resource users, unmediated by institutions, we gain a granular understanding of how decisions are made, rules are interpreted, and norms are established for accessing and using the commons. By unraveling the complexities of power relations and exploring the intricate interplay between institutions and everyday politics, this talk seeks to inform strategies aimed at creating, nurturing, and maintaining the commons for a more just and sustainable future.

Spanish: En América Latina existe una gran riqueza natural: la mayor cuenca hidrológica del mundo, el mayor bosque tropical remanente y el 60% de las especies de plantas, hongos y animales del planeta. Muchos de los territorios, ecosistemas y bienes naturales han sido históricamente y son en la actualidad, poseídos, usados, manejados y gobernados como bienes comunes. Latinoamérica es también hogar de 46 millones de personas que pertenencen a 522 pueblos indígenas, que en su mayoría habitan en Bolivia, Perú, Guatema y México. Como resultado de la riqueza biológica y cultural de la región, AL, durante miles de años ha sido sitio de creación, florecimiento y conservación de una enorme riqueza de bienes comunes de agrobiodiversidad, resultado de la riqueza biológica y cultural de nuestra región, en especial en Mesoamérica, Amazonia y la región Andina, tres de los siete centros de orígen de la agricultura. 

Por otra parte, AL es la región del mundo con más larga historia de colonialismo, que destruyó gran parte de las sociedades, la cultura, el conocimiento, la naturaleza y del gobierno de los bienes comunes indígenas. La dolorosa pobreza de los indígenas latinoamericanos, -de los cuales 43% viven en pobreza y 16% en pobreza extrema-; un racismo enraizado y la profunda desigualdad de las sociedades de América Latina donde se encuentran cinco de los diez países más desiguales del mundo, son parte de terrible herencia de la colonización europea que se perpetúa en el tiempo.

Durante las tres últimas décadas, la presencia creciente de corporaciones trasnacionales extractivas en el llamado “Sur Global” ha sido especialmente agresiva en AL, en particular en las tierras y sociedades indígenas. La expansión del extractivismo ha profundizado la desigualdad, destruido los medios de vida indígenas y locales, generando niveles de destrucción ambiental sin prececentes. A lo largo y ancho de la región, comunidades indígenas, campesinas e incluso periurbanas, han luchado contra el despojo, muchas veces pensando y nombrando sus luchas como “defensa de los bienes comunes”. Me parece que el marco conceptual de los bienes comunes, la construcción y reconstrucción de comunidad y los procesos de “commoning” pueden y deben tener un papel clave en la construcción de narrativas positivas y propositivas comprometidas con la construcción de futuros posibles, dignos y resilientes. 

English: Latin America hosts a rich biological and natural diversity, the largest watershed in the world, the largest tropical forests in the world that host, together with other LA regions host about 60% of the terrestrial biological diversity. Many of LA ecosystems and natural resources were historically and are currently owned, used, managed, and governed as commons. LA is also home of 46 million indigenous people, 43% of them are poor and 24% extreme poor, whose large majority live in Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico. For thousand years LA has also hosted agrobiodiversity commons. Biodiversity together with a large cultural diversity resulted in an impressive agrobiodiversity, that originated mostly in Mesoamerica, the Andes, and the Amazon, three of the seven global sites of origin of agriculture. LA is the world´s region with the longest story of colonialism that destroyed much of the indigenous societies, culture and knowledge, nature, and commons governance. The hurtful poverty among indigenous people, a pervasive and widespread racism and the profound inequality of LA societies are part of the harmful inheritance of the European colonization.

For the last three decades the increasing activities of extractive corporations in the Global South, has particularly hit LA, and particularly indigenous societies and lands. The expansion of extractivism has deepened inequality, destroyed indigenous and local livelihoods, driving an unprecedented environmental destruction. All over the region, indigenous and local communities have fought these repeated dispositions, often phrasing their mobilization as defense of the commons. For the construction of the much-needed positive narratives, aiming to think the way out of the current environmental and social crisis, reflection and mobilization of academics and activists, particularly indigenous academics, and activists, is already taking place and should expand. I am certain that the framework of the commons, community building and communing, can play and should play a key role.

As a part of the Promise of Commons initiative, the virtual conference on Celebrating Community Stewardship is back with its 2nd edition to take place from 4th-6th December, 2023 as part of the World Commons Week ( December 4-10), to provide a platform for community members to share their experiences in natural resource governance and management for our enhanced knowledge and capacities. 

Commons, or shared resources such as groundwater, forests, pastures, other natural resources and cultural knowledge systems associated with them, sustain the lives and livelihoods of millions of people worldwide. The distinct voices of indigenous communities, forest dwellers, farmers and pastoralists resonate the knowledge, expertise and understanding of Commons evolved over several generations.

This year, 80 community members from 18 Indian states and from Nepal and Bangladesh will share their experiences under 8 themes across 3 days.