3 Commons
Kenneth
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The commons is the cultural and natural 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 be defined 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 term "commons" derives from the traditional English legal term for common land, which are also known as "commons", and was popularised in the modern sense as a shared resource term by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in an influential 1968 article called "The Tragedy of the Commons". As Frank van Laerhoven and Elinor 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 make a distinction in usage between common ownership of the commons and collective ownership among a group of colleagues, such as in a producers' cooperative. 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 category res communis, applied to things common to all to be used and enjoyed by everyone, as opposed to res publica, applied to public property managed by the government.[7]
Originally in medieval England the common was an integral part of the manor, and was thus legally part of the estate in land owned by the lord 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 a commoner.[8]
In middle Europe, commons (relatively small-scale agriculture in, especially, southern Germany, Austria, and the alpine countries) were kept, in some parts, till the present.[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. The Lower Rhine region took an intermediate position.[10] However, the UK and the former dominions have till today a large amount of Crown land which often is used for community or conservation purposes.
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 of land degradation due to livestock grazing in the regions of Mongolia, Russia, and China.[11] 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.[12] A collaborative effort on the part of Mongolians proved much more efficient in preserving grazing land.
A trawl fishery in the Blight region, located in New York, provides a completely different example of a type of community-based solution to what is sometimes referred to as the dilemma or "tragedy of the commons". The multitude of fishermen in the region make up a fishing cooperative who specialize in harvesting whiting. Being a part of the cooperative gives them consistent access to the best whiting grounds in the area which allows them to be highly successful, sometimes even dominating regional whiting markets during the winter season. It is a relatively high price to be a member of the collective, which limits entry, while also establishing catching quotas for members. They prevent unlimited entry or access to cap the number of members that are allowed in the club. This is done through a closed membership policy, as well as having control over the docking spaces. This leads to exclude outsiders from entering the regional whiting market. The "quotas" are established based on what they estimate can be sold to the regional markets. It directly contrasts government imposed regulations which are typically considered to be inflexible by the fisherman in the local area. The cooperative on the other hand is considered to be effective and flexible in their sustainable use of the resources in the region.
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).[14] Lobster is another resource that is sometimes considered vulnerable to overharvesting, and many people within the industry itself have been predicting a collapse for years. Nonetheless, the lobster industry has remained relatively unscathed by resource depletion. The state government of Maine establishes certain regulations, but they do not limit the number of licenses themselves. In practice there are many restrictive exclusionary systems that are generated, dictated, and upheld by the community through a series of "traditional fishing rights" that have been locally grandfathered in. One must obtain confirmation to fish from the community to actually be granted access. Once an individual is granted access, they are still only able to access the territories held by that community. Outsiders may be persuaded by threats of violence even. It is impossible to know if the lobster resource would have been sustainably used if there was more regulation, or without the internal regulation, but it is certainly being used sustainably in its current state of affairs. It also seems to be run relatively efficiently. This case study 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.[13] Essentially, the local lobster fishers collaborate without much government intervention to sustain their common-pool resource.[13]
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. Beaver has been an important source of food and commerce for the area since the fur trade began in 1670. Unfortunately, beavers are an easy target for resource degradation and depletion due to their colonies being easily spotted. Luckily, the area has grandfathered in many traditions, and stewards of the land to safeguard certain territories populations.
In the 1920s there was a massive influx of non-native trappers in the region due to a new railroad coming to the area, as well as an increase in fur prices at the time. The Amerindian communities' lost control over these territories for a short time during this period which helped to eventually lead to what is known as a "tragedy of the commons". In the 1930s conservation laws were enacted which prohibited outsiders from trapping in the area, and reinforced locals' customary laws. This led to a restoration of the population and commerce that beavers provided by the 1950s. The experience of the 1920s is not an isolated incident in the community either. Business conflicts among fur trading companies has led to a couple other times of resource overuse, but gradually resource use was restored to a proper balance once local control was restored. This case study reflects how communal resource sharing can be effectively propagated by a community.[13]
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