Understanding the multiplicity of Commons as a research object and relating it to examples and real-life scenarios is crucial to release its analytical potential. Yet, it can be challenging due to the various approaches and traditions devoted to its study. Literature builds from many disciplinary backgrounds, meaning some texts assume a specific type of audience. Also, due to the increasing need to create modes of governance alternative to the market and the state, the popularization of many concepts can mean a more loose use that calls for a set of definitions that can help establish clear distinctions and relations between different terms and concepts typically used in Commons scholarship.
During the commons seminar 2024, participants discussed how this tends to happen, at least in two ways. In the first case, authors name concepts and objects in ways that connect to specific disciplinary contexts, like law or economics. Hence, different expressions relate to the same idea or object, overlapping their meaning. There is also another possibility that authors provide definitions that are either taken for granted or scattered throughout different passages in one or many texts. For both cases, it becomes helpful to have a glossary so concepts can be easily grasped, discussed, and applied in analyzing ongoing events surrounding the commons.
- Natural resources are material that has economic or social value when extracted from its natural state." (Buck, 1998, p. 18)
- Spatial-extension resources have value because of their location used to meet specific needs. For example, geostationary orbits are not natural resources because they are not extracted or converted from their natural state; they are spatial-extension resources that may be used to meet telecommunications needs. (Buck, 1998, p. 18)
- Resource domains: They are the fixed spatial dimensions where resources are allocated. (Buck, 1998, p. 18)
- Commons: "are resource domains in which common pool resources are found. They may be very small (the parking lot for an apartment complex) or quite large (the high seas or the solar system)." (Buck, 1998, p. 20) The term commons is very sensitive to when it is used and the disciplinary context of usage. Its meaning can be fuzzy and, because of its popularity, also a buzzword. De Moor (2011) explains:
"The term commons is now used for very different types of resources, both tangible (land, pasture, rivers) and more intangible (the air, the Internet). (...) [How the word commons is used] also identifies where common benefits can be found: the key differences are probably to be found in the extent of institutionalization that the resources have undergone. Whereas (the) commons for the historian is understood as a set of well-defined and circumscribed resources (usually land), with rules and sanctions attached to them, other disciplines tend to include resources (not only land, but also knowledge, information) before the process of institutionalization. When the term "commons" is used to refer to resources that are open access and in need of regulation of their use, it should be made clear that this is the case." (De Moor, 2011).
- Commons, geographical scope of. When commons do not fall in one specific country, they are:
- a) International commons: "are resource domains shared by several nations, such as the Mediterranean Sea and Antarctica" (Buck, 1998, p. 21)
- b.1) Global commons: "are resource domains to which all nations have legal access, such as outer space." (Buck, 1998, p. 21)
- b.2) Global commons: "...include completely open resources such as oceans and the air we breathe, which are also referred to as "global commons"" (De Moor, 2011, p. 422)
- Property rights: a bundle of rights of access, exclusion, extraction, or sale of a captured resource; the right to transfer these rights; and the rights of inheritance. (Buck, 1998, p. 18)
- "Epistemic communities are policy networks formed by scientists, technical experts, and international organizations specializing in a particular policy area" (Buck, 1998, p. 23)
- Principles of legitimacy for sustainability as a policy:
- Intergenerational equity: balance of present and future needs, as present-day desisions should not affect the potential wellbeing of future generations.
- Stewardship: actively care for shared natural systems and the resources within them.
- The precautionary principle provides a utilitarian justification to sustainable policy based on the potential uses of whatever species can go extinct. It is succinctly expressed in the proverb "Better safe than sorry." (Buck, 1998, p. 26)
- Frontier ethic: This is not a principle for sustanability as a policy per se, but rationale used to underplay the need of sustainability policies and regimes. Nature is an unlimited bounty, a cornucopia [corn of plenty, abundance, and plenty]. In this mindset, Science and Technology will always find a way to bypass environmental problems.
- Regime: "…are practices consisting of recognized roles linked together by clusters of rules or conventions governing relations among the occupants of these roles." (Buck, 1998, p. 45)
- "Rules are guides to action, defining resource use through administrative regulations and incentive systems and outlining liability and procedures for daily activities." (Buck, 1998, p. 45)
- Jurisprudence or legal positivism: a school of law within the Western tradition central to international law development. Here, actors and policies in a context that supports capitalism [individualistic]. After the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution, commerce established links among nations independent of papal supervision. The nation-states became as individualistic as their citizens, and international law reflected this individualism. (Buck, 1998, p. 40)
- Natural law: a competing school of international law, where there is a moral code independent from humans (needs and desires) against which activity can be measured. Inherits the pax romana and tends to be mediated by the Pope [egalitarian - hierarchical]. (Buck, 1998, p. 38)
References[edit | edit source]
Buck, S. J. (1998). The global commons: An introduction. Island Press.
De Moor, T. (2011). Dossier « Le champ des commons en question: Perspectives croisées » - From common pastures to global commons: a historical perspective on interdisciplinary approaches to commons. Natures Sciences Sociétés, 19(4), 422–431. https://doi.org/10.1051/nss/2011133
