Group items tagged

The "tragedy of the commons" is a central concept in human ecology and the study of the environment. It has had tremendous value for stimulating research, but it only describes the reality of human-environment interactions in special situations. Research over the past thirty years has helped clarify how human motivations, rules governing access to resources, the structure of social organizations, and the resource systems themselves interact to determine whether or not the many dramas of the commons end happily. In this book, leaders in the field review the evidence from several disciplines and many lines of research and present a state-of-the-art assessment. They summarize lessons learned and identify the major challenges facing any system of governance for resource management. They also highlight the major challenges for the next decade: making knowledge development more systematic; understanding institutions dynamically; considering a broader range of resources (such as global and technological commons); and taking into account the effects of social and historical context. This book will be a valuable and accessible introduction to the field for students and a resource for advanced researchers.

"If Planet Earth is to survive in the coming decades as we know it, we must find new ways to protect our planet from the unsustainable growth imperatives of neoliberal economics and politics. This will require a new architecture of "green governance"―laws, public policies, and social practices that can honor human rights and commons-based management of natural resources large and small"

The industry training had left not a single gram of salt in my body. I was itching to get into the metro so that I could take refuge from the sun's appalling heat. Metro came on time but was loaded with people as if it wasn't a metro but DTC bus of Delhi.

Keynote by David Bollier at Economies of the Commons Conference, April 12, 2008, Amsterdam.

it means not only a radically different structure of the economy, but a change in who runs American industry. And this is what the current political order is fighting to the death.

More political than commons related, but connected to the question of energy and resource usage and power.

The Political Economy of Institutional Change: A Historical Perspective on Land Tenure in Western Europe

pointer to book review at NYT

Marcellus Andrews explains how climate change will force us to confront the inequalities that market fundamentalism produces.

"Many people don't recognise that the commons is not just a thing - a physical element of nature or a resource like the Internet - but a distinct metaphysics and epistemology that challenges some deeply rooted premises of contemporary politics and policy. James Quilligan probes this territory with a thoughtful piece in the latest issue of Kosmos magazine. In particular, he explores the "social nature of property"and how its individual, atomistic nature in liberal political philosophy is responsible for "its catastrophic impact on the commons.""

"In this seven-part series of articles on each environmental impact of US militarism, scientist and author Patricia Hynes provides an overview of modern, military pollution and the use of natural resources with a central focus on the US military superpower, a power without precedent or competitor. From Superfund and former nuclear weapons sites in the US to Vieques, Agent Orange, depleted uranium - particularly in Iraq - biowarfare research and the use of fossil fuels in routine military training and wars, Hynes examines the war machine as the true tragedy of the commons."