The International Journal of the Commons is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed open-access journal, dedicated to furthering the understanding of institutions for use and management of resources that are (or could be) enjoyed collectively. These resources may be part of the natural world (e.g. forests, climate systems, or the oceans) or they may be created (e.g. infrastructures such as irrigation systems, the internet or (scientific) knowledge, for example of the sort that is published in open-access journals). The IJC is an initiative of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). Our aim is to promote inclusion, diversity and equity on this platform. To that purpose (and to the extent that we can), we offer support to majority-country scholars, for example through offering waivers, mentorships, and extra review rounds to authors from low and middle income countries affiliated with institutes from low and middle income countries. Contact us to see what we may be able to do for you.
The International Journal of the Commons provides immediate open access to its content. Authors retain copyright of their articles. Articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License (CC-BY 4.0). Authors are explicitly encouraged to deposit their article in their institutional repository. If you have any questions you can always directly contact the Editors.
Leadership in Urban Commoning: Why Bridging Social Capital Matters?
The article focuses on the role of leaders in the process of urban commoning. Applying interviews with leaders of urban communities situated in Katowice, Poland, we scrutinize their role in shaping internal and external relationships across distinct stages of urban commons development. Thus, in the paper we develop the concept of leadership in urban commoning, drawing from place-based leadership but also building on original elements such as a priority for the leader in creating bridging social capital. Leaders play a crucial role at all stages of the lifecycle of urban commons. During the initiation phase, they have the ability to recognize the potential of a location and mobilize resources. Subsequently, they are adept at maintaining group engagement and, importantly, managing relationships with the surrounding environment. A key aspect distinguishing effective leaders is their understanding of the need to balance responsibilities with rewards, as well as their capacity to identify each community member’s strengths and motivate them toward building community entrepreneurship.
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The Everyday Commoning Practices in Urbanising Localities
Negotiating Rights to Inhabit Common Lands for Housing in Two Cities of South India This paper presents a framework for understanding the everyday political dynamics of commoning initiated by residents to secure their claims to ‘common land’ in urbanising localities. This paper puts forward the proposition that a spatialised approach would serve to reveal the extent to which unique socio-political and geographical factors exert an influence upon the dynamics of collective actions (commoning). It examines the experience of households in two squatter settlements on the outskirts of two South Indian cities: Villupuram, a medium-sized town in the state of Tamil Nadu, and Bangalore, a large metropolis in the state of Karnataka. It demonstrates how common land could serve as a foundation for the inclusion of poor communities within the city. The two cases presented in this paper reflect a trend observed in Indian cities since the mid-1990s, whereby rural common lands in urbanised localities, previously allocated to poor households for housing, have been targeted for more profitable development, eventually justified by environmental arguments. Consequently, those in poverty are compelled to compete with more powerful actors in order to assert their right to the common land they occupy for the purpose of housing. The two case studies demonstrate the capacity of such communities to unite and engage in practical political actions to regularise their settlements and dwellings. We describe their engagement with multiple government institutions across the rural and urban continuum and illustrate the influence of contextual factors, including geographical and temporal factors, in shaping the unique and diverse trajectories of commoning.
Analysing Informal Governance Arrangements in Small-Scale Fisheries: A Case Study of Norton, Zimbabwe
Many small-scale fisheries (SSF) studies have recognised the importance of this sector. However, in Zimbabwe, limited recognition or policy provisions cater to the SSF. This study used an Interactive Governance Approach to analyse the governance of the Norton SSF and their lived experiences. A total of 113 respondents were sampled using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Data were collected through interviews, focus-group discussions and informal conversations. Secondary sources of data, such as government policy documents were also used. Data were recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed. The results show that SSF in Zimbabwe is instituted through an overlapping hierarchical, centralised system. This formal centralised system is poorly regulated, and challenges exist when implementing management strategies. As a result, the weak hierarchical arrangements coupled with the economic challenges have led to the emergence of informal fishing, which is dominant and visible in Norton SSF and contributes to local fishing livelihoods. This study calls for participatory and co-management arrangements that could strengthen this sector and formulate policies to guide the SSF sector in Zimbabwe. This study contributes to the emerging literature on SSF governance in Zimbabwe.
Robust Collective Action by Farm Producers: Analyzing Co-Operatives as Common Property Institutions
Common property institutions are often analyzed with Ostrom’s design principles, yet there are few applications of the analytical framework to institutions owned and controlled by organized farm producers (i.e. farm producer co-operatives). Applicable to any human group with a common interest, the potential of the design principles to study farm producer co-operatives as common property institutions is appealing as current theories and frameworks do not completely or satisfactorily explain their survival or longevity. Prior literature is consulted to determine if and how each of the design principles is applicable to farm producer co-operatives. To help inform a future research agenda, we highlight the analytical limitations and the empirical challenges of the design principles to study farm producer co-operatives as common property institutions. JEL Classifications: D23, L14, Q13
When Urbanization Leads to Governance Beyond the State: Network of Actors Along an Urbanization Gradient in Bengaluru, India
The rapid growth and expansion of cities in the global South has altered the values, perceptions, actor groups and thus dominant institutional and governance structures influencing management and access of local common pool resources. In this paper, we explore how urban transformation and changes in governance have influenced interactions of actors involved in commons (lake) management, with selected cases along an rural-urban gradient in the Greater Bengaluru Metropolitan Region (GBMR). We map the actors, actively and directly involved in lake management, and the interactions between them along an interconnected series of lakes, to identify five broad types of interactions: cooperation, conflict, competition, resistance and passive acceptance. Visualising the network of actors along the gradient, we highlight that the actor networks are fragmented based on municipal boundaries. We find that there is an increase in the non-state actors as we move along the rural-urban gradient highlighting diverse forms of polycentric governance arrangement with urbanisation. We find passive acceptance and resistance as predominant forms of interactions in rural areas and cooperation in urban areas. We find that with an increase in non-state actors there has been a shift from a state of dependence to a state of engagement between communities and the state actors leading to governance beyond the state.
Socio-Economic and Ecological Factors Influencing Rulemaking for Community-Based Forest Management: A Study on Aguaje (Mauritia Flexuosa) in the Peatlands of the Pastaza Marañon Foreland Basin, Peru
There is broad consensus that policymakers must work with indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) to protect biodiversity and carbon stocks in the remaining tropical forests. However, the success of community forest management initiatives around the world has been mixed. Collaboration between policymakers and IPLCs requires a nuanced understanding of the socio-economic and cultural realities, motivations, and long-term conservation needs of IPLCs. In this study, we examine the factors that influence the internal rulemaking in forest communities for the sustainable management of their forests. We collected social and ecological data from 57 local communities located in the tropical peatland forests of the Pastaza Marañon Foreland Basin in northern Peru—an area of global importance for its carbon storage and biodiversity. These communities are engaged in harvesting M. flexuosa palm fruit (locally called aguaje). This practice often involves the cutting of palms, which contributes to the increasing degradation of peatland forests. Using chi-squared analysis, we found that the commercialization of forest resources by community members predicts the presence of rules in communities. Resource scarcity is not associated with the existence of restrictive rules. In addition, we found that the adoption of rules by a community strongly associated with its participation in a community of practice (COP). In the context of sustainable forest management, COPs are networks that link IPLCs with external forest professionals for mutual learning and practical assistance. They must be horizontal partnerships that ensure equitable participation and mutual respect. While IPLCs have an invaluable traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) about their forest, their remote locations often prevent them from accessing innovative management solutions or scientific knowledge about the broader landscape-level status of the forest and its species, such as regeneration capacity and population size. Trusted partners can play a critical role in facilitating dialogue about sustainable forest management, reassuring communities about the implementation of restrictive rules, providing tangible visions of viable and sustainable alternatives, and offering practical support.
The Governance of the ReFi Ecosystem: Integrity in Voluntary Carbon Markets as a Common Resource
Addressing the shortcomings of the Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCMs), a nascent blockchain industry has disrupted this area with an ever-growing number of projects leveraging open-source, decentralised base-layer platforms (e.g. Ethereum, Cosmos) and business-oriented decentralized applications (Dapps). Building on this emerging digital infrastructure over the Internet, community-driven decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are building new socio-technical systems for decentralized finance (DeFi) and, more recently, regenerative finance (ReFi). Both areas are making their way into VCMs promising improved transparency, efficiency and greater accessibility. This paper examines the goals, scope, and intended outcomes of prominent blockchain-based ReFi projects in the VCM space. In particular, it explores the potential for commons-based outcomes emerging from peer-to-peer configurations in the VCM. Using a qualitative approach, the study analyses text-data from industry whitepapers focusing on the cases of Celo, Regen, Toucan, Klima and Moss. The findings show the ReFi ecosystem as a low-transaction-cost environment fostering open-source prototypes of peer-production for carbon accounting and trading. These innovations materialize through application interfaces operating on base-layer blockchains running smart-contracts and tokens. The tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) or rights (e.g. renewable energy generation, storage capacity, or forestry land) and the automation of operations (e.g. exchanges) via smart contracting, provides participants with new affordances for secure, bi-directional coordination in near-real time. The preliminary conclusion is that, while the ReFi organizations considered seem to be Ostrom-compliant with regard to some principles (e.g. clearly defined boundaries, procedures for making own rules, monitoring, or minimal recognition of rights) others are still ad-hoc practices or work in progress (e.g. graduated sanctions or dispute resolution mechanisms). This study contributes to the critical exploration of enhanced governance mechanisms, enabled by technological innovation, that can address climate action challenges and provide viable alternatives to traditional market-based approaches.
Research Through Design and the Politics of Scale: A Case Study in Brussels Metropolitan Centre, Belgium
Through an ex-post analysis of the successes and failures of the Brussels Studies Institute-Brussels Centre Observatory (BSI-BCO)—a multidisciplinary, multi-university research platform dedicated to transforming downtown Brussels—this article aims to contribute to the debate on the dilemmas between the risks and benefits of collaborations between urban commoners and local governments (Feinberg et al., 2021; Bianchi et al., 2024; Heidelberg, 2024; Polko, 2024). In particular, it explores how Research through Design—a methodology that emerged in recent decades at the intersection of design thinking, urban design & planning, transition management, participatory governance, and transdisciplinary research, yet has received little attention in commons literature—can serve as a valuable tool for navigating the tensions between seeking institutional support for urban commons and resisting political cooptation when addressing scales that involves multiple levels of stakeholders and governance.
Unshaping Model Forests in the Global South: Trans-local Politics and Community Forestry Knowledge Circulation in Ecuador and Cameroon
Forest communities around the world are increasingly connected to defend territorial and community rights over lands and forests. This is how the International Model Forest Network (IMFN) was created in 1995 by the Government of Canada, aiming at bringing together a diverse association of individuals and groups towards a common vision of sustainable development across extensive landscapes. In 2002, the Ibero-American Model Forest Network (RIABM) was created in Costa Rica, and in 2009 the African Model Forest Network (AMFN) emerged in Cameroon. This research examines how Model Forests’ actors build shared knowledge on community-based forest management through trans-local dynamics. It draws on a comparative analysis of the Choco Andino Model Forest, Ecuador, and the Campo Ma’an Model Forest, Cameroon. It shows the financial and project-based opportunities of being part of a Model Forest network, and the challenges related to local appropriation and visibility, political continuity, leadership and tensions with extractive activities.
Socio-institutional Considerations of Fishway Implementation at the Community-level in Southeast Asia
Throughout Southeast Asia irrigation development has allowed for agricultural yield gains and is an important development activity. To minimise the adverse environmental and social implications of these barriers within water systems, ‘fish friendly’ irrigation structures have been implemented, allowing fish passage for migrating fish to complete their lifecycles. Fishway literature has focussed largely on the biological and physical elements of fishways and ignored the human dimensions, such as community level social context. Yet it is often people who are the beneficiaries of improved fish passage and required for the proper functioning of the infrastructure. This study explored this community level social context of fishway sites throughout Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia using a qualitative approach, drawing on interviews and focus group discussions. Our findings suggest 5 key lessons: 1) The “social licence” of fishways needs to be established with surrounding communities and renegotiated over time; 2) communities should somehow benefit from fishway implementation (at least not be harmed); 3) consider the socio-cultural context of the fishway place; 4) consider the socio-economic context of the fishway place; and 5) consider the socio-institutional context of the fishway place. We conclude that community-level dynamics need to be considered in fishway implementation for a more holistic approach. Further research in this area could focus on the informal and formal institutional arrangements of fishway site management.
Mongolia Mining: Licensed Tenure or Commons Grabbing
Key to pastoralism, communal land in Mongolia is buffeted by expanding resource extraction with limited government oversight. Herders continue seasonal movement according to environmental conditions, particularly pasture quality, drought and extreme cold. Recently mobility and pastoral commons have been affected by the increase in mineral licenses and subsequent mine exclusionary zones. The process is often framed by development discourses and claims of adhering to global standards such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Using remote sensing and interviews our study examined mining impact on pastures and the role of global initiatives in addressing herder concerns. The study documented significant mining expansion at three mega-mines, a process that removes land from what was the community commons. Amongst herders there was limited awareness of the SDGs or relevance to their daily lives. The SDG agenda, embraced in the capital, was not considered beneficial to herders. The rural challenge is to maintain open pasture access with the development of mining. Social and political engagement is essential for herders’ continued viability in the country.
Energy Community Surplus Sharing: Solidarity Strategies for Energy Commons Governance
Energy communities (ECs) have emerged as a new class of ‘prosumers’ in energy transitions. ECs’ ability to sell electricity back to the grid is increasingly curtailed, meaning they are left with decisions on how best to use this common pool of generated electricity. While some ECs can self-consume the generated electricity, a surplus often remains over several timescales. This provides an opportunity for ECs to exchange with actors or households in the local area, but who are not formally involved in the EC. However, most scholarship has assumed a limited subset of prosumer energy exchange possibilities, namely market exchange. Drawing on economic anthropology, this paper explores the possibility of energy sharing between ECs and households beyond market exchange. It explores this using an agent-based model, with agents pursuing their objectives using the levers of sharing, selling and demand flexibility. We find that sharing is the dominant option, even if agents are solely focussed on their own economic benefit. Results also show that integrating local use of electricity and solidarity into agent objectives can improve overall outcomes (highest local use of electricity and improved EC member satisfaction, albeit lower but still slightly positive neighbour household satisfaction). Adjusting market prices (for buying and selling to the grid) can promote efficient surplus energy use, however caution must be given to the distributive implications of this on householders. Finally, this paper reflects on these findings and their wider implications for the governance of energy surplus commons by ECs.
Urban Communities, Housing Commons, and Real Estate Investment: Revisiting Housing Cooperative Development in Senegal Since the Beavers Experiment
Since the 2000s, the renewed interest in housing cooperatives in the Global South has ascribed to them a number of virtues: a successful mechanism for mutual aid and escape from poverty, a “third way” in the face of the failures of public production and the speculative excesses of private production. However, there is a lack of empirical studies documenting the concrete development and operations of housing cooperatives. This article aims to contribute to studies on housing cooperatives by examining their history and implementation in Senegal, drawing on the literature and first-hand data from interviews and case studies in the Dakar region. Senegalese housing cooperatives occupy a unique place in the West African cooperative landscape given their longevity since the late 1950s and the political and militant support they periodically receive. More specifically, we examine both shifts in the institutional support to cooperatives in Senegal, and shifts in understandings and practices of solidarity along Senegal’s socio-political transformations. This provides a nuanced picture of Senegalese cooperative. They have been the leading producer of formal housing in Senegal over the past decades. Nevertheless, the cooperative movement is weaker today, despite a public support in political discourse. Finally, current cooperative production leaves little room for the principles of sustainable communities beyond the step of land acquisition, for collective commitment to long-term maintenance, and for intergenerational affordability of land and housing.
Energy Commons During Crisis: Understanding Housing Cooperative Strategies Through Dramaturgical Sociology
The importance of energy as a common good becomes especially pronounced during crises. This paper reconstructs the response of housing cooperatives – a specific type of energy community – to the energy crisis. To this end, we apply eighteen impression management strategies inspired by Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical sociology. We analyse a unique dataset of annual reports from Polish rural housing cooperatives, which display a range of reactive, proactive, and collaborative attitudes to high energy prices and fuel shortages following the embargo on Russian coal in 2022. The energy crisis led four out of five rural housing cooperatives to adopt defensive impression management strategies. The three most common were crisis attribution (66%), resourceful management (18%), and deliberative silence (12%). These strategies appear to reflect an effort to position cooperatives within a dual role, balancing social and economic rationales. The collective attitudes undertaken by the cooperative boards to support common resources were also ambiguous, reinforcing existing power hierarchies and dominant logics rather than emerging from grassroots initiatives, due to the limited capacities and incentives in structurally disadvantaged areas. Therefore, our findings portray rural housing cooperatives as solitary and routine actors, undertaking an effort often beyond their capacities and call for their greater recognition as energy commons crucial for ensuring local energy security.
Intersectional Environmental Justice in Dutch-Brazilian Beef and Soy Trade: Challenges for the EU Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products
Intensive agricultural trade is associated with environmental injustice, affecting marginalised populations while depleting forests, rivers and biodiversity. Brazil is the leading soy exporter globally, while the Netherlands is the main soy importer in the EU. This bilateral soy trade is connected to forest degradation, rising emissions, and pesticide pollution. Similarly, international beef trade connects the Netherlands with deforestation and land conflicts in Brazil. In 2023, the EU approved the Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR) to tackle biodiversity loss and forest degradation, to decouple agricultural imports from deforestation in producing countries. However, civil society organisations claim that the EUDR overlooks the underlying drivers of environmental injustice, for humans and non-humans. For example, land tenure conflicts between local communities and large soy farmers (whose growing use of land is influenced by international trade markets), and the financial stakeholders linked to activities leading to forest loss and land dispossession. In this article, we assess the Dutch-Brazilian beef and soy trade through the lenses of intersectional environmental justice (IEJ) and suggest how to improve the EUDR in light of the findings. Intersectionality helps us identify injustices, the drivers and associated actors. Yet, no previous study has mapped intersectional environmental injustices in these supply chains. Our data includes 20 semi-structured interviews with environmental NGOs, businesses, government and academics from both countries, besides secondary sources (15 NGO reports and policy papers). Our recommendations include amendments to be incorporated into the existing version of the EUDR. Specifically, geolocation tools that help businesses track not only deforestation risks, but also intersectional injustices and human rights threats along soy and beef supply chains. And, more broadly, measures to track risks associated with pollution, land dispossession, hunger, health and the impacts of infrastructures on IPLCs. The article contributes to the Commons literature by providing empirical evidence on the interconnections between forests loss, commodity trade and human rights abuses, supporting a diagnosis of the necessary transformations that can positively impact biodiversity in social-ecological systems in both countries.
Self-Governance and Adaptation: Rethinking Indigenous Arctic Histories
How can a self-governance perspective reshape our understanding of Indigenous Arctic histories? This paper aims at advancing our understanding about aboriginal societies and their historical use of common pool resources. By applying a self-governance approach, it moves beyond state-centric narratives that have long dominated interpretations of historical change, and highlights how Indigenous agency and internal dynamics have shaped historical trajectories. Aboriginal societies around the world have independently transitioned their production modes throughout history. In northern Eurasia, one such major transition manifested in a movement away from transport reindeer herding towards reindeer pastoralism from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Northern Fennoscandia was one of the first regions to witness this shift, and the Indigenous Sami there are an especially suitable case to study. The historical sources are exceptionally rich in the area, and Sami are an interesting case because reindeer pastoralism developed in a foraging culture, with many households continuing on as hunters and fishers long after pastoralism had been introduced. The shift to pastoralism was driven by concomitant, self-governed responses as the transition progressed. By combining historical sources and self-governance frameworks, this analysis advances the discussion about how Indigenous reindeer-herding societies – governance and social relations included – were affected by the transformation from 1550–1800 AD. The Sami case reflects that there was a dynamic interaction between customary rules-in-use and colonial rules-in-form, that complicates interpretations of Indigenous societies as either autonomous or passive in historical shifts.
Paving the Ground for Biodiversity-Positive Transformative Change in Fashion: An Exploration of Drivers of Biodiversity Loss and Barriers to Transformative Change in the Textile, Apparel, and Fashion Sector
Biodiversity-positive transformative change requires transformations at the societal level and transitions in specific sub-systems directed at addressing the indirect drivers of biodiversity loss. Despite the recognised need to target the sectors most responsible for nature’s decline, the dynamics of biodiversity loss and biodiversity-positive transformative change in the textile, apparel, and fashion sector have never been directly studied by academic contributors. This explorative study maps direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss in fashion’s supply chain activities and identifies barriers for transformative change to reflect on the potential direction of a biodiversity-positive transformation of the sector. We base our mapping on the qualitative thematic content analysis of semi-structured interviews with experts from the fashion sector in Italy and grey literature publications. Our results suggest that land-use change due to raw material production is the direct driver to which the industry contributes the most, while economic indirect drivers are the most influential for determining the intensity and distribution of the direct drivers. We identify seven barriers to biodiversity-positive transformative change: i) the ideology of perpetual growth, ii) fashion consumerism, iii) telecouplings, iv) rigid political boundaries, v) uncoordinated institutions and policies, vi) lack of understanding, human capital and measuring, and vii) poor availability of biodiversity-positive technologies. Moreover, we reflect on the direction of transformative change by addressing these drivers beyond panaceas, simple interventions, and single governance levels. Finally, we identify the absence of attention to power relations and equity as a potential obstacle to biodiversity-positive transformative change in fashion. Rather than a systematic and conclusive research endeavour, this study must be seen as a starting point from which further discussions can be developed to promote a transformative governance of biodiversity in fashion.
Multispecies Constitutionality: Governing Human-Wildlife Interaction Beyond Anthropocentrism
The question of the role of non-humans in conservation has given rise to a number of pressing debates. Proponents of ecocentrism, multispecies ethnography or the post-human turn have all aimed to promote more-than-human perspectives and attribute equal importance to all forms of (animate) life. However, their relative failure to translate this advocacy into actual conservation decision making has given rise to the question how to appropriately represent non-humans in conservation governance for more inclusive and just conservation. This paper introduces and outlines an approach to addressing this issue we term multispecies constitutionality by exploring a case of human-bear interactions in the commons of the Rodopi mountains of Bulgaria, where outmigration and postsocialist transformations have emptied space for brown bears in areas previously inhabited or managed by humans. Building on longstanding exploration of common pool resource governance, growing discussion of “constitutionality” is intended to capture how the “agency and creativity” of bottom-up governance processes are able to effectively manage natural resources in the absence of external authority, while still accounting for local power relations in a way commons research has often overlooked. Yet both commons and consitutionality research has thus far remained focused on how humans decide among themselves how to interact with nonhumans without actively including the latter. Here, we expand our focus to take into account calls for inclusion of “more-than-human” perspectives in governance and decision-making to achieve a more holistic understanding of human-bear coexistence and introduce an approach for investigating multispecies interactions that accounts for the role of non-human actors in shaping shared landscapes.
How to Survive Without Commons? Conflicts Over Forests and Coping Strategies of the Poor in the Post-Feudal Period in the Northeastern Part of the Habsburg Empire
The article deals with the conflicts over common forests and peasants’ common rights in the first decades after the abolition of serfdom in the north-eastern part of the Austrian Empire (Galicia). The analysis focuses on the revolutionary agrarian reforms that had a direct impact on the existential condition of former serfs. On the one hand, the peasants received the land they had been cultivating and no longer had to work for free for the nobility. On the other hand, they lost access to the common lands and common rights that had been essential for their everyday life. As a result, the peasants developed their own coping strategy due to the lack of resources necessary for survival, i.e. through illegal acts such as thefts of natural resources in the manor forests.
Institutional Bricolage and Commoning in Community-Driven Development Projects in Brazilian Agrarian Settlements
This article applies theories of commoning and institutional bricolage to analyze how agrarian settlements in Northeastern Brazil navigated a World Bank community-driven development (CDD) project focused on infrastructure and productive activities. This project evolved out of a successful Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) occupation of state offices that secured access to rural development funds, resulting in an unusual partnership where the MST selected recipient settlements and partnered with state agencies for implementation under standard CDD guidelines. Using mixed methods across eight settlements, including 62 interviews, a household survey (n = 93), and site visits, I analyze how communities with robust governance and collective work institutions developed through commoning practices navigated the CDD project framework. Settlers acted as bricoleurs (Cleaver, 2012) to adapt settlement institutions to support CDD project governance and collective work. These actions are analyzed through de Koning’s three processes of institutional bricolage (2011): alteration (minimal compliance with bureaucratic requirements while maintaining existing governance), aggregation (repurposing settlement institutions to manage projects), and articulation (resisting external sanctions that conflicted with local norms). While settlement institutions enabled project implementation, they proved insufficient for addressing technical and marketing challenges. Even in settlements with strong collective organization, where CDD had the best chance of success, project effectiveness depended on existing commoning practices rather than CDD’s institutional framework, representing a fundamental misalignment between the external agency and the settlements.
Living with Fire: Relational Approach to Fire in the Uttarakhand Himalaya
Changing fire regimes amidst the planetary ecological crisis demand a rethinking of human-fire relationships. This rethinking has led to growing calls for moving away from anti-fire strategies and recognising the necessity of living with fire. Focusing on the Uttarakhand Himalaya, this study examines how approaches that align with ‘living with fire’ shape and intervene in the management of commons. It analyses three distinct burning practices: prescribed burning by the state, traditional burning in commons, and burning in enclosures by a subset of community members. Adopting a relational approach, this study explores how these practices foster collective futures, perpetuate exclusions, or uphold colonial logic. Data collection involved participant observation, participatory methods, and interviews with community members and forest department staff. The findings reveal that while these burning practices overlap in their physical characteristics, such as intensity and timing, they differ significantly in the relations they emerge from and the multispecies worlds they co-create. Traditional burning is central to managing commons in the region and is underpinned by relations of care, reciprocity, and responsibility. In contrast, state-led prescribed burning and enclosure-based practices reinforce exclusionary dynamics and undermine collective action. The study cautions against an uncritical adoption of ‘living with fire’ and emphasises the importance of foregrounding relational difference. Convivial human-fire relations must be understood in terms of their role in fostering social justice and collective action, grounded in relations of care and responsibility.
Concealed Contradictions: Sustainable Development Goals and Indigenous Land Dispossession in Cambodia
This paper examines how the dual forces of Economic Land Concessions and nature conservation projects in Cambodia converge to dispossess the Indigenous Bunong communities of their forest commons—land held as common property and managed collectively by local institutions, with access determined by matrilineal descent. Drawing on ethnographic research, it argues that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), rather than transforming entrenched exclusionary practices, function as an institutional epiphenomenon: a discursive layer that enables the Cambodian state to reframe ongoing dispossession in the language of global sustainability while leaving underlying power structures intact. The analysis exposes how state-led land titling processes and overlapping land allocations perpetuate exclusion, masking the gap between the SDGs’ stated aims and the lived realities of the Bunong. The findings call for a critical reassessment of the SDG framework, emphasizing the need to address the political-economic context and the agency of states in selectively mobilizing global agendas to maintain established patterns of Indigenous exclusion.
School Gardens as Commons: Fostering Relational Values for Biodiversity Through Participatory Environmental Education
Children are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of the current environmental, economic and health crises. As part of the European Union-funded PLANET4B project, the transformative potential of Hungarian biodiversity education on children’s values, worldviews and behaviour was assessed through a critical systemic analysis, key informant interviews, and various participatory methods applied in school gardens. This paper shares some key lessons learnt from a long-lasting study conducted in one of the partner schools via two projects. In 2018, the school set up a garden together with researchers who investigated the evolution of both human-human and human-environment interactions in the frame of a participatory action research process. Throughout PLANET4B this process was continued and assessed from a long-term perspective to see if and how values, behaviour and practices can be transformed over time at the practical, personal and political level. Occasions to spend more time in the garden, and practising commoning activities, generated an emerging safe collaborative space. Here shared values could be discussed and developed, and jointly held understandings on mutual responsibility and care could be formed. Beside positive changes in individual perceptions and social norms, newly emerging teaching practices were observed, which triggered the school to further invest in nature-based solutions. Based on these results, we argue that consciously selected and carefully designed in-class and extracurricular activities can create shared values for nature, and contribute to behavioural and organisational change. Moreover, learning new ways of living and doing, such as commoning, can raise doubts about the current system and show an alternative vision for a socio-ecological future based on solidarity.
Multiple Challenges in Mind, Biodiversity out of Sight: Insights on the Need for Structural Transformations
Although biodiversity loss is a key challenge of our time, it remains largely neglected in the broader societal discourse. Research that systematically investigates the question how attention for biodiversity competes or interacts with attention for other issues remains nascent and scarce. Against this background, we conducted an information-provision experiment that presented people with information from selected societal challenges and looked at how this exposure influenced their attention toward biodiversity loss. Specifically, we reminded participants recruited from the general population of Germany about Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine at the time when both of these societal challenges dominated the media. To mimic real-world conditions, we used predominantly negatively-framed media content. Our findings indicated less priority to addressing biodiversity loss after being reminded of other societal challenges, leading to a so-called saturation. However, we found that personal importance of biodiversity to individuals was much stronger behavioural predictor while respondents indicating the deeper personal change is in principle possible (although not necessarily in any specific direction). These findings highlight boundaries of information-based interventions (e.g., choice architecture vs reflexive learning), stressing the need for deeper social and structural processes making biodiversity personally important. The research enhances our understanding of a key provision dilemma – individuals’ willingness to contribute to addressing biodiversity loss, particularly while dealing with multiple societal challenges. JEL Classification Codes: D91; Q28; Q57; Q58
News on Biodiversity? An Analysis of the Biodiversity Discourse in European News Outlets in 2010 and 2022
The loss of global biodiversity is recognised by politics and science as a global crisis. Its anthropogenic causes require a radical societal transformation, but stakeholder interests and low political priority decelerate action. The term’s complexity and its vague usage in everyday life hinder public engagement and allow for a variety of understandings of the drivers and impacts of biodiversity decline in public discourse. News outlets play a crucial role in shaping how biodiversity is understood and valued. This study explores how European news outlets represent “biodiversity” and traces the evolution of this discourse over time. Using a case study approach, we analysed the discourse on biodiversity in news articles from Austria, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and United Kingdom. For each country, five widely circulated national news outlets with diverse ideological perspectives were selected. For each news outlet, we collected articles mentioning biodiversity published in 2010 and 2022, yielding 169 and 385 articles, respectively. The articles were analysed using a qualitative content analysis in which statements were categorised with a framework focusing on definitions, values, rhetorical functions and actors. The results show that biodiversity is only rarely defined in European media. Over time, its attributed values have shifted from nature-centred (‘ecocentric’) to human-centred (‘anthropocentric’), though the implications of this shift remain unclear. Additionally, while the term used to be frequently associated with scientific actors in 2010, by 2022 a broader range of actors, mainly NGOs and governments, had gained prominence. Cross-country differences were also noted, particularly in the emotional tone of reporting. The analysis offers a broad overview of biodiversity discourse of European news outlets and offers valuable insights for future policy and communication strategies. This nuanced analysis underscores the complexity and plurality of biodiversity values and discourses in Europe.
Commoning in a Hyperdiverse Neighbourhood: Insights From a Community Festival in Nicosia
By examining the annual ‘Pame Kaimakli’ festival in Nicosia, Cyprus, this article explores how self-organized urban collectives can create urban commons through cultural production. Drawing on a decade-long, embedded case study and a mixed-methods approach, the study examines how the festival, curated by a local NGO together with residents and collaborators, is transforming a hyperdiverse neighbourhood. We introduce the concept of ‘nurturing the commons’, describing the festival’s capacity to foster common narratives and mobilize inclusive participation, shared governance, and spatial co-production. The festival’s recurring nature embeds artistic and cultural practices into neighbourhood life, sustaining relationships and counteracting the temporal constraints often associated with grassroots urbanism. By framing the festival through practices of commoning—organizational strategies, participatory socio-spatial repertoires, and negotiated spatial governance—the article discusses how festivals can generate concrete entry points into the commons within hyperdiverse urban environments. In doing so, it challenges dominant framings of festivals as economic or branding tools, instead positioning them as civic laboratories that foster diversity, creativity, and new forms of collective urbanism. JEL Classification Codes: Z13; Z10; O35
The concept of commons has gained traction in housing research. However, when translated to the housing field, the notion of commons is interpreted in various ways and applied to a large range of situations. This increasing interest in the commons has thus resulted in a high degree of conceptual pluralism in the field. While this pluralism is inevitable, and, to a certain extent, necessary to grasp a complex social reality, it can also lead to confusion. This article addresses this issue by conducting a systematic scoping review of the literature from 1990 to 2023 to capture how the concept of commons is used in housing research. Using thematic coding and k-mode clustering, we identify five distinct clusters: (i) “commons in housing”, with a focus on collective action problems, (ii) “housing as commons”, with a focus on the use-value of collective housing arrangements and their de-commodification, (iii) “commoning in housing”, with a focus on socially reproductive collective practices, (iv) “commons/commoning for housing”, with a focus on co-production in housing and urban governance, and (v) “commons/commoning as a political practice”, with a focus on everyday politics and housing activism. Our cluster-based approach thus provides a valuable framework to navigate the pluralism of the field and can be replicated in other subject areas.
Just Institutions or just Institutions? Research on Groundwater Justice in the European Union
This qualitative systematic literature review examines discussions on groundwater justice in the European Union (EU) by analyzing 51 peer-reviewed academic articles that address groundwater governance and justice-related issues. The review identifies a limited number of studies that explicitly focus on groundwater justice, with most research emphasizing the local and regional institutional setup for groundwater distribution, particularly in agricultural contexts in Spain and France. Key themes in the literature include the role of institutions in regulating groundwater distribution, decision-making processes, and the recognition of different forms of knowledge. The literature also examines groundwater markets, often in relation to their potential to exacerbate inequalities, and explores the historical development of groundwater rights regimes, highlighting their continued influence on governance and water rights regimes. Additionally, studies discuss how infrastructure investments can further amplify inequalities, particularly as groundwater levels decline. The limited explicit focus on groundwater justice in the EU may be linked to disciplinary traditions in commons scholarship and environmental justice research that tend to focus on institutions and high-profile cases of injustices, respectively. This paper highlights how grounded justice perspectives from EJ and Water justice literature based on capabilities and power can analyze more subtle cases of injustice. The review suggests that integrating uncertainty as an analytical category might be fruitful for groundwater justice research since uncertainties regarding groundwater materiality and modelling ultimately influence institutions mediating groundwater access and decision-making processes. Future research could therefore explore the relationship between uncertainty and justice, specifically how uncertainties shape groundwater rights distributions and decision-making processes.
Collective Subjectivation in Socially Innovative Commoning
This paper focuses on subjectivities of agents involved in socially innovative commoning practices. Social change agents, often influenced by neoliberal ideologies and individualist subjectivities, sometimes prioritize ‘practical’ approaches over approaches addressing the complexity of social relations and ethics in commoning; this can unintentionally undermine collective efforts, reinforcing the very systems these initiatives seek to dismantle. Responding to insights from our four-year large-scale research project on commoning, the paper proposes the groundwork for examining subjectivities and subjectivation processes within socially innovative commoning. It draws from an open definition of subjectivity volunteered by the psychologist Fernando González Rey, highlighting how subjectivity of actors is deeply intertwined with cultural, historical, and social contexts. It addresses individual and social subjectivation, showing how collective subjectivity is formed through their interaction. Collective subjectivation is staged by drawing from three literatures that give attention to the role of subjectivity and subjectivation in social and political action: political ecology (emotional and performative experiences of subjects as driving forces for the politics of resistance), ecofeminism (understanding affective and communicative social relations among humans and between humans and more-than-humans in everyday experiences), and anarchism (exploring the interplay between individual freedom and social cooperation in reimagining the political subject and community building). Collective subjectivation involves re-imagining and re-building social relations on the grounds of solidarity in opposition to dominant individualist mindsets, engaging in human-nature interactions, and integrating personal emotions, affective dimensions, and psychoanalytic insights to stimulate new collective practices.
Correction: Understanding Institutional Compliance in Flood Risk Management: A Network Analysis Approach Highlighting the Significance of Institutional Linkages and Context
This article details a correction to: Ghorbani, A., Siddiki, S., Mesdaghi, B., Bosch, M., & Abebe, Y. A. (2024). Understanding Institutional Compliance in Flood Risk Management: A Network Analysis Approach Highlighting the Significance of Institutional Linkages and Context. International Journal of the Commons, 18(1), 522–540. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1351