Traditional Knowledge Commons

Description

Andrea Farias:

"A knowledge commons is a shared system for creating, managing, and accessing knowledge that is collectively governed by its community of users. Like traditional commons, such as shared grazing lands or shing waters, a knowledge commons is more than just a collection of resources. It includes the social practices, governance systems, and infrastructure that enable sustainable collective use.

As Bollier and Helfrich (2019) write:

"Every commons is based on natural resources. Every commons is a knowledge commons. Every commons depends on a social process."

According to Simon Grant (2023), a knowledge commons is:

● Governed by a community of practice: People who both contribute to and use the knowledge to advance their work. ● Sustained through mutual benet: Contributors share resources, methods, and experiences that others can learn from. ● Guided by shared norms and rules: Including decision-making processes, licensing, and mechanisms for onboarding new members.

Traditional ecological knowledge systems are the original knowledge commons. These systems are sustained by communities through cultural practices, oral traditions, and collective governance, preserving complex understandings of ecosystems, and how to interact with them, over generations.

Wikipedia is an often cited example of a digital knowledge commons. On this platform, content is collaboratively created and maintained through clear contribution processes, governance policies, and technical infrastructure. However, it lacks a true community of practice, since many of its contributors are not practitioners of the elds they write about. In contrast, initiatives like Open Source Ecology are closer to Grant’s denition. These platforms are created by communities of practice for their own shared use, governance, and learning.

Taken together, these examples help us envision what bioregional knowledge commons could be: shared, living infrastructures rooted in place-based knowledge, shaped and stewarded by the communities that depend on them."

(https://www.r3-0.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Bioregional-Knowledge-Commons-A-Meta-Perspective.pdf)

More information

See the Reports:

1) Imagining a Traditional Knowledge Commons. A community approach to sharing traditional knowledge for non-commercial research. IDLO, 2009. By Elan Abrell et al. [1]

2) Implementing a Traditional Knowledge Commons. Opportunities and Challenges. Developments following the Traditional Knowledge Commons Workshop, December 2009, Cape Town, South Africa. Natural Justice, 2010.