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| We have abundant reminders, both during the 2008
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| biennial conference and in the news that many local
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| commons are under threat. I realize that this is nothing
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| new—we’ve had examples of almost 500 years of
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| enclosures of one type or another, in this country alone.
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| But the processes are accelerating as dramatically higher
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| food and fuel prices create increased demand for land to
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| produce both food and agrofuels. The price of rice, for
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| example, has doubled in the last five months, and many
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| other key food prices have been increasing rapidly.
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| While enclosures of the commons may lead to intensification
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| of production of these commodities, we also need
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| to ask at what cost, and to whom? In many cases it is
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| the very poorest people who lose out, and many subsistence,
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| environmental, and even spiritual values that are
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| hard to quantify and price are lost.
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| It isn’t just at the local level: we also have growing
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| evidence of global commons under threat. The IASC
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| has been addressing global commons issues since at least
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| 1996, but it is good that it is a focal point of this conference.
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| The atmospheric commons is one of the most
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| critical examples, going beyond loss of air quality to
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| wholesale climate change. The collapse of ocean fisheries
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| also calls for urgent attention, as does the loss of
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| genetic resources. The loss of biodiversity in terms of
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| wild species of flora and fauna does receive some
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| attention, but loss of agrobiodiversity is also a matter for
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| serious concern, as the local landraces and “orphan
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| crops” like leafy vegetables, roots, tubers, or medicinal
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| plants are lost. This is part of our common human
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| heritage, and can have serious repercussions for the
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| resilience of world food systems.
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| Let’s look for a minute at some of the challenges posed
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| by the “new commons”. Our name change and the
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| expansion of our mission to include these other types of
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| commons has increased concern with these issues, but
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| also to furthered opportunities to learn across resources.
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| Again, in both the news and the papers of this conference
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| we have examples of: enclosure (and expansion) of
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| urban parks, gardens, and neighborhood improvements;
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| ICT (information communications technology)-related
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| commons such as bandwidth for internet and cell phones,
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| or the internet itself; debates over intellectual property
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| rights over music, crafts, books or text on the internet,
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| and even genetic resources.
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| Information and knowledge open up whole new realms
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| for exploration of the commons. In April this year I
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| attended an international conference on agricultural
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| innovation systems. People at this meeting are dealing
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| with issues like how to foster and spread innovation—
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| whether by farmers, scientists, businesses, or partnerships
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| of these. Increasingly, there are group-based approaches
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| to not only extension information systems, but also
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| participatory plant breeding or other types of knowledge
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| generation and application. I was struck by how relevant
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| the analyses of the commons are for addressing the
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| problems with which they are grappling, and when I
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| mentioned some of what we have found about managing
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| commons, I got a lot of requests to point them to this
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| literature, and grateful responses saying how useful this is.
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| The list goes on, but let me now turn to what I mean by a
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| Strategy for the Commons.
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| A Strategy for the Commons
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| Confronted with these challenges, we can either sit back
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| and bemoan the “tragedy of the commons,” or we can
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| bemoan the loss of the commons, whether local or global,
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| “old”, or “new”, or we can try to do something about it.
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| But what?
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| Now I am not going to suggest any kinds of panaceas,
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| simple solutions, and I don’t mean to imply that any of
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| these apply everywhere. But I do suggest that elements
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| of this Strategy for the Commons include:
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| Continue the learning
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| Share our knowledge
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| Put it to use
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| As IASC and as individual members we will each play
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| different roles in this, but let us look at the components of
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| each of these elements, and how they interconnect.
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| Continue the learning: across disciplines, resources and
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| countries. It is quite appropriate that our new acronym
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| spells out “I ASK.” Study both successes and failures.
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| Look for underlying principles as well as local specificities.
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| Think about what lessons will apply to the next
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| situation, especially to the “new commons.”
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| I don’t see this learning as being in conflict with action.
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| As an applied researcher myself, I firmly believe that
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| sound theory and research methods are critical for getting
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| a better understanding of what is going on as a basis for
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| policies and practice. But I’ve also found that many of
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| the best theoretical insights (and many methodological
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| innovations) come from engaging with people in the field,
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| which forces us to confront the limitations of our pared
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| down conceptual models.
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| That’s also often the most fun part. Last year, right at
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| this time, I was back in Sananeri, the irrigation tank in
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| India where I began my study of the commons, 25
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| years before (which, in turn, was right near my home
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| town where I grew up). It reminded me of how
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| exciting that feeling of discovery was. I had been
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| hearing about the famous farmer managed irrigation
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| systems in Bali and Nepal, but was told they didn’t
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| exist in India, and this tank was government managed,
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| but I was curious about how the tanks operated, so I
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| did some interviews before starting on what was to be
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| the “real” topic of my masters’ thesis. Imagine that
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| feeling of discovering a very active local association
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| managing the tank, and then, as I dug deeper, to find
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| out that what I had been taught about the core of
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| irrigation association activities was incomplete, because
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| it had focused only on the internal activities, and not the
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| efforts the group made to acquire water or liase with
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| (lobby) the state.
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| But as exciting as that learning can be, it can’t end
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| there. We need to: Share our knowledge, among our
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| membership, but also more broadly. The Commons
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| Digest and the International Journal of the Commons
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| are good tools for this. I realize that it’s ironic that the
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| IASC, with so many scholars of the commons who
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| know all about free rider problems, make our materials
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| available as open access, but the reason is that we
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| believe it is essential to share our knowledge on these
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| issues so that we can build on each other’s work and
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| put it to use for addressing the problems and seizing the
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| opportunities that the commons present. This knowledge
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| is too precious to hoard.
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| We also need other ways to share this knowledge
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| outside our Association. I ask each of you to look for
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| opportunities to disseminate an understanding of the
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| commons. Each of you is a member of other communities
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| of practice, and can serve as a bridge, a transmission
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| point, a boundary spanner.
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| Put our knowledge to use. I know many of us are
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| engaged in direct work with local communities to
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| enhance management of the commons, or providing
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| information, such as about the extent or “value” of the
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| commons (whether in economic, environmental, or
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| other terms), and in many cases also working with
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| communities to advocate for their rights,
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| We also have a lot to offer to help those working on
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| global commons challenges. And if they don’t seek us
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| out, we shouldn’t be shy about putting forward what
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| we have learned and how it can be used. That requires
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| going out to where they are: beyond our own publications
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| to the things they read or pay attention to, such as:
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| briefs that trade in some of the scholarly language for
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| understandability by a wider audience, and which relate
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| to the global issues they are grappling with; and contact
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| with the media (which may also involve some of those
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| trade-offs). But we also need to address policy at
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| various levels. Let me give some examples.
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| We have heard this week about efforts
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| in England to advocate for stronger legal
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| rights for the commons, both on behalf
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| of individual local commoners and for
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| the broader public interest. The 2006
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| Commons Act is a very important
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| accomplishment in this regard. But as
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| we have also heard, the law is (almost)
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| nothing without implementation, and that
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| requires a lot of work on the part of
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| national government departments, local
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| government bodies, commons councils,
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| and members of the communities, who
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| will exercise their duties as well as their
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| rights.
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| For those who wonder whether our association’s name
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| change—dropping the “property” from our name—
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| implies any less commitment to work on property rights,
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| let me assure you that it doesn’t. Owen Lynch’s work in
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| a number of countries provides an approach in working
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| for legal reforms to strengthen community-based property
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| rights. He notes that: “As an initial step, this can be
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| accomplished by creating a legal presumption of local
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| community ownership wherever such evidence exists”
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| (CIEL 2002: 7). But he also notes that private rights are
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| often stronger than public or “commons” rights, which
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| are easier to expropriate or reallocate without due
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| process and compensation. Rather than having individual
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| privatization, collective and community-based
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| rights can be legally recognized as private property
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| rights, which would give the right-holders more leverage
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| with outside interests, including government or rival
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| claimants. Such legal recognition can also strengthen
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| community bargaining power with businesses that might
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| provide capital, knowledge, or market access so that the
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| community gets a higher share of the value of the product,
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| enhancing both their livelihoods and their prestige.
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| I won’t say it is easy to engage with policy, or that we’ll
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| always get it right. It’s usually easier to criticize than to
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| create, and for many of us, our training stresses
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| critical thinking. It can be scary. But if we don’t help
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| shape policy, others will, and they are likely to have
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| less understanding of the commons.
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| After doing the study of Sananeri tank, I was involved
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| in some of the work that tried to synthesize
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| across cases of farmer managed irrigation, and began
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| to challenge the World Bank and other development
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| agencies for irrigation projects that vested all authority in the state, rather than building in
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| farmer participation and even management
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| of the systems. So it was with a
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| lot of trepidation that I found out that
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| “my tank,” Sananeri, had been included
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| in a European Union project
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| for tank rehabilitation, that had required
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| the registration of a tank
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| association in each site, and gave a
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| matching grant to support the
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| association’s activities. My visit last
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| year was over a decade after that
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| project, and I was nervous about what
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| that had done to the tank. Having
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| become a bit jaded about the outcome
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| of development projects over the intervening years,
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| imagine my pleasant surprise to find that this (and cell
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| phones) had actually made it much easier for the
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| association to operate. The involvement of a local
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| university and NGO in “organizing farmers” under the
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| project had certainly contributed to the good outcomes.
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| There were, however, some indications that
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| there might be some equity problems resulting, either
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| from this policy or from other changes going on in the
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| area. Some of my Indian collaborators have been
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| investigating, and just this week I got the preliminary
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| results. So the cycle continues… from research, to
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| policy, to research on the outcomes of policy…to
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| better policy?
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| Being strategic about having a policy impact also
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| means forging appropriate partnerships, which may
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| be with civil society organizations, governments, aid
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| agencies, or even the private sector. For example,
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| shall we accept Bakary Kante’s offer to forge a
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| partnership between UNEP and IASC to address
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| some of the combined challenges of sustainability,
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| linking environment to poverty reduction?
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| Conclusion
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| These are some of the elements of being strategic to
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| defend and enhance the commons.
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| The IASC is itself a commons. Whether we achieve
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| anything depends on what we all contribute, but I also
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| think that there is a kind of multiplier effect when we pool
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| our efforts. So let me end with an invitation, a call to all
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| of you to contact members of the council or secretariat if
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| you have ideas that you would like IASC to take forward.
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| I may be dreaming, but I would like to see that when we
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| meet again in two years, the widespread connotation of
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| the “commons” is not a tragic relic of the past, but a
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| vibrant hope for our shared future. And furthermore, that
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| as an Association and as individuals, we will have contributed
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| to making this happen.
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| For Further Reading:
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| Hardin, G. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science
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| 162 (3859): 1243-1248.
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| CIEL (Center for International Environmental Law).
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| 2002. Whose Resources? Whose Common Good?
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| Washington DC: CIEL.
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| R.MEINZEN-DICK@CGIAR.ORG
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