Physical Commons
Physical Commons differ significantly form the Information Commons that we are in the process of creating, so this entry focuses on material related to such physical commons.
Managing Common Pool Resources
These are the design principles that Elinor Ostrom reported finding in groups that managed common pool resources without either underprovisioning or overconsuming them.
From: http://www.cooperationcommons.com/Documents/EntryView?id=30
o Group boundaries are clearly defined.
o Rules governing the use of collective goods are well matched to local needs and conditions.
o Most individuals affected by these rules can participate in modifying the rules.
o The rights of community members to devise their own rules is respected by external authorities.
o A system for monitoring member's behavior exists; the community members themselves undertake this monitoring.
o A graduated system of sanctions is used.
o Community members have access to low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms.
o For CPRs that are parts of larger systems: appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises.
A Defense of the Commons
Well-written plea for the importance of the 'environmental' commons.
"The environment isn't just about nature anymore. It has become a metaphor for a battle against market — and sometimes governmental — encroachment that extends to virtually every corner of our society. Everything is up for grabs. Everything is for sale. Politicians and the media are essentially oblivious, just as they were oblivious to the threats to the environment before Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, about the dangers of the pesticide DDT. There isn't even a word for this encroachment and loss, except for the tendentious euphemism "growth."
It is significant, then, that an old term is reappearing to describe what is being threatened. It is "the commons," the realm of life that is distinct from both the market and the state and is the shared heritage of us all. Vandana Shiva, an Indian physicist and environmental activist, writes about the commons of water and seeds. Lawrence Lessig, an author and lawyer, describes the innovation commons of the Internet and the public domain of knowledge. Others are talking about the atmospheric commons, the commons of public squares, and the commons of quiet.
People don't generally connect seeds and bytes, aquifers and silence. But the concept of the commons shows them to be aspects of the same thing, with political, legal, and environmental implications that could be far-reaching.
It is not whether there will be more government or less, but whether the market will be able to expropriate everything. In an "ownership" society, what happens to the realms that belong to all of us together, as opposed to each of us apart? If the atmosphere, say, is a commons, then we start to see that polluters are trespassing on something that is ours, and that we hold in trust for future generations. The same goes for the gene pool, cyberspace, the broadcast spectrum, the world's water, and the still of the night. If such things are commons, then we have rights regarding them — common property rights. And that changes everything."
The preindustrial commons provided livelihood and material sustenance, and in the developing world, it still plays that role….. But increasingly the commons today meets a different kind of need: refuge from the market and its frenzied pace. It provides such things as open space, access to nature, the conviviality of public squares…. It produces by not producing in the narrow economic sense. Each new step of market encroachment has increased the need for counter-production of this kind – for quiet instead of noise, for open space instead of development, for seed banks instead of genetically modified organisms." (http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200507/commongood.asp)