David Bollier

One of my working hypotheses has been that commons discourse has great power because it is able to function as an open platform.  It is both general and specific.  I frequently compare the commons to DNA because both are under-specified design structures that evolve and adapt in relationship to local circumstances.  A certain ambiguity and incompleteness in the language of the commons is precisely what enables people to infuse it with their own specific values, needs and aspirations.  And this is what makes the commons both universally appealing and particular in its manifestations.

Now I have found a wonderful confirmation of my hypothesis in the history of the Buffalo Commons.  In 1987, Frank J. Popper and Deborah Popper, husband-and-wife geographers, wrote an essay that argued that some 139,000 square miles of the Great Plains -- the drier parts extending across ten Western and Midwest states – should become a vast nature preserve.  They dubbed their idea the Buffalo Commons, believing that reintroducing the American bison, popularly known as buffalo, could symbolize their vision for the region’s restoration and conservation in ways compatible with human needs.

The Poppers noted that the Great Plains had gone through several major boom and bust periods in American history, in which economic growth resulted in overgrazing, overplowing and excessive water use, which then resulted in busts as people migrated elsewhere, as they did during the Dust Bowl crises of the 1930s. The Poppers proposed that some 10 to 20 million acres of land should be allowed to return to its native vegetation, especially native prairie grasses, and that farming and ranching should be gradually phased out.  Writing in 1987, during yet the third major “bust” phase in the Great Plains, the Poppers realized that neither large-scale government intervention (dams, irrigation projects, etc.) nor conventional economic development (farming, ranching, mining) were sustainable.  Hence the idea of the commons -- a collaborative plan that might emerge from people themselves.

The world lost a brave, creative mind when Elinor Ostrom died this morning from cancer.  She was 78, a professor at Indiana University, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, in 2009.  Without her pioneering work and global outreach, it’s doubtful that the commons would have survived the “tragedy of the commons” myth that Garrett Hardin inflicted on it in 1968.  Nor would the commons have gone on to become a respected paradigm of governance, let alone an orienting framework for the current surge of commons policy advocacy and social activism.

In the 1970s, economics was quickly veering into a kind of religious fundamentalism.  It was a discipline obsessed with “rational individualism,” private property rights and markets even though the universe of meaningful human activity is much broader and complex.  Lin Ostrom pioneered a different, more humanistic way of thinking about “the economy” and resource management.  She originally focused on property rights and “common-pool resources,” collective resources over which no one has private property rights or exclusive control, such as fishers, grazing lands and groundwater.  This work later evolved into a broader study of the commons as a rich, cross-cultural socio-ecological paradigm.  Working within the social sciences, Ostrom proceeded to build a new school of thought within the standard economic narrative while extending it in vital ways.    

As important, Ostrom built a global network of colleagues and a vast literature that explores how people can actually cooperate in managing resources.  At Indiana University, she and her husband, political scientist Vincent Ostrom, in 1973 founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, a crucible for much seminal thinking about the commons.  Internationally, she helped start the International Association for the Study of the Commons, an academic network whose hundreds of members have developed a rich literature documenting howordinary people create fair rules and institutions for managing shared resources in sustainable ways.  Much of this literature can be found at the Digital Library of the Commons, which is affiliated with the Workshop at Indiana University.

While the official Rio+20 environmental summit will surely be a bust, reaffirming the supposed power of markets to solve our planetary eco-crises, the alternative People’s Summit has made some progress toward positive outcomes.  A wide variety of civil society groups from around the world has been meeting since November 2011 to try to hammer out a shared vision that addresses the theme, “Capitalist Crisis, Social and Environmental Justice.” 

The dialogues seek not only to provide a critique of what’s wrong and needs fixing, but to suggest some coherent themes and proposals for moving forward.  I am pleased to report that one of four short working documents produced by the so-called Dialogue Platform of the Thematic Social Forum (TSF) sees great promise in reclaiming the commons.

My colleague Silke Helfrich has been involved in these proceedings, participating in group discussions that occurred in Porto Alegre in January and in Rio de Janeiro in May.  She shared her insights with me from her blog, and will be attending the People’s Summit in Rio in about two weeks.  (See also her excellent presentation about how the commons can help us navigate the coming "Great Transition.")

The People’s Summit bills its gathering as “part of a historical process of accumulation and convergence of local, regional and global struggles, that have anti-capitalist, classist, anti-racist, anti-patriarchal and anti-homophobic political frames.” For a fairly short document that emerged from a very diverse group, the Dialogue Platform’s statement on the commons is remarkably deep and subtle.  It is clear to these activists that the problem is not just misguided policies and economic analysis; it involves fallacious mental maps, epistemological categories and modernity itself. 

I am impressed that a large group of this sort could agree on such a statement, and show such depth of understanding about the commons and its role in building a better future.   Here is the Dialogue Platform’s statement:

A week or two ago, I blogged about the rise of new sorts of eco-digital commons that blend virtual spaces with environmental management.  It's a bit of serendipity to learn this week about the a fascinating new online tool, the Great Lakes Commons Map.  The map is an interactive platform that solicits contributions and conversation by people who love the Great Lakes.  The idea is to turn a resource that is often seen as belonging to no one into one that is actively stewarded by everyone.  How?  By inviting everyone to post their own videos, text, photos and comments about specific portions of the Great Lakes.  Over time, it is hoped that the site will help build a new shared “mental map” and shared space for people to talk about the Great Lakes as an integrated bioregion -- and to take action to defend it.

The map was created by Paul Baines, an environmental educator, and Darren Puscas of reWORKit (“web production for unions and social change”).  Here is Haines' video introduction to the map.  Haines hopes that the website will help people annotate their conservation projects, cleanups, ecological education and restoration initiatives, activist efforts, walking tours, historical markings, a

Haines eventually hopes to make it possible to post and share video and audio on the site; use SMS and Twitter feeds for reporting and campaigning; host workshops and training on community mapping; and translate the website into other languages. 

What’s especially beautiful about the site is its use of Ushahidi, an open source, interactive geospatial platform for the crowdsourcing of information in crisis situations.  The platform has been used to enable the geospatial visualization human trafficking, for example.  Haines adapted it to serve as a way to crowdsource information, images, video and more that can create a new shared cultural space for saving the Great Lakes.