Wrapping up at the Commons conference

This is my last in a series of posts from the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons. The final session, a roundtable discussion on Authority, Property and Democracy, was facilitated by Ashwini Chatre and included Jesse Ribot, Andy White, Anne Larson, Melissa Leach and Elinor Ostrom as panelists.

Ribot challenged researchers to move on from discussions on the ‘tragedy of the commons’, which he said was a dead horse, to examine and better understand the dynamic, contested nature of the commons within their larger political economy. A few speakers from the floor responded that the ‘tragedy’ is very much alive and well in the minds of policymakers, leading to related policies of ‘enclosure’, and therefore could not be walked away from just yet.

Leach set out two main challenges for researchers in this field. Firstly, she saw a need to shift global and national institutions towards more deliberative and reflective governance where powerholders understand their own subjectivities. Secondly, related to the first point, we need to bring local knowledge and perspectives into debates - not in a glorified sense, but for their substance and to enable social justice.

Ostrom emphasised the need for trust and relationship building between actors if we are to deal with the major social and environmental challenges facing us. She felt commons researchers were in a good position to demonstrate the linkages between local and global, to shed light on discussions around property rights, and ultimately to contribute to the crafting of new rules to manage the commons.

Judy Lee Wong of the Black Environment Network felt that academics could play a useful role in explaining uncertainty to bureacrats, to foster a more flexible approach in dealing with uncertain and complex systems.

Another interesting thread was around the concept of adaptation, which both Ribot and Leach didn’t like as a term because 1) human and natural systems do not respond in predictable and mechanical ways, and 2) the adaptation discourse shifts attention away from power - adaptation by whom to what? Instead, we need to focus on resilience and vulnerability reduction.

These IASC events - and this was my second -  are great at fostering critical engagement between research, policy and practice. Leach perhaps summed this up in her response to a PhD student who felt that the ’so what’ question on commons research was still unanswered for him: “Why do it? For social justice.”