This article argues that rational self-interest is but one dimension of human behavior. In the context of ‘overshoot’—the excessive consumption of resources beyond the planet’s regenerative capacity—rational self-interes...
Commons represent a wide, heterogeneous class of resources but its composition is the subject of growing tensions. The question “What is a commons?” has become even more complex while the answer still remains elusive. Current research focuses on two...
Despite their laudable intent, extraterritorial legal initiatives to promote corporate sustainability development have not been well received in practice, and are often seen as a window-dressing exercise. This article aims to conduct a conceptual and...
Commons (or common-pool resources) are inherently dynamic. Factors that appear to contribute to the evolution of a stable commons regime at one time and place may undergo change that results in the collapse of the commons at another. The factors invo...
In Garrett Hardin’s popular essay on “The Tragedy of the Commons”, he presents a model of a shared commons where herdsmen graze their cattle to illustrate the tension between group and self-interest that characterizes so many social dilemmas. However...
This study extends recent research on informal property rights at surf breaks by exploring the process through which nature, by establishing conditions conducive (or not) to the presence of sharks, shapes the baseline level of exploitation by surfers...
The compossessorates are traditional Transylvanian commons. They were disbanded during the Communist regime and re-established after 1989 according to the successive laws concerning land restitution. The current article highlights the importance of c...
This study frames integration of Solar Energy Conversion Systems (SECS) with the built environment, addressing on-site limitations for resource allocation in the urban context. The Sun, buildings, and solar technologies are investigated as resource s...
Twenty years after the declarations from the Earth Summit in Rio, the world faces an unattenuated host of problems that threaten the goal of sustainable development. The challenge to cooperatively solve socio-ecological problems has been portrayed in...
In recent years, the concept of the commons has gained relevance across academic, legal and civic spheres as an alternative framework for managing shared resources. Rooted in Elinor Ostrom’s seminal work on collective governance, contemporary d...
This paper reviews the major issues involved in Hardin’s [1] tragedy of the commons, written over 44 years ago, and examines whether these issues are still relevant today. We assert that this model still provides important insight to aid in the solut...
This study investigates the long-term effects of demographic trends and admission rules on common properties in the Province of Trento, Italy, which we refer to as historical commons. Historical commons have evolved into socio-ecological systems over...
This paper presents an acoustic reconstruction of the UK House of Commons between c. 1820 and 1834. Focusing on a historically important site where political decisions were debated over the centuries, we aim to simulate and present the intangible pri...
Environmental history, as a field of analysis and transdisciplinary study, aims to explore the interactions between society and ecosystems from a deep understanding of how relationships between human groups and natural systems change over defined per...
This paper explores how educational commons, in which education and learning are shaped by the members of the educational community in terms of equality, freedom, and creative participation, contribute to addressing inequalities, empowering democracy...
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Commons theory is one of the influential economic theories that study the governance of shared resources, including knowledge. This paper provides a comprehensive view of the application of the concept of the commons towards supporting innovation in...
Community Land Trusts (CLTs) have emerged as alternative housing models mainly taken up by civil society organizations aiming to de-commodify land and ensure long-term affordable housing, while fostering participatory democratic governance and (re)cl...
Food sharing and food commons have both been raised as possible solutions to unsustainable and unjust urban food systems. This paper draws upon ethnographic research conducted in Berlin and New York to examine self-organizing in community food initia...
In the current battle for sustainability and climate, understanding the nature of sustainability games is of paramount importance, especially to inform appropriate policy actions to contrast the harmful effects of global climate change. Relatedly, th...
The tragedy of the commons is a primary contributing factor in ensuring that humanity makes no serious inroads in averting climate change. As a recent Canadian politician pointed out, we could shut down the Canadian economy tomorrow, and it would mak...
The history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) has long been framed as a parable for how societies can fail catastrophically due to the selfish actions of individuals and a failure to wisely manage common-pool resources. While originating in the interpretat...
This article examines shifting practices of commoning among the Jola in the Casamance region of Senegal. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and a theoretical background of New Institutional Political Ecology as well as commoning, it explores how a col...
A deep reading of Hardin (1968) reveals that he had a lot more to say about the use and regulation of resources such as fisheries than he is given credit for in the literature. It appears that he is typically cited just so that authors can use the ph...
Organic seed is vital for organic agriculture. However, organic plant breeding is not keeping pace with the increasing organic production, mainly because of a lack of sufficient financial resources. Therefore, the questions arose: what are the obstac...
Humanity faces numerous deeply interconnected systemic risks to sustainability—a global polycrisis. We need economic institutions that produce the knowledge required to address this polycrisis at the lowest cost, maximize the benefits that know...
Good governance practices through electronic government (eGov) platforms can be suitable instruments for strengthening the outcomes of smart city policies. While eGov is the application of information and communication technologies to public services...
Recent debates in social anthropology on land acquisitions highlight the need to go further back in history in order to analyse their impacts on local livelihoods. The debate over the commons in economic and ecological anthropology helps us understan...
This article aims to understand, from the conceptual proposal of urban commons, the social processes of use and appropriation of infrastructures developed in the framework of urban sustainability policies in cities of the Global South. Specifically,...
The topic of large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) has attracted wide interest in the literature and the media. However, there is little work on the gendered institutional changes and gendered impacts on common pool resources (CPR) due to LSLA. The aim...
The compossessorates in Transylvania (Romania) are traditional varieties of commons. During the inter-war period two types of compossessorates were most common in the Olt Land, between the Olt River and the Southern Carpathians: those of the former b...
This paper rethinks the governance of genebanks in a social and political context that has significantly evolved since their establishment. The theoretical basis for the paper is the commons conceptual framework in relation to both seed and plant gen...
There is a growing trend towards securitization of the maritime commons, which seriously impacts sustainable fisheries governance cooperation. This impact is mainly reflected in the fact that it undermines the effectiveness of the international legal...
The food system, the most important driver of planetary transformation, is broken. Therefore, seeking a sustainable and socially-fair transition pathway out of this crisis becomes an issue of utmost priority. The consideration of food as a commodity,...
Agro-pastoral dams (APDs) are an increasingly popular method of adaptation interventions improving communal water supply in rural West Africa. However, APDs are often constructed in areas where culturally heterogeneous pastoralists and farmers compet...
The paper discusses the relationship between Commons, Social Capital, and sustainability in terms of resources used, tools available, and goals to be achieved. The conceptual framework differs from the traditional one, which considers Commons and Soc...
This paper examines Bologna as an emblematic case to explore how the City as a Commons approach can support the implementation of the Climate City Contracts (CCCs) and advance a climate-neutral urban transition through collaborative governance and pa...
Urban community gardens are increasingly institutionalized through public land, infrastructure, and administrative recognition, yet the mechanisms through which formalized gardens retain—or lose—civic purpose remain insufficiently underst...
Local commons are underutilized in resource management models, thus limiting the effectiveness of the commons concept. This study examined the actual situation of the local commons in Altanbulag soum, a suburb of Ulaanbaatar City, Mongolia, where lan...
Lack of recognition lays at the root of many of the current challenges for commons and ICCAs—Territories of Life despite the wide range of ongoing, collective action initiatives in Europe acknowledging and fighting this gap. In this paper, usin...
Solar photovoltaics (PV) deployment is not easy in dense urban areas because there is little space for the installation. Furthermore, tenants have few incentives to install PV panels because they frequently relocate, and most PV facilities are nonrem...
Through the implementation of low carbon-based energy systems and participatory modes of governance, there are countless collective initiatives progressing towards a sustainable and resilient energy model. Local alternatives necessarily have to be ab...
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has reshaped shared spaces in higher education, with manufacturing labs (Fab Labs) emerging as vital hubs for collaboration. However, a systematic framework for ensuring their long-term sustainability as shared resour...
In the health sciences and policy, it is common to view rising health care costs as a tragedy of the commons, i.e., a situation in which the unhampered use of a resource by rational individuals leads to its depletion. By monitoring a set of outcomes,...
Open Educational Resources (OER) are widely promoted as mechanisms for expanding access to knowledge and supporting sustainability in higher education. Yet their long-term viability remains constrained by fragmented governance, unstable funding arran...
The ‘second phase’ of the energy transition involves large-scale rollout of renewables, raising wider questions about arrangements for the management and ownership of such resources and how costs and benefits should be distributed. Ideas and practice...
This exploratory, comparative sociological study examines youth civic engagement and attitudes toward urban commons in two non-Western cities: Almaty, Kazakhstan, and San José, Costa Rica. The overarching research question is: What are the pro...
Integrated Community Energy Systems (ICES) are an emerging local energy system focusing on the collective use of distributed energy resources (DER). These socio-technical systems (STSs) have a high potential to advance the transition towards socially...
The main aim of the study was reflecting on performative implications of the urban commons and their relational ability (i.e., inter- and/or intra-actioning) within an inclusive governance model and policy design context through two interpretative ke...
Groundwater is critical to human survival, however, it has constantly been overexploited around the world. Despite hydrological causes and the effects of global climate change, groundwater governance has an essential role to play in causing or preven...
There exist common-pool resource systems where it is difficult to prevent prospective beneficiaries from receiving profits from the use or harvest of shared resources, and they are often subject to continual utilization, leading to resource degradati...
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