Commons

The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately.

The definition from the Digital Library of the Commons is; "the commons is a general term for shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest".

The term "commons" derives from the traditional English legal term for common land, which are also known as "commons", and was popularised in the modern sense as a shared resource term by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in an influential 1968 article called The Tragedy of the Commons. As Frank van Laerhoven and Elinor Ostrom have stated; "Prior to the publication of Hardin’s article on the tragedy of the commons (1968), titles containing the words ‘the commons,’ ‘common pool resources,’ or ‘common property’ were very rare in the academic literature".

The examples below illustrate types of environmental commons.

Originally in medieval England the common was an integral part of the manor, and was thus legally part of the estate in land owned by the lord of the manor, but over which certain classes of manorial tenants and others held certain rights. By extension, the term "commons" has come to be applied to other resources which a community has rights or access to. The older texts use the word "common" to denote any such right, but more modern usage is to refer to particular rights of common, and to reserve the name "common" for the land over which the rights are exercised. A person who has a right in, or over, common land jointly with another or others is called a commoner.

In middle Europe, commons respectively small-scale agriculture in especially southern Germany, Austria and the alpine countries in general were kept, in some parts till the present. Some studies have compared the German and English dealings with the commons between the late medieval times and the agrarian reforms of the 18/19th century. The UK were quite radical with doing away and enclosing former commons, while southwestern Germany (and the alpine countries as e.g. Switzerland) had the most advanced commons structures and was much more willing to keep them. The Lower Rhine region took an intermediate position. However, the UK and the former dominons have till today a large amount of Crown land which often is used for community or conservation purposes.

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Wikipedia