EDFix Call #9 Afterthoughts: Reconnecting with The Commons

An archaic German word — allmände — refers to goods used jointly by members of a community. This call was an exploration of such goods with German Commons activist Silke Helfrich.

Five years ago, Helfrich helped organize a conference in Mexico that brought together experts in agriculture, biodiversity, genetics and more. An Argentine participant asked about folding in the concepts of open source software, precipitating a useful discussion about Common Pool Resources and their governance (you may remember CPRs from EDFix #5, with Charlotte Hess).

Three notions bubbled out of those conversations, relative to these shared resources: access, usage rights and control. The culture of open source software gives everyone the right to read, write and use the code. Why was that kind of governance not happening with land, water, seeds and other resources needed for biodiversity? Duke professor James Boyle and others have described what's happened to The Commons as a second enclosure movement.

During the first Enclosure movement, many physical Commons were replaced with private landholdings, but often with some loopholes to soften the blow. For example, the Magna Carta has a little-known companion document, the Charter of the Forest, which gave commoners access to enclosed lands for firewood, grazing their pigs and a little more. Historian Peter Linebaugh has a marvelous, slow-burning talk about this forgotten charter.

This quick historical background is a platform for Helfrich's thesis: that we have become accustomed to delegating responsibility for these Commons to the State or the Market, and we need to regain the capacity to talk about The Commons and re-engage in its governance.

Our earlier call with Charlotte Hess taught us that the people closest to a Commons are most likely to understand how to govern it. Helfrich believes we need to share our knowledge better, so people are better equipped to make wise governance choices. We also need to make some important vocabulary distinctions. One she finds critical is between property, which is permanent (until sold or transferred), and possession, which is temporary.

What Governments and the Market will do depends largely on what society honors and rewards. Is the best company the one with the most patents, or the one that creates the most good with its innovations? (Think GreenXchange, from EDFix Call #6.) How, asks Helfrich, do we change the reward system?

Commoning is not easy. It takes time and patience. There's no panacea. Each solution will be different, but the core notions are the same. Commoning is a social process that can reconnect the relevant stakeholders in ways that are beneficial in the long term.

Many foundations, institutions and research centers are changing how they handle intellectual property, but Commoning doesn't fit comfortably into most of their charters. One useful step forward would be to reexamine their charters and missions to incorporate these ways of seeing and acting.