On 7th December 1972, Harrison Schmitt took an image of the Earth from Apollo 17 on its way to the Moon that has become one of the most reproduced images in history. For the first time, people saw our common home as a fragile, vulnerable planet in a vast universe. The image has been utilised by the environmental movement to promote a sense of shared responsibility, which now seems an increasingly distant dream as authoritarian dictators fight over control of crumbling resources.
Of course, it has rarely been a common home. Elites have sought to control the land and exploit the majority for as long as history has been recorded and beyond. Now, however, the risks from those drives for domination, combined with a rapidly warming world, are accelerating as democratic constraints are dismantled.
This issue explores a bottom-up response to this predicament: commoning, taking control into our own hands to reinforce and rediscover our potential to do it for ourselves, rather than being passive victims of commerce, broligarchs, and dictators. To build our own commoning spaces.
Guy Standing views commoning as a new, powerful political movement, Samantha Power explains how she supports the creation of vibrant bioregions, and David Bollier discusses the possibilities of creating islands of coherence in a complex and dangerous world.
David Barkin finds hope in the growing prominence of indigenous movements in the Global South, Lynne Davis explores how solidarity could counter fear in the Global North, and Dil Green considers what is essential for commoning to live.
J. Mark Dodds outlines how to save our pub commons, Maisie McCarthy sees potential for more radical change in the demise of ESG, and Guy Standing warns of the dangers of Trump’s assault on the sea commons.
Sofia Casas warns of the emergence of another shade of greenwashing in Brazil’s promotion of bioeconomies at COP30, Jia-Ren Jan charts how elites are plundering the fruits of family farms in Malaysia and beyond and I propose that club economics is a better framework than commodity economics for landscape regeneration.
Wolfram Elsner explains how economics needs to stop ignoring institutional evolution, and Anders Hayden warns of the vulnerability of the concept of Wellbeing Economies to cooption.
Last but not least, our regular columnist, Frances Coppola, looks to the Bible for lessons in authoritarian emergence and our guest columnist, Miss Ettie Kett, looks for lessons in picnics.
This encourages you to consider getting involved in commoning.
