By sdohrn, published at 15 July 2008 - 3:09pm, last updated 6 weeks 1 day ago.

The IASC Conference started yesterday with a series of pre-conference workshops. One of them was on New Commons organized by Charlotte Hess. She was presenting an overview of academic work on 'new' commons - new in contrast to the traditional commons such as forests and rangelands, but also new because some resources are new of have never been looked at through a commons lense. The aim was to start a debate about defining 'commons'.

We tried to tease out some characteristics of commons:
1. shared resource
2. vulnerable to enclosure, degradation, and social dilemmas
3. has to be managed
4. management/ governance requires collective action

Please chime in and let us know what you think. If you want to read more about this session, read a post Brad Lichtenstein at onthecommons.org.