INTRODUCTION
The Global Idea of ‘the Commons’
  Donald M. Nonini

What is now at stake at this point in world history is control over ‘the com-
mons’—the great variety of natural, physical, social, intellectual, and cultural
resources that make human survival possible. By ‘the commons’ I mean those
assemblages and ensembles of resources that human beings hold in common
or in trust to use on behalf of themselves, other living human beings, and past
and future generations of human beings, and which are essential to their bio-
logical, cultural, and social reproduction.1

  Various kinds of commons have long existed as viable and durable arrange-
ments for providing for the needs of human survival. This is best documented
in the case of natural-resource commons by a very large literature in human
ecology, political ecology, and policy studies, with hundreds of case studies of
long-term stable arrangements for the use of common-pool resources, such as
land, waterways and irrigation works, forest stands, fisheries, and game and
wild food plant catchment areas (Bromley et al. 1992; Dietz, Ostrom, and Stern
2003; National Research Council 1986; Ostrom 1990). This research shows that
Hardin’s (1968) supposed situation of the “tragedy of the commons,” in which
users compete with one another to appropriate commons resources, thus beg-
garing one another and so exhausting the commons, is far from inevitable.2
This is not to say that common-pool resources may not be depleted or that
commons do not come to an end, but that the outcome depends on social and
institutional arrangements. According to Ostrom et al. (1999: 278): “Although
tragedies have undoubtedly occurred, it is also obvious that for thousands
of years people have self-organized to manage common-pool resources, and
users often do devise long-term, sustainable institutions for governing these
resources.” It is particularly worth noting that when left to themselves, poor
people have worked out commons arrangements for sharing scarce resources
(e.g., coastal fisheries, highland irrigation water, unfarmed pasture lands)
essential to their survival, often in marginal ecological zones and in some
places for centuries (Cordell and McKean 1992; McKean 1992; Netting 1981;