Post date: Oct 21, 2012 3:58:36 AM
The phrases of the ‘global commons,’ ‘international commons,’ and ‘local commons’ had already come to be used since 1970s or 1980s. I bold these phrases in the following quotations.
The title of John C. G. Boot (1974)’s book contains the phrase ‘global commons,’ and he also argue on the population problem as following:
As mankind increases in numbers, our common globe is becoming a global commons. Just as an English farmer saw nothing wrong with adding an extra cow to the commons, so on Earthly family sees nothing wrong with adding an extra person to the globe. At the outset, or in sparsely settled regions, a new person may be to the solid advantage of the existing society as a whole. More people will permit a better division of labor and greater productivity. However, the population nearly always continues to increase until long after it has ceased to bestow a net advantage upon society as a whole. The model of the commons is at work (p. 28).
Or,
The real common enemy is population. The whole globe has the same and common interest here: to keep it within limits. This could be the rallying point of the rich who deplete and the poor who starve alike, helping each other and thereby themselves, and creating in the process one globe, common to all. Instead, we are creating a global commons. We are dirtying and exhausting the only nest we have. It is a sad state of affairs. It is prone to self-destruct. It is small solace that, as a statistical certainty, there are thousands of other globes wandering through the universe (p. 126).
The phrase of ‘international commons’ appears in a report of UNEP (1975):
7. Three respondents [the Governments of Sweden and Brazil and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe] attempt to define explicitly the type of shared natural resources that fall within the ambit of one General Assembly resolution in question. In the view of one Government [Sweden], the expression "natural resources common to two or more States" is susceptible of different interpretation. It may be taken to include the international commons such as the atmosphere of the earth, the existing climate and weather conditions, the resources of the sea and the sea-bed beyond national jurisdiction, Antarctica, and the existence of each and every species (p. 3).
Or,
86. The Executive Director has no difficulty in accepting the view that within the context of General Assembly resolution 3129 (XXVII), it might be preferable to deal with natural resources shared by a limited number of States, as opposed to the international commons that are the concern of all mankind, but feels that this should be interpreted as a matter of emphasis which should not exclude dealing with potentially significant threats to the commons (p. 40).
It is vague for me when the expression ‘local commons’ come to be used. Axel Sømme (1976) wrote as below, describing the history of the land register in Norway:
The transfer of ownership of the Geitsjødalen and two other privately owned properties has been proposed in order to give residents in local communities the same rights of use in new state or local commons as those prevailing in existing state commons (p. 112).
Indeed the phrase “local commons” appears here, but perhaps this may be counted as a part of rather “a state common and a local common” than “state commons and local ones,” distinguishing a singular ‘common’ from a plural ‘commons.’ At latest, Ivan Illich (1983) has come to use the phrase as a singular noun in the early 1980s, from his unique point of view:
Silence now ceased to be in the commons; it became a resource for which loudspeakers compete. Language itself was transformed thereby a local commons into a national resource for communication (p. 9).
Does there exist any text including the phrase ‘local commons’ between A. Sømme (1974) and I. Illich (1983) or before them?
REFERENCES
- Boot, John C. G. 1974 Common Globe or Global Commons: Population Regulation and Income Distribution, New York: Marcel Dekker.
- Illich, Ivan. 1983 “Silence is a Commons,” CoEvolution Quarterly Winter 1983: 5-9.
- Sømme, Axel. 1976 “Two rural mountain communities at the eastern border of Hardangervidda,” Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift = Norwegian Journal of Geography 30(3): 103-114.
- United Nations United Nations Environment Programme. 1975 ‘Co-operation in the Field of the Environment concerning Natural Resources Shared by Tow or More States,’ UNEP/GC/44.