Billier on the commons v. enclosure

It’s an encouraging sign that the language of the commons and enclosure is gaining momentum internationally.  This should not be a surprise.  Enclosure is one of the great, unacknowledged scandals of our time.

One of the worst sets of enclosures is the international land grab that is now underway in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  Investors, national governments and speculators are buying up millions of acres of farmlands.  Saudi Arabia is spending $1 billion for huge tracts in Africa for rice cultivation.  India and China are assembling investment pools to buy up farmlands.  Much of this land is customary land  managed as commons.  Hundreds of millions of rural poor use have used these lands for generations for subsistence.   But because they don't have formal property rights -- the government or corporations do – they are powerless.

And to justify the appropriations, the commons are called “wastelands” or “unowned” lands.  This harks back to John Locke’s definitions of property and value.  Because commoners use their lands in ecologically sustainable ways, without the exploitation and extraction that markets typically use, the lands are considered without value.  Investors who bring the land into a system of market control – say, for monoculture farming or biofuels production – are supposedly “developing” the land.  This is how language misleads us about the real meaning of value.

One of the most infamous enclosures occurred in Bolivia.  We just heard earlier about the infamous attempt to privatize water in Cochabamba.  Even though the people prevailed, enclosures of water are still a worldwide phenomenal.

Read it at David Bollier — new and perspectives on the commons

Surveying Commons Activism on the International Stage

by David Bollier

h/t Energy Bulletin)

I bring this to attention because it is relevant to a developing trend destined to shape the future, which might be termed "global awakening."

The commons is a great sleeping giant – an unacknowledged superpower – if we consider the many transnational tribes of commoners.  Because they are not conventional institutions or nonprofits, their impact can be easy to overlook.  But consider these diverse movements and networks of people who may not be explicitly using commons language, but certainly share the core values and goals of commoners:  

• The Solidarity Economy movement, which is particularly strong in Brazil, Venezuela, Canada and Europe.

• The Transition Town movement

• Water activism

• The Landless Workers Movement / Via Campesino

• Free software/open source software, a well-established international network

• Creative Commons / free culture, which is active in more than 70 countries

• Wikipedians, who number in the tens of thousands in dozens of countries

• Open access publishing, which has more than 7,000 open access journals

• Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which features open courseware in more than 150 colleges and universities worldwide

• The Pirate Parties in more than two dozen countries

• The Occupy movementA great convergence of movements is going on, or at least robust cross-fertilization.  

Each movement has serious questions about conventional governance and politics, or is building its own alternatives to convention markets and government.  Each has different focal points and different tactics.  But there is a rough agreement on basic human values, political goals and a respect for the open, participatory ethic of the Internet.