Common Property Regimes: Taking a Closer Look at Resource Access, Authorization, and Legitimacy

Green appropriations through shifting contours of authority and property on a pastoralist commons

“…3 The literature on legal and institutional pluralism acknowledges the multiple, overlapping normative orders and sources of authority that often characterize rural spaces, particularly in contexts shaped by post-colonial histories and the neoliberal present (Chiba 2002;von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 2006). The growing recognition of the role of non-governmental agencies and normative orders shaped by development and conservation projects (Fuys, Mwangi, and Dohrn 2010;West 2006) adds complexity to the more longstanding recognition of overlapping customary, religious, state and international legal regimes among scholars of legal pluralism. These overlapping normative systems shape the pathways through which individuals and groups gain access to, and seek to legitimize claims to, natural resources in places characterized by plural normative orders -engaging in 'forum shopping' to appeal to the authority they perceive to be most supportive of their interests or claims (von Benda-Beckmann 1981).…”

Rights to Land, Forests and Carbon in REDD+: Insights from Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica

“…This distinction between formally sanctionable property rights and informal relations around natural resource management is important because, on the one hand, it recognizes that property is only property if socially legitimate institutions sanction it, and politico-legal institutions are only effectively legitimized if their interpretation of social norms is heeded [14]. On the other hand, it underscores the fact that other forms of accessing and benefitting from natural resources transcend formal property rights and may rely on other forms of authority and legitimacy [15].…”

Commoning: on the social organisation of the commons

“…A large body of studies have demonstrated the significance of commonly held resources to rural lives and livelihoods (e.g. Agrawal, 2002;Fuys et al, 2008;Ostrom, 1990Ostrom, , 2010. Not only do the commons persist, but in some conditions, they provide efficient and sustainable ways of managing resources.…”

“…As de Angelis argues, the process of capital accumulation is one of constant enclosure, a process that seeks to 'forcibly separate people from whatever access to social wealth they have which is not mediated by competitive markets and money as capital ' (de Angelis, 2007: 144). All over the world, peasants and indigenous populations continue to be expelled from land and deprived of access to natural resources through legal and illegal means (Fuys et al, 2008;Harvey, 2011). As a result, the increasing masses of the dispossessed have to rely on market exchange and to sell their labour for a wage.…”

“…However these acts of 'dispossession' (Harvey, 2003) have not gone uncontested and people have fought to defend and reclaim their commons (e.g. Fuys et al, 2008;Goldman, 1998;Nonini, 2006;Scharper and Cunningham, 2006). There is a myriad of communities across the world struggling to reclaim or keep access to water, electricity, land or social wealth (Midnight Notes Collective, 2009).…”