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Abstract:
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"Far from being a relic of the past, there is an increasing consensus in England and Wales that common land holds an important message for the future. Whilst the traditional economic function concerning agriculture is in decline there is wide spread recognition that a common land is to be valued for different reasons, namely nature conservation, heritage, landscape and the link between society and nature. Within England and Wales, as in many other places, commons have been excluded from the productivist policies of the past 50 years. Short and Winter have argued that commons experienced a 'constrained productivism' (Short and Winter 1999) that struggles to be incorporated into policy (Short 2000). As a consequence, just when policy seems to be moving into a 'post-productivist' phase with the changes to the Common Agricultural Policy and an acceptance that agriculture is multi-functional rather than just for food production, commons provide a vision of what might be achieved through collective management and the incorporation of 'new' stakeholders. How these new stakeholders are incorporate is a crucial issue for the future of common land and has implications for the work in this area (McKean 1992 and Edwards 1996) and the defining characteristics of long-enduring common-pool resources (Ostrom 1990). For example, over half of all commons in England and Wales have a national designation because of their importance for nature conservation. In the case of heathland, common land alone accounts for over 40% of the national areas of lowland and upland heath habitats. Areas of common land also have a strong collation with designations for landscape and heritage and well as new areas of open access. As a result it is not the product arising from the CPR (e.g. grass or water) that is being valued but the CPR itself. Far from attempting to privatise the commons, national government and agencies now support legislation that will sustain and renew the collective approaches into the twenty-first century. Their interest is partly a result of both over and under use of the products from the common. The level of under use is growing and this trend has major implications for commons generally and is replicated in other developed countries such as Japan (Nakashima 2003). This paper will analyse a number of schemes in areas such as the New Forest, the lowland commons in England and those in upland areas such as Cumbria to see what insights they offer to long- enduring commons in advanced countries and their sustainable management."
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