Common Land in Western Europe: Anachronism or Opportunity for Sustainable Rural Development?

Abstract

"The material and metaphorical territory of the common land has been struggled over for centuries. Various attempts to de-valorise and re-valorise the commons -both past and present - have cultivated a paradoxical and generally unresolved tension between common land as anachronism and as valuable resource. The purpose of this paper is to disentangle some of these mixed messages about commons, and the issues they raise for contemporary management, by drawing on examples of two different types of common land in a contemporary UK context. The problems that commons currently face in adapting to the pressures of a countryside where agricultural production is no longer the overriding objective are discussed with reference to common land in both the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and the Lake District in England. Exploring in particular the disparity between the declining use of common land, and their potential contribution to sustainable rural development, this paper investigates what stands in the way of common land producing greater social, economic and environmental benefits, and highlights efforts made at a local level to meet these challenges."