Welcome to an emerging community of practice & work in progress.

Commons & commoning

- resources that belong & are governed in common

World Heritage Catalysis sets out to explore how commons and the practice commoning could improve practice and contribute towards a regenerative development paradigm. 

The following allows you to explore the extensive and growing efforts, practices and scholarship on the commons and commoning. See also cooperatives and community currencies.

The commons are the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values (social practice) employed for a governance mechanism. Commons (or 'commoning') can be also defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates. (Ostrom; Wikipedia)

Commons and commoning are integral to human development and the emergence of civilizations, and include practices today recognised as World Heritage. Acknowledging the wealth and transformational power in indigenous wisdom and collaborative practices, World Heritage Catalysis build upon the later work of Elinor Ostrom (1933 - 2012) who in 2009 was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for her groundbreaking work on the governance of common property, and subsequent contributions.

Scholarship & research

Podcasts

Inspirational efforts

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