The 2017 United Nations Climate Summit: Women Fighting for System Change and Building the Commons at COP23 in Bonn,Germany

ABSTRACT

This contribution presents a “commoning ecofeminist analysis” of the actions and perspectives of selected activists within Ende Gelände (Here and No Further), Idle No More, and La Vía Campesina (The Peasant’s Way) who are seeking system change as expressed at the 23^rd Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held 6–7 November 2017 in Bonn, Germany. The analysis finds that women’s struggles for the commons, understood as cooperative control over the means of life, fundamentally challenge capitalist relations and affirm transformative alternatives. From this revolutionary potential, it follows that alliances, especially with those of Indigenous women and women of colour who are engaged in commoning, are crucial to making the epochal transition from ecocidal fossil capitalism to regenerative solar commoning.     

Beating the bounds: how does ‘open source’ become a seed commons?

In response to ongoing plant genetic enclosures, the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) is creating a ‘protected commons’ for seed. It is a project, I argue, that reflects characteristics of a growing transnational commoning movement. From the Zapatistas to seed wars, such movements draw attention to commons not simply as a resource, but as a dynamic and evolving social activity: commoning. In the US, OSSI includes 38 plant breeders, 48 seed companies and 377 crop varieties. Yet challenges remain for OSSI to gain wider legitimacy for ‘freed seed’, to build trust in a moral pledge, and to establish fair guidelines for which people and which seed can participate in making the commons. Using the metaphor of ‘beating the bounds’ – a feudal practice of contesting enclosures – I ask how OSSI defends the commons in intersecting arenas. The first way is legal, as OSSI negotiates a move from contract law toward moral economy law. Next is epistemic, as an informal breeder network revitalizes farmer knowledge, while proving more structurally able and culturally equipped to lead commoning efforts. Finally, I reflect on the nature of boundary beating itself, aided by Global South movements. Seed sovereignty perspectives suggest room for a pluriverse of commons to grow.     

Climate Change Policy Implementation: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

Why would countries invest resources to protect the global atmosphere, a global common‐pool resource? After all, this is an open‐access resource with no restrictions on appropriating its benefits. Furthermore, why would they do so under the aegis of a weak global regime (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC) that has virtually no provisions for sanctioning noncompliance and when the largest contributor to the problem is not participating in the regime? This article examines why a number of countries have implemented the UNFCCC. I hypothesize that countries implement UNFCCC because they corner domestic environmental benefits, namely reduction in local pollution. In my empirical analysis of 127 countries, employing an ordinal logistic regression model, I find that local air pollution is associated with higher levels of implementation of the UNFCCC. Thus, I conclude that the incentives to implement a relatively weak global regime can be found in the domestic political economy.     

Investments in Global Warming Mitigation: The Case of “Activities Implemented Jointly”

This paper examines bilateral cooperation between developed countries (home country) and developing countries (host country) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to enhance carbon dioxide sinks. With the home-host country pair as the unit of analysis, our logistic regression model examines 158 Activities Implemented Jointly (AIJ) investment projects from 1993 until 2002 across 2541 country-pairs. Because the marginal costs of reducing emissions may be lower in developing countries, the AIJ projects served as a policy laboratory to assess whether such investments might be advantageous to both countries in the event future regimes allowed emission credits from such bilateral projects. Instead of investing in home countries where maximum pollution reductions (or carbon sequestration) might be possible, home countries invest in locations where they can conduct their policy experiments at low transaction costs. Prior trade and aid relationships were used as a proxy. Regarding energy projects, location decisions are driven by home countries’ desire to reduce air pollution that they receive from abroad. Geography – proximity of a host country to a home country – in interaction with host country's coal production, is a very important driver of location decision in AIJ energy sector projects. Location of sequestration projects is impacted by the host country's potential for avoiding deforestation as well as by previous aid and trade patterns between a home and a host country. Proximity is not important in this case.     

创建“养护者受益”环保法基本原则

“公地的悲剧”自英国的“圈地运动”始得以有效遏制,而保持公地基本制度下的环境保护也仍然在赋予公民无可辩驳的义务与责任之中持续着各种形式的环保投资,可实践证明形式的多样性和不啬资财并未能有效地阻止自然生态环境的持续恶化。究其根源,无不与公地基本制度和法律层面除私有化之外,一直没有公地独特的接纳或认可私权内在的权义对等所需求的基本原则和制度有关。在市场经济条件下,承认并保护公地之上私人为环保所付出劳动和养护投入所获得的权益至关重要,为此,拟创设“养护者受益”环保法基本原则,来弥补公地自然生态环境保护忽视私权关怀之严重缺陷,以期阻止“公地的悲剧”的延续。     

Bounding the Commons: Land Demarcation in Northeastern Nicaragua

In north-eastern Nicaragua, territorial titling of communal lands conflates particular notions of ethnicity with proprietary conceptions of space to generate new forms of conflict within and between indigenous and black communities, and with mestizo migrants. Notions of rights between competing groups, or within conflicting normative frameworks, become increasingly polemic during demarcation. While analysis of three land titling case studies demonstrates that results are socially contingent and place based, trends include: (a) power disparities; (b) tension between 'traditional' and 'modern' patterns of land tenure and resource rights; and (c) contradictions fed by international conservation agendas and neoliberal economic reforms. Combining critical actor-based analysis with practical policy critique our work illuminates how contestations over the bounding of communal territories contribute to social injustice.     

Remunicipalization in German cities: contesting neo-liberalism and reimagining urban governance?

After two decades of widespread privatization, German municipalities have started to re-purchase privatized companies. At the same time, social movements are campaigning for remunicipalization, promoting it as a means of achieving greater urban democracy, though these objectives are often divergent from those of municipalities concerned with reasserting local state autonomy. With reference to Berlin, the paper discusses how remunicipalization campaigns might contribute to post-neo-liberal urban governance. It presents a preliminary frame for developing progressive remunicipalization movements centred on three elements of contestation: rejection of neo-liberalism; connection to other and broader struggles; and commoning as an alternative form of urban governance.     

Comment on Franz Von Benda-Beckmann, “anthropological approaches to property law and economics”

This comment deals with criticisms of law and economics analysis as they can be formulated from the point of view of an anthropologist. These criticisms are taken seriously. The author first addresses so-called defects of law and economics analysis which should be considered underdeveloped areas of the approach. Secondly, and more specifically, weaknesses of the property rights approach are taken up. In the author's view, they should be dealt with in future law and economics work. Finally, methodological issues are being addressed which, if not considered with circumspection, could impair the scientific integrity of the law and economics approach.     

Democracy,children, and the environment: a case for commons trusts

This essay argues that our unsustainable degradation of the natural environment violates fundamental, democratic obligations to children. I argue, first, that obligations to children are clearer and more determinate than obligations to future generations. I then argue that our democratic obligations to children alone, which can be derived from a theoretically modest, procedural conception of democracy, demand substantial institutional reforms. Finally, I propose that commons trusts – which have received very little attention in the theoretical literature – are the best way of meeting these obligations.