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Contested Common Land

Environmental Governance Past and Present

By: Christopher P. Rodgers (Editor), Eleanor Straughton (Editor), Angus J.L. Winchester (Editor), Margherita Pieraccini (Editor)

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eText | 6 August 2012 | Edition Number 1

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This innovative and interdisciplinary book makes a major contribution to common pool resource studies. It offers a new perspective on the sustainable governance of common resources, grounded in contemporary and archival research on the common lands of England and Wales - an important common resource with multiple, and often conflicting, uses. It encompasses ecologically sensitive environments and landscapes, is an important agricultural resource and provides public access to the countryside for recreation.

Contested Common Land brings together historical and contemporary legal scholarship to examine the environmental governance of common land from c.1600 to the present day. It uses four case studies to illustrate the challenges presented by the sustainable management of common property from an interdisciplinary perspective - from the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, North Norfolk coast and the Cambrian Mountains. These demonstrate that cultural assumptions concerning the value of common land have changed across the centuries, with profound consequences for the law, land management, the legal expression of concepts of common 'property' rights and their exercise. The 'stakeholders' of today are the inheritors of this complex cultural legacy, and must negotiate diverse and sometimes conflicting objectives in their pursuit of a potentially unifying goal: a secure and sustainable future for the commons.

The book also has considerable contemporary relevance, providing a timely contribution to discussion of strategies for the implementation of the Commons Act of 2006. The case studies position the new legislation in England and Wales within the wider context of institutional scholarship on the governance principles for successful common pool resource management, and the rejection of the 'tragedy of the commons'.

Industry Reviews

'Chris Rodgers and his co-authors have brought together important research...They show that 'modernizing' common law institutions that evolved over time can change ownership rights and duties in unexpected ways. For sustainability questions we have to study more systems over time as this important collection of studies illustrates.' Elinor Ostrom, Indiana University, USA, and joint Winner of the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences 2009 'Contested Common Land exemplifies collaborative, multi-disciplinary landscape research at its finest: field and archival, contemporary and historical, comparative and local, scholarly and publically engaged. Both rigorous and imaginative, the book shines a new light on English and Welsh commons and the landscape more widely. The project team reveal their rich and remarkably resilient history as a working country in the face of periodical challenges, with the capacity for a new lease of life in a wider, international, world concerned with sustainability. With complementary expertise, the authors show that common land is a topical as well as traditional place, a diverse and dynamic social and environmental resource, a repository of complex uses and values, a living landscape that demands careful cultural appreciation as well as effective conservation and practical management.' Stephen Daniels, Director, AHRC Landscape and Environment programme, UK