February 2011 Commentary: Commoning, the action verb

While I had traveled to India previously on GEM business, it was my first experience in Hyderabad, which is in the process of building a new modern city miles from the traditional urban core. At the invitation of my friend Jagdeesh Puppala Rao, executive director of the Foundation for Ecological Security, a long-standing GEM partner working on sustainable rural livelihoods and landscapes in India, I participated last month in the 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons. This year the theme was “Sustaining Commons: Sustaining the Future” and was held in Hyderabad. Over 500 delegates were in attendance, with the keynoter being Nobel Prize winning economist, Elinor Ostrom. A stimulating event, here I attempt to share some emergent ideas I found interesting.