(cc yeowatzup, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany)
John Powell and Chris Short are travelling to the beautiful medieval city centre of Utrecht in the Netherlands for the 16th Biennial Global conference ‘Practicing the commons: Self-governance, cooperation, and institutional change’ of The International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC).
The conference takes place between 10th to 14th July and is expected to attract over 600 participants from all over the world: academics, practitioners, and others interested in the field of commons, common-pool resources, and cooperatives.
Whilst the conference will focus on examples from all over the world, conference themes have been developed around the experiences of the Dutch people in managing their natural environment and resources through collaboration and the development of cooperative institutions, key elements of any approach to commons governance.
The conference themes will enable participants to explore a wide range of issues associated with commons governance, including the following:
Resilience and cooperation
Exclusion and control in the formation and governance of commons
Methods and models to study the commons
Polycentric governance of global resources
Relationships between corporations, governments, and commons
Keynote speakers from all around the world will be giving presentations throughout the conference week. In addition, a number of excursions have been organised to explore commons management in practice.
John and Chris will be publishing new blogs during the conference in Utrecht, which you can follow on our blogs section of our website.
John Powell is the current president of the IASC, which is the world’s leading professional organization for the interdisciplinary study of commons, common-pool resources, and other resources that are (or could be) held or used collectively by communities, both in developing and developed countries. The association is devoted to understanding and improving institutions for the management and governance of such resources. Become a member of the IASC.
John and Chris, together with Kate Ashbrook (Open Spaces Society), recently published a collection of blog posts and other writings associated with attending and organising international IASC conferences which can be downloaded for FREE.
The CCRI also offers a series of online short courses covering different aspects of commons management. New dates have just been set for Managing our Common Resources and From source to sea – the governance of water resources. Details can be found on the relevant web pages, but if you need any further information please do not hesitate to contact the course administrator, Carol Markey, on cmarkey@glos.ac.uk
