Seventy percent of the land in the town of Leitza in the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Iberia is held in common by all the citizens of Leitza. The landscape of this mountain valley has been a commons, as the commoners say, “since time immemorial.: The Law of Commons regulates the use of pasture, forests, farmland, hunting blinds, and other common goods. This panel looks not only at the effectiveness of the commons as sustainable for resource management, but just as important at the effect of the law on the valley’s ecology. Preservation of the land has helped preserve Basque cultural practices like competitive axe cutting and annual bird hunts. It has also maintained a large collection of ancient beech and oak trees, many of which were once pollarded. The survival of this landscape now has attracted an international community to study and practice the preservation and revitalization of these ancient woodlands. In addition, citizens of Leitza have used common land to create a new arboretum. We will contrast this township with several in nearby Gipuzkoa, where such land types were largely converted to conifer plantations.
The panel will analyze the Laws of the Commons in Leitza, tracking changes in the law over time. It will assess and review the effect of the law on restraining ecologically damaging uses of the land, and will look at how the law in enforced. Above all, it will examine the cultural and ecological value of a system that makes all the citizens watchful over the character and health of the place where they live. It will look at how international participation on the land has not vitiated the place of this commons, but rather informed and enlarged its ability to preserve and renew the forests and fields.
