Unnikrishnan, Hita

The state plays an indispensable role in policy-making to govern the commons, collective action, and formal and informal institutions in postcolonial societies. To overcome socio-ecological crises, the state uses public policy as a tool to manage and govern the commons, thereby often limiting citizens’ capacity to access these commons.

In the analysis of interactions between state, citizens, and non-state actors in policy processes, the role of power is emerging as an important factor in understanding these complex set-ups. Explicit considerations of power may reveal underlying colonial continuities, entrenched power asymmetries, and persisting inequalities that cut across social, economic, and political arenas and affect the decision-making processes and institutions under investigation. However, emerging approaches to conceptualising power are yet to find broad application in policy and institutional anlyses.

In this panel, we invite contributions that draw on postcolonial, decolonial, and subaltern theorizations or framings to integrate critical reflections on power in their public policy analysis of commons governance.

Papers in this panel question assumptions about the nature of goods and social dilemmas in commons. They explore how variations in interdependence may influence environmental governance. Rather than intrinsic, dichotomous, or fixed types of goods; variation in uses, users, and interdependence, and how institutions deal with these, can shape the excludability, subtractability, and indivisibility of environmental goods and the potential for conflict and cooperation. Rather than a few symmetric static social dilemmas, interdependence may be better understood as diverse, dynamic, mostly asymmetric, and involving various forms of power. Unpacking the complexity of power in social-ecological systems requires going beyond typical social dilemma models to develop a better typology of how power influences the dynamics and outcomes of social-ecological systems, and their governability. This panel will invite participant questions and present brief provocations to stimulate conversations about going beyond conventional conceptions of commons to better understand environmental governance in contexts of heterogeneous interests, asymmetric situations, and power dynamics. Additional paper proposals related to the panel topics are invited and the scope of the abstract and panel session may be adjusted accordingly.

Public health dilemmas and associated institutional arrangements have always been at the forefront of driving transformations within urban commons. Examples of these transformations have historically included dramatic changes in the distribution, property rights bundles, and governance of urban blue and green commons in response to diseases such as cholera, malaria, and plague. For instance, several water bodies in colonial India and elsewhere were covered and built over responding to experiences with both cholera and malaria. In more recent times, successive waves of COVID-19 have seen the opening and closing of various urban commons in direct relation to changing knowledge about how the virus manifested. Accordingly, the first wave of the pandemic was characterised by stringent restrictions and lockdowns affecting access to open spaces such as lakes, forests and parks, while the second wave was characterised by the opening up of these very spaces for newer activities. Yet, despite the prominent role played by public health in shaping urban commons, there is a paucity of knowledge about the mechanisms driving these transformations and their impact on already politicised and gendered spaces. Through this panel we wish to invite contributions that explore this underrepresented dimension of urban commons research.

There is a rich diversity of scientific and practitioner-based literature that tell tales of diverse commons – from cities to forests, and from earth to space. Scientific analyses and practitioner experiences analyse these cases we study through particular viewpoints and present them through traditional academic writing or reports. However, these accounts often leave out such interesting anecdotes that truly bring the everyday in those spaces to life. There are stories of hope, of despair, of times long gone, of heroism and valour, and of actors whose deeds are so clumsy or colourful that they just beg to be told!

Such stories can only be told through alternative means such as storytelling or verse which reveal yet more dimensions of the commons under investigation. They describe commons in novel ways and offer enormous potential to reach broader audiences. In this un-conference panel, we wish to both draw on our own experiences in writing verse, short stories, novels, and illustrated books around the commons as well as invite anyone who wishes to tell new stories about their own cases. By necessity, the panel will follow an un-conference format and involve activities such as reading compositions and co-creating new stories and/or verses.