Session 12. 5.

There is a rich tapestry of stories within Indigenous Knowledge (IK) that is crucial for the sustainable management of common-pool resources (CPR), particularly for Indigenous communities facing the challenges posed by climate change, land degradation, and the incorporation of IK into modern legal frameworks. This research brings to life these stories by exploring the Bedouin community's narratives and experiences in their self-determined management of common pastoral land in Jordan's Southern Badia.

A customized Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework is employed, emphasizing the significance of informal institutions within CPR management systems. By weaving together tales of hope, resilience, and traditional practices, this approach facilitates an exploration of how IK and community-based management strategies have cultivated ecological resilience, community autonomy, and social cohesion. For this presentation, we employ storytelling and visual media, including interviews with local Bedouin community members, with videos that can be shared during the presentation.

Furthermore, the study assesses the effectiveness of the Bedouins' collective management practices through the lens of Ostrom’s Design Principles (1990), which focus on the robustness and resilience of self-organized, Indigenous governance systems. Utilizing qualitative methods, including interviews and document analysis, and highlighting anecdotes and personal stories, this research examines the Bedouin community's informal institutions and governance structures in addressing environmental pressures and ensuring sustainable CPR use.

The findings highlight the importance of creating space for Indigenous communities to manage their own commons, recognizing the Bedouins' expertise in navigating environmental changes, considering that rangelands in Jordan were sustainable before the Bedouin sedentation projects in 1960. By sharing these stories through alternative means, such as storytelling, and presenting video interviews showcasing how such narratives can reach broader audiences and bring the everyday experiences of the Bedouin community to life.

The destruction of waterbodies in Delhi is a glaring consequence of institutionalized corruption and the failure of the legal system to uphold the rule of law. Despite clear legal precedents from the Courts in India mandating the protection of waterbodies as a paramount duty of the state, ongoing violations continue unchecked. Our evidence demonstrates that a urban village pond land is unlawfully used by the Delhi Government to construct a cultural center building, an act that directly contravenes these legal directives.

Shockingly, the Court remains indifferent to the destruction of this vital waterbody, accepting false submission by the Administration denying the existence of the pond. This is despite the fact that the government department, which sold the land to other department, has itself admitted that the land is a pond, though falsely labeling it as barren. Our investigation reveals clear evidence of green cover and fully grown trees that have now been destroyed by the contractor—a testament to the fact that this was not barren land, but an ecologically significant area. Yet, the court has chosen to side with bureaucratic misinformation, disregarding both the environmental importance of waterbodies and the rule of law. This case highlights the corruption and negligence that are eroding Delhi’s natural resources, while the judiciary turns a blind eye. It is time for urgent action to hold accountable those responsible for these illegalities and to restore our waterbodies before it is too late.

This Presentation illustrates the waterbodies spread across the Delhi that grew on village lands leaving the village commons excluded in city planning. Through GIS technology, they have been mapped to point out the uncomfortable truth that unfolded in a village that now the government wants to bury about commons. A phenomenon that is ensuing in villages exposed to urban transformation in India.

"Come…let me tell you a story."
These are the happiest words a child can hear. As children, stories opened a world of imagination; they made us dream. Into adulthood we may have continued to read—over a cup of coffee or snuggled into bed.

Today as academics, we write, but mainly in peer-reviewed journals. But, don’t we have stories to tell too about our research? As someone who loves and believes in the transformative potential of a well-told story, we wanted to explore how we could use stories to make our research more accessible—and impactful.

Trees in cities of the Global South are urban commons supporting multiple ecosystem services. In our research on trees in Indian cities we have seen the important role they play from addressing the urban heat, as a source of food, and of sacred significance for city residents. Our research has been published in peer-reviewed journals—but we also wove stories about trees.

In “Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities” (Penguin Viking, 2019) we share recipes, games, and myths along with information on species and ecology. “So Many Leaves” (Pratham 2022), is an illustrated book on the fascinating world of leaves for young readers. “Where have all our gunda thopes gone?” is an illustrated multi-lingual story about the transformation of a wooded grove, an urban commons, to a landscaped park.

We wrote these stories hoping to reach out to a wider audience. Some have had an impact beyond what we imagined. The story about the groves was distributed across libraries in the state, as were worksheets for schoolteachers. An important impact was the government order passed requiring villages to protect and maintain the groves.

We would like to share ideas, challenges, and learn ways of writing ‘un’common stories about urban commons.

One of the biggest pillars for sustainable development is that of clean and just energy transitions, the achievement of which will have profound implications for many other sectors including health, education, and the general growth of cities. Yet energy access is also deeply complex intersecting with contemporary societal and systemic problems such as gendered societal divisions, and geopolitical contexts such as civil conflict, war, and genocide. Capturing the rawness of such experiences as well as the intersectionally situated power dynamics within these interactions is more effective through mediums that allow for such expression, sometimes more so than a traditional scientific paper. In this contribution, I explore these dynamics through a series of different verses all designed to unpack the question of "whose energy is it after all"? I base these verses on my own experiences and emotions while seeing, listening to, and engaging with community energy research in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mozambique through the CESET project which examines sustainable energy transitions in these countries.

Storytelling is an integral element of commons research, action and communication. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, designed by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues, provides a very apt but hitherto-unexplored way to create grounded storytelling. A story is a set of scenes, or action situations. Whether fiction or fantasy, imagined or real, IAD settings draw on elements of culture, geography, history, environment, climate, economy, society – and much more. Institutions, social-ecological settings, culture, and norms are the exogenous and endogenous variables that bring the story world to life, influencing individual and collective choices that create a compelling plot that showcases normative messages - without preaching. Drawing on my experiences as a commons researcher and novelist, I will discuss how writers and storytellers can outline stories as a collection of IAD action situations (scenes) to create a storytelling engine, with some examples.