Kenya’s constitution of 2010 provides for recognition, protection, and registration of community land. This is significant because it recognizes customary tenure after decades of historical bias towards private property and brings to the fore the uniqueness of the African commons. We revisit the debate on managing communal land by reviewing the process of implementation of the Community Land. The paper is based on a review of the legal framework, discussions on the implementation of the Community Land Act and authors interaction with communities through workshops.

Crop genetic resources constitute a ‘new’ global commons, characterized by multiple layers of activities of farmers, genebanks, public and private research and development organizations, and regulatory agencies operating from local to global levels. This paper presents sui generis biocultural community protocols that were developed by four communities in Benin and Madagascar to improve their ability to contribute to, and benefit from, the crop commons.

In the midst of global change uncertainties, Indonesian spatial planning authorities are developing 20-year strategies. However, the lack of collaborative engagement of stakeholders and unclear methodology around using futures studies in addressing land management undermine such plans and affect environmental governance. A crucial question is how to link a future-oriented process with governance transformation processes, particularly related to land-use planning and management.

A lack of information about the living customary systems that manage commons in Madagascar hampers efforts to identify the levels at which collectivities charged with allocating land and enforcing land claims should receive legal recognition. To help address this knowledge gap and inform ongoing legal reforms aimed at recognizing collective tenure, we reviewed relevant legal texts and field studies of Malagasy tenure systems.

Local commons are underutilized in resource management models, thus limiting the effectiveness of the commons concept. This study examined the actual situation of the local commons in Altanbulag soum, a suburb of Ulaanbaatar City, Mongolia, where land degradation is a concern, using the case study method. Interviews using semi-structured questionnaires were conducted with pastoralists. It investigated land use and pastoralists’ relationships to open-access summer pastures, summer camp selection, grazing practice, and acceptance of migrants.

The Franks Tract State Recreation Area (Franks Tract) is an example of a complex contemporary park mired in ecological and socio-political contestation of what it is and should be. Located in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, it is a central hub in California’s immense and contentious water infrastructure; an accidental shallow lake on subsided land due to unrepaired levee breaks; a novel ecosystem full of ‘invasive’ species; a world-class bass fishing area; and a water transportation corridor.

Public spaces are believed to make cities more liveable, healthy and socially equal. To date, discussions about public spaces have primarily revolved around emblematic types, such as squares and parks, while little attention has been paid to cemeteries. Drawing on a review of public space scholarship and cemetery research, an analysis of strategies for cemetery development in two Scandinavian capitals, Oslo and Copenhagen, and interviews with stakeholders, this paper elaborates on the cemetery as a special type of public space.

This Special Issue contributes to the debate that land grabbing should be discussed as commons grabbing [...]

Pastoralism faces diverse challenges, that include, among others, land tenure insecurity, that has necessitated the need to formalize land rights. Some governments have started regularizing rights for privately owned land, but this is complex to implement in pastoral areas where resources are used and managed collectively. Our aim was to assess how the scale of communal land tenure recognition in pastoralist systems may affect tradeoffs among objectives such as tenure security, flexibility, mobility, and reduction of conflicts.

The topic of large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) has attracted wide interest in the literature and the media. However, there is little work on the gendered institutional changes and gendered impacts on common pool resources (CPR) due to LSLA. The aim of this paper is to address these impacts.

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Effective altruism is an ethical framework for identifying the greatest potential benefits from investments. Here, we apply effective altruism concepts to maximize research benefits through identification of priority stakeholders, pathosystems, and research questions and technologies.