Event

Our Common Land

Who owns the land? Is land a commodity or a common? Are we all sharing the surface of the earth? How can we think global, act local when it comes to sharing natural resources (land) in a fair way?

This evening we will draw from examples from the practice to see how we can govern land as a commons, exploring what possibilities and complexities arise. First Henry Mentink (Ecovillage Network NL) will talk about sharing the whole world as a common. What does this mean for our attitude towards the planet? Then we will scale down and explore local initiatives that work towards create common used heath farms and pastures, when we give the word to Martin Woestenburg from the Heideboerderij Foundation.

Henry Mentink is chair of the Ecovillages Network The Netherlands and initiator of the innovation centre het Veerhuis (www.veerhuis.nl). Henry collaborates with investors to buy up land to create free space for ecovillages to settle on. Also he will explain his ideology of seeing the whole world as a commons and retrieving the earth from the stock market, making it a common good instead of a private good. On the 20th of March he will start with an action to put the whole earth on the UNESCO World Heritage List. You can read more about that here: https://www.veerhuis.nl/aarde

Martin Woestenburg from the Heideboederij (heath farm) foundation will talk about their efforts to create collaborations between land owners and different stakeholders to create common used heather land and pastures. In creating these commons, they follow the design principles of Elinor Ostrom. At the event, we will explore how the development of land commons works out in practice. Here you can read more about the Heideboerderij foundation: https://www.wur.nl/en/project/To-a-heath-farm-and-a-new-commons-for-the-Sallandse-Heuvelrug.htm

Earlier this year in January OtherWise organised an event about different theories on commons. We invited two speaker from the Utrecht University to talk about the politics of commons and how we can prevent a tragedy of the commons to occur using the design principles of Elinor Ostrom. On the 27th of March we give the stage to commons-creators, illustrating how the commons theory can be put into practice.