Context: Various events that have occurred in 2020 so far such as the pandemic, record-breaking forest fires, floods and droughts in various places, and the rapid melting of Arctic ice are majorly due to the disruption of the environment.

• These events point towards the need to increase efforts in managing interactions with the environment on a global scale.

Global Commons

• ‘Global Commons’ refers to resource domains or areas that lie outside of the political reach of any one nation State.
• They are shared resources that cannot be managed within national jurisdictions.
• It is a term typically used to describe international, supranational, and global resource domains in which common-pool resources are found.
• Global commons include the earth’s shared natural resources, such as the high oceans, the atmosphere and outer space and the Antarctic in particular.
• Cyberspace may also meet the definition of a global commons.

Governing shared resources

• For the management of shared resources, there is a need to balance both private and public interests.
• For example: Each individual farmer may benefit from turning on the pump to irrigate his/her land, but on a larger scale, it contributes to declining groundwater levels and electricity blackouts.
• The spread of zoonotic diseases like COVID-19; greenhouse gas emissions; biodiversity reduction; overfishing; and the accumulation of plastic waste are some of the problems within the scope of global commons.

Challenges

• The insights of what kind of governance might be successful at the local community level do not directly address the challenges we face on a global scale.
• The consequences of human activities on a global scale are only being recognised in recent times.
• The appropriate scale of governance of global commons is a highly debated topic.
• Some argue that top-down governance with binding agreements is the only effective solution for problems of a global scale.
• Multilateral negotiations on climate change and other global commons over decades have had limited success.
• Others have emphasised a more decentralised multi-level or polycentric approach that builds on the observed successes of local solutions.
• Empirical research demonstrates that well-intended solutions imposed on community members are typically short-lived.

Road Ahead

• There is no panacea to solve this problem. Coordinated activities at different scales are needed to address the challenges in managing the global commons.
• To manage our global commons, there is a need to facilitate and accommodate the self-governance of local commons, but provide safeguards at different levels to avoid exploitation and manage risks.
• When rural and urban communities are allowed to self-govern their shared resources, there could be risks involved for which cities and nations need to accept responsibilities.
• At the local levels, initiatives and solutions could be developed that fit the local context.
• When expertise is not available, higher-level organisations could facilitate learning from peers in similar conditions.
• Failures will be inevitable when local-level experimentation is simulated, and higher-level authorities need to provide insurance for those cases.
• If local initiatives are successful, higher-level authorities need to ensure that the outcomes of those successes will not be grabbed by outsiders.