Collaborative governance includes the variety of methods, strategies and knowledge necessary to work together to protect, nurture and create our commons. It includes approaches like “Collective Impact”, a method for creating systemic change, deep dialog and deep democracy processes for inclusive decision making, the use of cooperatives and mutuals in ensuring equity and trust for a community, facilitation processes that support collective intelligence and diagnosis of shared issues and challenges, and a number of other processes in a variety of contexts that allow us to protect, maintain and generate that which we mutually depend on for our survival and wellbeing. The need for collaborative governance arises when we must protect our shared commons – what we mutually depend on for our survival and wellbeing.
Commons exist in many shapes and forms. Nobel Prize winning economist Elinor Ostrom defined a commons as a shared resource such as grazing land, forests or river systems. In the domain of digital resources authors Michel Bauwens, Yochai Benkler and others talk about “commons based peer production”, the way in which contemporary digital communities (think Linux, Wikipedia, and the open source movement) co-produce shared and common value. In this regard open source knowledge, design and technology becomes a commons, something that is shared and a resource for all of humanity. Political scientist Susan Buck discussed the ideas of “global commons”, which are things which all people on the planet mutually depend on, such as healthy oceans and a safe climate. Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione developed the idea of the “urban commons”, the how citizens can share in the benefits and governance of a city.
In general a commons can be seen as something which a group of people mutually depend of for their survival and wellbeing. By virtue of their mutual interdependence with this commons, those people must form a community to govern this commons.
There are many other ways of seeing what a commons is. A good starting point are a series of books by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich:
Bollier, D., & Helfrich, S. (Eds.). (2014). The wealth of the commons: A world beyond market and state. Levellers Press.
Bollier, D., & Helfrich, S. (Eds.). (2015). Patterns of commoning. Commons Strategy Group and Off the Common Press.
Bollier, D. (2014). Think like a commoner: A short introduction to the life of the commons. New Society Publishers.
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