Global Commons

Global commons is a term applied to environmental resources simultaneously used and shared by everyone on the planet but under the jurisdiction of no one. In particular, they are not owned by any one nation-state, nor under any single nation-state's jurisdiction, and therefore they are not subject to sovereign rule. Such environmental resources are perpetually at risk of overuse to the point where the collapse of the world's biosphere is a possibility. It is therefore often stated that there is a pressing need for high levels of cooperation between nations, indeed what amounts to global governance, to mitigate pervasive global environmental degradation.

Environmental resources and problems related to their degradation may be conceived as global in three ways. First, problems like climate change, ozone depletion, and overfishing may be said to affect all nations as they relate to environmental resources in the global commons, such as the world's atmosphere and oceans. Second, problems like oil spills, acid rain, and air pollution that cross state borders are global in the sense that although instances of them may be mostly regional, or even affect as few as two states, they are so pervasive in their incidence and impact that they may be said to be a global problem and therefore have a global commons dimension. Third, what seem to be purely national problems involving environmental resources that fall within state borders often have a global dimension because they arise in so many countries and are often driven by relations among them. For example, soil degradation, the destruction of tropical rain forests, and loss of biodiversity are [Page 634]problems occurring within national borders, yet their pervasiveness amounts to a global problem because the environmental heritage of humankind, or the global commons, is threatened.

It should be noted that only environmental resources in the first category are clearly, and unproblematically, in the global commons. Many authors dispute that the environmental resources in the other two categories are in the global commons at all. For example, Kate O'Neill labels issues in respect of them “transboundary” and “local-cumulative” rather than global. This is not purely a theoretical point either. For example, attempts to define the world's biodiversity as part of the global commons in the negotiations leading up to the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity raised the ire of biodiversity-rich states who feared international intervention in their right to exploit and manage resources within their own borders.

Even so, almost all environmental resources and problems may be conceived of as global, in either their scope or incidence. The interdependence between nations that characterizes globalization either exacerbates or causes environmental problems that threaten the sustainability of the world's ecosystems, so that local and national resources are increasingly becoming matters of global concern and therefore may be said to be at least partially in the global commons. For example, demand for tropical timbers in industrialized nations combined with the need for development in poorer ones is a key reason for the overexploitation of the world's rain forests. This is therefore a global commons issue because of the global political economy aspects of their exploitation and for the dependence of the world's atmosphere on their preservation. Global cooperation also seems necessary to address the problem.

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