John Powell and Chris Short from the CCRI have travelled to Japan for the 14th Global Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons.
John provided this post on the first day of the conference…
The IASC international conference kicked off in earnest today [Monday]. The registration desk was packed with delegates getting their conference packs and moving off to workshops. There are people from all over the world here and they are involved in a wide range of work. People are greeting old friends and striking up new acquaintances. Someone from Japan I met four years ago came up and had a chat, while in the hotel I met new people from Spain, Argentina, Indonesia and Iran. Some are doing similar types of research, others work in very different areas. There are academics, resource managers, international development, and government agency people all mingling together and talking to each other.
Just in this first workshop introducing people to the theory of the commons there are delegates from: Iran, Brazil, Malaysia, Brazil, Mexico, UK, Indonesia, Australia, USA, Australia, Uganda, India, and Japan. And, they are working on land tenure, fisheries, marine resources, forests, property rights, irrigation, genetic resources, intellectual property, and agricultural terraced land, to name just a few of the topics mentioned.
The fascinating thing is that in a workshop like this, which Ruth and Leticia have delivered many times before, it still becomes a learning process for those doing the teaching. The wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, cultures, and employment experience with different resources in a wide range of places, always creates new insights on the concept of commons and how people interact to manage them.
The above picture is the conference banner – incredibly colourful we think! 🙂
