Messages from elsewhere: lessons from the management of commons in Norway – Abstract & Video
This paper was presented at the New Forest Knowledge Conference 2018 entitled: The Role of Commoning in the Maintenance of Landscape and Ecology: A New Forest, National and Global Perspective.
Speaker:
Chris Short, Countryside & Community Research Institute (CCRI)
Abstract
Commons can be found across the globe, and often hold an important message for us back home, often about the need for shared problem-solving to meet current and future challenges. In Norway a new project FUTGRAZE, is assessing why some pastoral associations are able to meet the challenges while others are not. In some areas, the conflict level has grown so high that farmers cannot bear the social strain of continuing with farming. Key reasons are poor cooperation between pasture farmers as well as between farmers and other stakeholders. The result is less grazing, increasing encroachment with subsequent loss of biodiversity. But at the same time, in other areas, the grazing associations have managed to handle these complexities despite huge challenges, sometimes bigger than in the areas where cooperation has declined. FUTGRAZE seeks to crystallize alternative ways of organizing, operating and managing commons in Norway, with the purpose of reducing the conflict levels that threaten these areas and to ensure improved communication amongst all stakeholders.
The Talk