Ourcommons.org is a digital platform for activists concerned with the abuse of common resources and public services by authorities and private interests. Our aim is to present our struggles in promoting sustainability and protecting resources that are held in common, or those that we wish were managed by communities. We will provide an insight into practical activities and theory regarding spaces that are meant to serve local communities.
By commons, we mean cultural and natural resources available to all members of society, including natural resources such as air, water and habitable land, which are shared and managed collectively, not in private ownership. There are four main types of commons: natural, cultural, intellectual, and digital.
The concept of commons becomes extremely important at a time when the world is still recovering from a global economic crisis. A review of current responses such as austerity measures (which particularly affect the most vulnerable groups of the population), can reveal that the inequality gap has widened and that many people struggle to make ends meet, even in the world’s developed countries. Dealing with poverty and sustained abuses of human rights, many of us have sought alternatives, especially when it comes to the role of national institutions and local governance. Countries in Europe that have been crippled by the crisis, such as Spain, Italy, and Greece, have already begun not only discussing the alternative of commons but also practising it. In Spain, social movements that arose to protect the vulnerable, particularly as a result of a serious housing crisis, have managed to win local elections and put commons at the core of their governing principles. In Greece, locals have taken over spaces that drowned in dept and remained empty and converted them into community centres or shelters for refugees. Social care and support have also been proliferated by citizen groups, where the government failed to provide social security. In Italy, the commons are increasingly recognised, and citizen participation is slowly being promoted in some cities as a key model for local decision-making.
Commons are not exclusively about resources and management; they are also about their impact on communities (on a local and global scale). Commons are goods, procedures, but also people. It is not only about benefits, it is also about responsibility.
Our focus is on three countries in the Western Balkans: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia. In terms of urban commons in these countries, we can note many similarities in the attitude of local authorities, primarily towards public space , the mismanagement of public services, and the ultimate goal of privatisation. The public space in the listed countries is increasingly privatized, abused and transformed in a way that ceases to be at service to the local communities. Similarities also exist when it comes to natural resources; currently, all the countries we focus on are dealing with the proliferation of hydropower plants and the destruction of common resources. Activist groups and initiatives that want a different approach are active in all three countries, and we will be more engaged in supporting their work and efforts to find alternative solutions to the destruction of common resources and spaces.