The Global Commons

Four enormous physical environments, still mostly unexplored, are treated in international law and custom as parts of a "global commons." Outer space, the atmosphere, the oceans, and Antarctica belong to no oneóor to everybody at once. This emerging concept is powerful not only metaphorically, but it can also have a practical influence on national economic and social priorities, the strategies of international business, and the governance of our global environments.
Political scientist and public executive Harlan Cleveland writes that as humankind has become a more important agent of environmental change than nature, environmental problems have become behavioral: the pace and direction of global change can only be modified by what we (humanity) doóor stop doingónext. What global change is to the social sciences, governance of the global commons has become to the social sciences: the next frontier. Co-published with the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies.