IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v37y2016i7p1252-1267.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Managing the global commons: common good or common sink?

Author

Listed:
  • Nico Schrijver

Abstract

The global commons, comprising the areas and resources beyond the sovereignty of any state, build upon the heritage of Grotius’s idea of mare liberum – an idea that aimed to preserve the freedom of access for the benefit of all. However, the old mare liberum idea digressed into ‘first come, first served’ advantages for industrialised countries. Especially at the initiative of developing countries, it has now been replaced by a new law of international cooperation and protection of natural wealth and resources beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. The global commons have thus served as the laboratory for testing new legal principles and the rights and corollary duties emanating from them. Occasionally path-breaking innovations in regulation have been practised, most notably the imposition of a ban on whaling, penalties for the production and use of ozone-depleting substances and the freezing of claims to sovereignty over Antarctica.

Suggested Citation

  • Nico Schrijver, 2016. "Managing the global commons: common good or common sink?," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(7), pages 1252-1267, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:37:y:2016:i:7:p:1252-1267
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2016.1154441
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2016.1154441
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436597.2016.1154441?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. María-José Gutiérrez & Belén Inguanzo, 2019. "Contributing to Fisheries Sustainability: Inequality Analysis in the High Seas Catches of Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-20, June.
    2. Andrea Salustri, 2021. "Social and solidarity economy and social and solidarity commons: Towards the (re)discovery of an ethic of the common good?," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(1), pages 13-32, March.
    3. Shuangge Wen & Jingchen Zhao, 2020. "The Commons, the Common Good and Extraterritoriality: Seeking Sustainable Global Justice through Corporate Responsibility," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-21, November.
    4. Eglė Butkevičienė & Florian Rabitz, 2022. "Sharing the Benefits of Asteroid Mining," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 13(2), pages 247-258, May.
    5. Chu Li & Wenjin Shen, 2024. "How to Perceive National Governance Networks in the Global Commons of the Earth’s Surface: A Case Study of the Antarctic," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-20, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:37:y:2016:i:7:p:1252-1267. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.