This class focuses on two ‘blue’ global commons – the oceans and the atmosphere. The main topic is to look critically at the regimes of use and legal regulation in these planetary domains and how they facilitate the problems of inequality, pollution, overuse of natural resources, and the overall environmental degradation. The first part of the class looks at the term ‘the tragedy of the commons’ popularized by Garret Hardin and overviews Elinor Ostrom’s influential theory of the commons developed to counter the paradigm of the tragedy of the commons. The seminar then looks at the main regimes constituting the use of the ocean and the atmosphere. The seminar introduces students the theme of the global commons from an interdisciplinary perspective of international law, political and critical theory, and philosophy of justice.
Hardin, Garret. 1968. ”The tragedy of the commons,” Science 162 (3859): 1243-1248; ”Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor,” Psychology Today 8 (): 38-43.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (Chapters 1-3, 1-102).
Ostrom, Elinor. 2009. ”A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems,” Science 325: 419-422.
Ostrom, Elinor et al. 1999. ”Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges,” Science 9: 278-282.
Bederman, David J. 2012. The Sea. The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law. Oxford University Press.
Ranganathan, Surabhi (2016): Global Commons. The European Journal of International Law 27 (3): 693-717.
Ranganathan, Surabhi. 2019. ‘Ocean Floor Grab: International Law and the Making of an Extractive Imaginary’. European Journal of International Law 30 (2): 573–600.
Urbina, Ian. 2023. The Outlaw Ocean. The Outlaw Ocean Project.
IPCC Sixth Assessment Report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.
Malm, Andreas. 2021. How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Verso |
