B/ordering the environmental commons

In order to better understand transboundary environmental governance and the role and functioning of borders, the author looks at the interconnected processes of b/ordering and commoning which seems especially relevant in the face of increasing anthropogenic environmental change (p. 1). She describes new environmental geographies that unfold through the governance of commons like biodiversity, food security of carbon sequestration (ibid.). Miller defines transboundary commons as “specific set of relationships that value resources ‘in common’ across boundaries or borders within as well as between countries” (p.2), which means that transboundary commons “traverse borders at all scales of governance” (ibid.). Furthermore, b/ordering signifies on the one hand the “physical (geo)political power of borders” that demarcate certain resources and on the other hand “processes of (re)ordering, parcelling, fragmenting and enclosing resources” (ibid). The processes of b/ordering and commoning create “transboundary communities of practice” that work across “multiple organisational scales” (p. 3).

The relationship between commoning and b/ordering matters for the spatial organization of transboundary environmental commons as they are “sites of political flux, ongoing transformation” and as administrative borders are “continually being rescaled around shifting governance priorities and market narratives that differently value particular resources over time” (p. 4). Since transboundary resources cross (geo)political borders, they must be governed at multiple scales which calls for a mulit-scalar, mulit-stakeholder governance that considers mulit-sited as well as situated commoning practices (ibid.). The author defines transboundary governance as “the collective […] decision making, norms and actions across territories and timeframes that shape the (re)distribution of environmental benefits and costs” (p. 6). She describes commoning as an inherently political strategy of transboundary governance that is shapes by a diverse set of actors, intermingled in flexible and power laden relations, which complicates policy prescriptions for transboundary governance (p. 6f).

Transboundary commoning activities challenge conventional borders in four ways. First, through awareness of socio-ecologically interconnected resources across borders that require “planetary stewardship” (p.8). Second, through the focus on cross border environmental disasters and third possibilities of communication and information technologies that enable cross-border commoning activities (p.8f). Fourth, through the emphasis of ecological concerns over territorial ones by transboundary communities of practice (ibid).

Lastly, Miller points to these communities of commoning and shows how they “socially and materially reconstitute borders” across different scales (p. 10). She describes communities of commoning at the grassroots, the urban and regional, the national and international level and underlines the characteristics and challenges of the specific spatially organized communities (10ff). Miller states that there is often a lack between regional and global “communities”, therefore international Organization must adapt their “language and programs in line with contextual specificities” (p. 13).