Welcome to Campaign For Commons

Campaign For Commons has just launched! Grown out of years of campaigning on nature and land issues, the time for common land has arrived.

Something is in the air. Commons are suddenly everywhere. From the amazing work of Stroud Commons, to the Festival of Commoning, articles in the Guardian to the upcoming Wild Justice case, the idea of the commons is being examined and questioned.

This year is 60 years since the 1965 Commons Registration Act, and it seems like a good time to pull commons out into the open and, dare I say it - make them common again. An area the size of Greater London and Essex put together has around 3900 people deciding what happens to it. Some of these people are working to make things better, tending the land and taking their roles as stewards seriously. Others are not.

Common land is opaque, with very vague notions of what it is, why it’s common, and what that means for most of us. There is an opportunity, here and now, to address some of the crises we face - climate, biodiversity, health, community-breakdown, poverty, nature connectedness - through a different model of land rights, one that still exists today.

But it needs drastic reform - transparency, accountability, community, responsibilities as well as rights. We need to ask ourselves - what is it that we need from land? A place for nature to thrive, for communities to come together, for wildfire and flood prevention, for locking away carbon. The commons have the ability to do all this - if we reform them. 

Sign up for our newsletter here to join the mission and find out more!