For over a decade, the study of the commons and their promotion by social movements have considerably developed. The foundations were laid by Garrett Hardin in 1968 in his article "The Tragedy of the Commons": it stated that only the privatization or nationalisation of an open access common resource could make it possible to profit from it while ensuring its renewal. By demonstrating that other forms of governance and institutional arrangements based on communities of users were possible, Elinor Ostrom opened the way to possible links with other fields (ecology, the digital sector) and other issues (climate change, norms and social interactions).

Questioning the boundaries between private and public spheres, the definitions of ownership, the management and sharing of resources, and the role of communities and traditional knowledge, the discussion around the commons could not fail to address studies on gender as well as feminist views and practices. These have enriched the theoretical and programmatic approaches of the commons. Often critical, this contribution has however not led to a coherent conceptual articulation, nor to a real aggiornamento of the different approaches to the commons viewed through the prism of gender.

Starting from a systematic review of academic productions devoted to the commons in the fields of economics, sociology and political sciences (and from a human rights perspective in particular), this study aimed at defining the conditions for an approach to the commons through the prism of gender.

The aim was to apply a gender approach to the three components of commons (resource, community, rules), as well as to their major characteristics (collective action, ownership, distribution of value). This approach aimed to highlight how gender, as a system of domination, contributes to structuring governance and resource allocation processes.

It was also about considering how women’s and men’s rights to life are satisfied (or not), what are their practical needs (improvement of living conditions) and their respective interests in reducing gender inequality. In this regard, the study paid particular attention to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to commons and gender equality, and their possible contradictions. In this perspective, all care-related activities - which are extensively studied from a gender perspective - have been the subject of specific attention: close links were likely to be established between the social organization for care services (for children, sick persons, the elderly and/or dependants, etc.) and those governing the management of the commons, especially the environment.

OFCE defined a methodology to select the corpus of documents for this state of the art and its critical analysis. The research questions were asked from different perspectives: the feminist economy, the history of the commons, eco-feminism and feminist perspectives on the commons.

OFCE then carried out two case studies to illustrate:

• the current limits of the articulation between gender and commons, 
• the perspectives that a critical approach through the prism of gender could open about their definition and associated discourses (especially in the field of development policies).

For example, by looking at the subject from the "care" perspective (and its critique), these case studies are likely to cross-examine practices regarding the management of different commons: natural resources or digital resources, basic services to the community, etc.

The research project resulted in three deliverables:

• A bibliometric study presenting the state of the art, the methodological choices made and the result of the analysis. This report outlines complementary research proposals and a series of recommendations that could feed  strategic reflections underway at AFD.
• Two notes to illustrate more precisely the interest of a critical approach through the prism of gender for the (re)definition of commons: "Water, a "one of its kind" common?" and “Urban commons through the prism of gender”

The literature combining gender and reflection on the commons is not new, but remains insufficiently explored. It is heterogeneous and is analysed here from two points of view: academic and analytical on the one hand; normative and committed on the other hand.

The commons are not free from forms of oppression. The research agenda remains open: more empirical work is required to understand the processes that recompose existing hierarchies within the commons, as well as the modes of resistance from oppressed groups.

The bibliometric study paves the way for an analysis of the grey literature produced by development agencies and donors to understand how the practices of these actors are influenced by the connections between academic literature on gender and academic literature on the commons. With this in mind, the proposed reading grid could be adapted to identify discursive and normative frameworks for action (policy frames).

Without claiming to be exhaustive, this study demonstrates the extraordinary richness of an approach combining gender and commons to address the major transitions of our time (environmental, demographic, digital).

In order to outline a transformative approach to gender and commons, two case studies complete the bibliometric study: one is dedicated to urban commons and the other to environmental commons from a climate change perspective.

Contacts:

• Hélène Périvier, economist, OFCE
• Maxime Forest, political scientist, OFCE
• Stéphanie Leyronas, research officer, AFD
• Serge Rabier, research officer, AFD

International donors have intervened massively in the Palestinian Territories since 1994. A large part of this financing has enabled the mobilization of new water resources and an increase in the efficiency of water use in an arid territory. They assumed that the Oslo accords and the Palestinian water law reflected the reality of water management.

The introduction of new principles through the Oslo Accords and national resource management by the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) has weakened the social norms that governed the functioning of traditional governments. This has given rise to complex local situations in which different registers of recognition of rights of access to the resource are exercised.

It is therefore important to understand how each of the pathways followed by water drawn from a common reservoir, whether it is a well or a source, is part of bundles of rights and how bundles of rights are now affected by projects funded by donors: who appropriated the water made available by these projects? Under what terms? Who lost it?

This research programme focused on the political dimension of the construction and transformation of commons. It sought to understand the current governance of the “paracommons” of water in Palestine − the term “paracommons” denoting potential material gains from improving the efficiency of systems drawing from a common reservoir of natural resources, such as water. 

The programme also examines how to harness the existing bundles of rights within the commons of water to develop a deliberative and equitable governance.

The programme organised three types of seminars: seminars with the members of the programme, research seminars, and "action-research seminar" which involved, in addition to the researchers, farmers in the studied areas, members of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), members of Palestinian agricultural NGOs, as well as members of the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture and of the PWA.

The fieldwork, which was very substantial, mainly took place during the first 24 months of the programme. Subsequent fieldwork was carried out to triangulate the results obtained by metrology, mapping and qualitative surveys. The results were disseminated through publications, seminars and panels at international conferences.

The program led to the publication of several peer-reviewed journal articles: Geoforum, Journal of Political Ecology, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, International Journal of Water Resources Development.

Many interventions have taken place related to the program, including:

• AFD’s 12th international conference on development in 2016 on the theme of “Common and development”;
• Stockholm World Water Week 2017;
• The first Palestinian International Water Forum (IWF) held in 2018.

The results were also disseminated to the general public through press and radio interviews, conferences and training sessions. 

The research project highlighted “the usefulness of recognizing the commons governing irrigation water. It harnesses the commons to understand the power interactions at play in transformations over local, national and international scales. It proposes to harness the positive externalities commons generate in order to transform political and economic interactions at the national and international scales. Although it uses a Palestinian case study, this conceptual development can apply anywhere. Palestinians have long managed irrigation as commons at the local level. But the overwhelming attention paid to their national struggle has led most researchers to focus on national institutions instead. It has also favored treating water as a stock rather than a flow (…) that is managed successively by a variety of institutions. At the local level, it allows us to understand the interactions between smallholders and neighboring agribusinesses, for example. It allows us to understand the upheaval in power interactions when a merchant economy attempts to supplant a human economy. At the national level, it allows us to address the governance of the paracommons. (…) Addressing the governance of the paracommons of Palestinian irrigation is now urgent.” (Trottier, 2018)

To go further:

• “Harnessing the commons to govern water as a flow” (Julie Trottier, July 2018)
• “Palestinian water laws: between centralization, decentralization, and rivalries” (Jeanne Perrier, November 2020)
• “The institutionalization of irrigation and the effects thereof: The case of the Palestinian water user associations” (Jeanne Perrier, November 2020)

Contacts: 

• Julie Trottier, director of research at CNRS
• Stéphanie Leyronas, research officer at AFD