ABSTRACT
The idea of the commons offers a community-based ethic located within ideas of a shared common humanity; that stands opposed to the ethics of individualism and competition that are more connected to private property and hierarchical control. The most important contribution linking the ecological commons to questions of cosmopolitanism or more global dimensions of citizenship has been that of Ulrich Beck. The consideration of environmental risks and dangers are necessarily cosmopolitan problems that cut across national and cultural boundaries. In the 1960s and 1970s ideas of eco-socialism suggested a complex social order beyond the yearning for a return to a rural idyll and the poisonous environment of unlimited economic expansion. A commons-based education would require not only the ability to turn the city or countryside into a place of learning, but where the ideas of young people are nurtured and respected. This would require a programme of radical democratisation and localisation.
