ABSTRACT
Modern priorities for sustainable governance of the commons have been pursued using a variety of legal and economic mechanisms that often fail to resolve tensions between public interest values in sustainable governance and property rights in the commons, between recreational land-use and environmental governance priorities, and between private legal obligations (such as those between landlord and tenant) and the legal obligations on commoners reflected in modern environmental legislation. This chapter will examine the self-regulatory models proposed for the commons under the Commons Act 2006, and their potential as mechanisms for sustainable management. The 2006 Act introduced measures to facilitate the establishment of statutory commons councils. This chapter will argue that, in opting for a ‘managerial’ reform model based on the self-regulation of commons through commons councils, the 2006 Act has ignored a number of deep-rooted problems arising from the unique nature of the property rights subsisting over common land (and discussed in Chapter 4). It will use qualitative data to examine the prospects for the successful introduction of self-regulatory management through statutory commons councils under the 2006 Act, and will compare and contrast these with other self-regulatory models that are currently used to manage the modern commons.
