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Contribution short abstract

Swiss commoners’ forests lost value after the fossil energy turn, but regained value in the green energy turn as a sustainable timber resource. After having maintained the forests outside the capitalist system until today, the new turn helps commoners to re-enforce decentral heating systems.

Contribution long abstract

Access to timber but also to forests generally for multiple reasons had been a central part of rights and duties of Swiss Commoners systems since the 13th century. Still today the more than 1600 commoners’ organizations own more than 1/3 of all forests in Switzerland in common property and are the main force to maintain biodiverse cultural landscape ecosystems. But since the devalorisation of timber after the energy turn to fossil fuel, the forest commons shift from a revenue to a burden, as the maintenance costs are rising due to rising labour costs in a post-industrial market context. But as many commoner’s organizations have been holding the value of identity of collective forests high, they still managed them outside the capitalist value system via internal cross subsidies by income from real estate land, housing, gastronomy and water rights for hydropower. Since the green energy turn, increasingly timber as a regrowing natural source of energy becomes an important resource again and also serves for forest maintenance. But different as in other parts of the world, the Swiss commoners, thanks to their secured common property, use this rising value to invest in collective decentralized heating systems beyond a market logic, helping to further subsidize forest ecosystem maintenance. Two cases from commoner’s organization in the German speaking (Sarnen, Canton Obwalden) and the French speaking part (Val D’Annivier, Canton Valais) illustrate this innovation trend which allows them to re-enforce commoning processes as responsibility to care for the landscapes in the age of the extractivist ‘green capitalist turn’.