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Contribution short abstract:

This paper will sketch out the case study upon which this roundtable discussion will be grounded; the green transition of the Greek island of Ikaria. In thus doing, I will introduce the theme of this roundtable and pose the questions that the discussants will address.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper introduces the case study that will be at the center of this roundtable. It shows that the green energy transition underway in the island of Ikaria is based on extractivism, exploitation and processes and practices of uncommoning (i.e. enclosures) of the island's traditional commons -community forests, water sources and structures of self-governance. At the same time, all over rural Greece, as in Ikaria, collective subjects are emerging to resist the usurpation of their ancestral land and local natural resources by multi-corporations. The case of Ikaria appears to be just another case of neoliberal colonisation of the commons, that is going to widen existing inequalities and intensify the environmental consequences of climate crisis, mainly through desertification.

Following, this paper poses the questions that the discussants will address; how can research on the island's commons be part of a project of commoning instead of uncommoning? That is, how can it be a contribution to the counter-movement described by Karl Polanyi? What are the methodological prerequisites of research that does not serve as the handmaiden of neoliberalism by enhancing the rhetoric repository of neoliberal imaginaries that colonise the commons? In an attempt to reflect on methodologies that decolonize the commons, it further asks; how can we produce anthropological critique, which challenges the neoliberal imagination of a green future that leaves no space for local cultures? How can community engaged research contribute in the construction of alternative visions of green transition, which instead place social justice at their core?

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Contribution short abstract:

This paper compares contemporary enclosures in Ikaria, Greece to historic enclosures in the Appalachian mountains of the eastern United States. Extraction in both locales belittled and threatened longstanding commoning communities and undermined human well-being and more-than-human ecologies.

Contribution long abstract:

With an emphasis on forests, waters, and human communities, this paper compares commoning and enclosure threats in contemporary Ikaria, Greece with historic cases in the Appalachian region of the United States. Like Ikaria, the Appalachians host some of the globe’s most unique forests. As in Ikaria, commoning communities have long nurtured and protected these forests and the waters they hold. Also as at Ikaria, the searches for energy sources and wood products threatened commons forests and their human communities with extraction, enclosure, and livelihood destruction.

Fossil fuel and wood extraction destroyed nearly all the Appalachian region’s old-growth forests near the turn of the twentieth century. In the pell-mell race for short-term fuel and fiber, extractivism in the Appalachians set in motion long-term destructive forces that continue to undermine human well-being and more-than-human ecologies in the present-day. While commoning communities emphasized the enduring value of healthy forests and clean waters, advocates for extraction dismissed those values and denigrated local people. Cataclysmic destruction, in the forms of uncontrollable fires, unprecedented flooding, desertification, species loss, great human suffering, and a host of other ills resulted.

Appalachian examples underscore 1) the longterm ecological, economic, social, and cultural value of complex commoning systems such as those in Ikaria; and 2) the costly, enduring results of devaluing such commoning communities. Through commoning and commons defense, marginalized people such as Ikarians in Europe and Appalachians in the U.S. do the vital and unsung work of ecological caregiving. Without it there can be no green future.

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Contribution short abstract:

This is a reflection on the commons of the Greek island of Ikaria. I will look at land, water and mountains - the first "casualties" of neoliberal green policies. I will also discuss the consequences of enclosures for the fabric of Ikarian culture and explore avenues of resistance for local society.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper reflects on the commons of Ikaria. As commons are becoming the "casualties" to this never-ending series of privatizations, it is becoming increasingly difficult to be an objective witness to processes of uncommoning of our mountain, its water sources and forests. Commons have supported our lives and are attached to our cultural memories.

Ikarian commons have not survived to the present day intact. The waning of agricultural production, the opening of rural roads, that have intersected footpaths and have redirected water sources and disrupted grazing land, EU subsidies, which have given the incentive for the increase of the population of goats, and the abandonment of the rotation system between winter and summer grazing land, have contributed to the gradual dismantling of the island's commons and to its ecological degradation.

But commons have never been static nor have been lifeless "things". Quite the opposite; they breathe, nurture and inspire human presence. They are embedded in space, time and memories. Through land we own, we recognize ancestral lines and our relations to each other. The mountain above our villages is recognized as community land that has to be left alone ensuring clean water supplies. And we still celebrate our community ties, our civic commons and our intergenerational knowledge in our annual feasts.

Drawing from Bareli's dissertation on Ikarian commoning and my experiences from community struggles, this paper asks; can we construct a network that transcends borders and instructs and teaches effective measures? Can art be a powerful avenue of resistance?

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Contribution short abstract:

I consider the shared fate of discourses of forest commoning in Ikaria and in the Appalachian region of the U.S. under what legal scholar Mary Christina Wood calls the “failed regulatory paradigm” of environmental review, and describe the Seasonal Round as a method for modelling forest commons.

Contribution long abstract:

I consider the shared fate of discourses of forest commoning in Ikaria and in the Appalachian region of the U.S. under what legal scholar Mary Christina Wood calls the “failed regulatory paradigm” of environmental review. Under this paradigm, environmental assessment constructs a sieve that filters out land-based commons on resource frontiers, which may then be dispersed into new enclosures of heritage. Relying on existing documentation of natural and cultural resources, environmental impact assessment tends to limit community engagement to review and comment on technocratic plans. Existing documentation in the gray literature of the archives of environmental review rarely acknowledges the interdepencies of community life with surrounding ecosystems. De facto commons tend to be invisible, cast into relief on the threshold of their disappearance. The archives of the commons are living archives, accessed continually through speech practices that drive commons as what I call “narrative climax systems.” I argue that engaging narrative of the commons – itself a practice of commoning – coaxes commons into visibility. Drawing on Appalachian and Ikarian examples, I will describe a methodology for modelling and mapping time-spaces of commoning (sites of fishing, hunting, gathering, harvesting, worshipping, festivity, and so forth -- all topics of constant conversation on which commoning depends) as sites that anchor daily, seasonal, annual, life, and generational cycles, and will point to efforts underway to identify and dismantle specific practices of discommoning favored under the regulatory paradigm.

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Contribution short abstract:

Commons stewardship is grounded in local civic and ecological relations and knowledges. But, threats and needed resources flow from regional, national, and global scales. How can collaborative research methods scale up local access to State-based public revenues, discourses, and legal protections?

Contribution long abstract:

This presentation explores what Ikarian commoning can teach movements for just transition from coal in Central Appalachia in the U.S. Our link-tank, LiKEN, works with wide webs of partnerships among diverse transition movements, community groups, and scholars across Appalachia. On one hand, much of our collaborative work for post-coal transition focuses on local stewardship of commons and livelihoods. Paradoxically, the boom and bust of jobs in coal mining catalyzed intergenerational traditions of forest livelihoods on the vast tracts of corporate, absentee owned lands and national forests. Global and national movements for knowledge democracy have produced a rich toolkit of methodologies for Participatory Action Research which is vital in uplifting and crystalizing the visions that emerge from these sustenance economies. However, we face massive barriers in our work, because of the ways in which extra-local government and philanthropic funds flow. We need federal resources to repair devastated land and waters from extractive economies. But, access to resources is structured by ideas about the ‘future’ (as codified into ‘plans’) that are antithetical to how local commoning actually generates its futures. (Inter)national, ‘progressive’ ideologies of ‘green transition’ are not adequately engaging the ways in which post-carbon transition might increase local and regional inequalities as massive funds flow through entrenched clientelistic gatekeeping and corruption in State structures. How adequate are our theories of the State to the needs of commoning? How can we reclaim bureaucratic and legislative structures for democratic commoning? What should be the role of anthropology in methodologies for transformation?