♾️ Commons Governance Protocols
Activities
Community-Led Governance
To counter government contracts for commercial fishing that risked overuse, habitat harm, and displacement, TBS helped communities create the River Arvari Sansad (River Arvari Parliament) in 1998. The body drew gram sabhas from 72 villages along the river. With more than 140 members, the Parliament challenged those contracts through public-interest litigation until the Supreme Court canceled them—asserting community rights to water and land over company concessions. It sets rules for the river, banks, and catchment; for crops, fishing, grazing, borewells, and thirsty crops such as sugarcane—embodying local stewardship of shared resources. The twin villages of Bhaonta–Koylala, leaders in Arvari’s revival, received the first Down to Earth Joseph C. John award for an environmental community from President K.R. Narayanan on 28 March 2000. Similar models are spreading along rivers such as Chambal and Dholpur.
Green Valley Commons
In year one they formed a nonprofit and turned a former gas station at the town center into a new town square—Green Valley Commons. They raised over $1 million through land-trust funding, public sources, private gifts, and crowdfunding, then ran a community design process so neighbors could imagine the shared space. The Commons now hosts cooperative workdays, events, youth gatherings, and early shared childcare and food-growing. A lease-to-own agreement gives site control; they are working toward an outright purchase. Early support is in place; they seek $250,000 in catalytic capital to secure title, advance priority capital work (permitting, kitchen, ADA access), and strengthen programming and local governance.
Nila Indigenous Land Trust Strategy
The aim is a Native-led land trust that can travel as a model—returning land and authority to tribal stewardship. Elements include: - USD 6–9 million for conservation easements on Kvichak Corporate lands—blocking incompatible development and speculative lodge buyouts. - USD 10 million via the Kuicaak Fund to reassemble fractionated ANCSA allotments that fragment control. - USD 2 million already raised to secure a wildlife corridor between Lake Clark and Katmai. If the corporation advances conservation on upper Caskan and Queac reaches while tribes aggregate allotments, parties could later negotiate trust terms that centre community stewardship.
Multi-Stakeholder Forest Governance
In Jembrana, KEM supported Sabha Wana Kerthi, a multi-stakeholder forest forum chaired from the regional planning agency and joined by forestry and environment offices, the forest management unit (KPH), farmer groups (KTH), and firms such as Palapa (nutmeg) and Conservana Spices (vanilla, coffee, cacao). The body coordinates stewardship, benefit-sharing, and on-the-ground practice with policy.
DAO Design
Design work mapped stakeholders, translated customary decision-making into written protocols, tested tools (WhatsApp polls for low-friction votes; DAODAO training for on-chain transparency), and iterated charters for how proposals are built, voted, and executed. The first two tiers of a nested structure are live: - Stakeholder DAOs (organised groups such as ASOMEG and the Water Board) submit proposals and vote - Community DAO (Guayabillas DAO) allocates funds with representatives from each stakeholder group. - Upper tiers are scoped but not launched. Off-chain practice uses WhatsApp, assemblies, and paper or oral records where needed. On-chain, a DAODAO instance logs proposals, votes, and treasury moves; Carolina Davalos acts as a human oracle, posting community decisions so participants are not required to run wallets themselves. A Notion wiki holds governance records, training material, charters, planning tools, and spatial/MRV documentation.
Mangrove Conservation and Spatial Planning
SPaCES (Spatial Planning for Conservation, Sustainable Economic Development and Society) supplies mapping and planning support across Forever Sabah programmes. Current work maps mangrove extent, loss, threats, and restoration need toward protecting Sabah’s mangrove estate. The Lower Kinabatangan & Segama programme deepens co-governance—community protocols, Locally Managed Marine Areas, and Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas—in a large mangrove–estuary system. Livelihoods (e.g. solar cold storage for fishers, ecotourism) aim to reduce extraction pressure while communities steward the wetlands they rely on.
Participatory Governance Development
Governance is described as a living braid of sociocratic practice and Indigenous decision-making—listening from many directions, elders and local communities in the weave, sociocratic circles with shared representation, and decentralized, transparent mechanisms for deciding and acting. The baseline is "recognition and reciprocity first." When council decisions land, communities need capacity to move; the aim is governance patient enough for real listening yet able to act quickly once alignment appears. Pasted image 20260218174155.png From Diamante-Barú Bioregional Consortium: Activating bioregional finance facilities rooted in Indigenous reciprocity, ecological stewardship, and self-governance.
The Common Ground Forum
When the Association of Deer Management Groups first approached the Alliance for Scotland's Rainforest a few years ago, they saw potential for collaboration—something they called "the common ground." But decades of conflict between environmental groups and deer management interests had created a deep-seated lack of trust that made even conversation feel like a distant dream. They brought in the Centre for Good Relations, specialists in civic mediation. Through careful facilitation, people from all sides of upland deer management—environmental charities, government agencies, gamekeepers, private estate managers—began meeting and building relationships of trust. As the mediation process was ending, the people involved insisted they wanted to keep going, to continue the work they'd started together. In Autumn 2023, the Common Ground Forum was born. Today, the Forum has brought together more than 500 people across Scotland's upland deer management sector. They work together through respectful, constructive conversations to make better, more informed decisions about upland deer management. Last November, their work was recognized with the Innovation Award at the Nature of Scotland Awards—the first time such a diverse group of people had received this kind of recognition together. NatureScot has also recruited two new deer management roles in the rainforest.