Achievements
Working with commoners, land managers, voluntary groups and the public agencies responsible for the governance of common land, the project's achievements include the development of LandNote, an online geospatial tool, the publication of a monograph and the creation of a website (live as of December 2013). More broadly, the research has raised awareness of the importance of common land as a communal resource in traditional agrarian systems.
LandNote, the online geospatial tool developed as part of the CCL project, allows us to map historical and contemporary data and photographs of landscape features onto a 3-D version of Google Earth, adding a highly visual dimension to the presentation of our research findings. Each case study has a set of relevant LandNote webpages, which were used as a focus for discussion in the stakeholder workshops and are freely available and accessible to the wider public through the website. In the case of Eskdale, we used LandNote to map farms and land areas (such as heafs and cow pastures) mentioned in the Twenty-Four Book of 1587, relating the historic text to the modern landscape; we also provided a potted history of each farm and its flock, with images of the 'lug' (ear) and 'smit' (fleece) marks used to identify the ownership of sheep grazing the common. We have also produced pages showing the modern boundaries of the Common Land registration unit and SSSI boundaries. The Eskdale site was presented on a table-top screen at our workshop with stakeholders and land managers in Eskdale (November 2009), generating round-table discussions. Now available online, the Eskdale LandNote site has lasting value as a record of the local farming culture, an educational tool, a focus of land management discussions, and a means to enhance farm tourism in the valley. As a generic tool, LandNote has relevance to policy makers, stakeholders and research teams who wish to explore land management issues in a geospatial context; it also has considerable potential for community use,in community-led planning, for example, as well as local history (where it could be used to capture and present communal 'memory' of place). There is therefore scope for further development and wider use.
The project concluded with an assessment of the impact of different models of self-regulation on the biodiversity and landscape values of the commons in each of the four case study areas, and for the effective implementation of the wider objectives of the Commons Act 2006. The Google-Earth based tool 'LandNote', developed as part of the project, enabled 3-D geospatial presentation of research findings on historical and contemporary aspects of sustainable land management.
The project monograph Contested Common Land: Environmental Governance Past and Present, was published in 2010. The project doctoral student Margherita Pieraccini also completed her thesis A Legal Pluralist Analysis of Upland Commons in England, Wales and Northern Italy in 2010.
Ongoing influence
The digital facility Land Note also has considerable potential for future development into a more widely based tool for: facilitating collective land management by stakeholders; land use planning by public bodies; and for a variety of uses by local community groups, education providers and others.
The project team have developed a number of related research proposals, and three doctoral students working on different aspects of common land are now being supervised by members of the project team. Following the Impact Fellowship workshop on 'Bringing landscape to life', for instance, Chris Rodgers developed a research partnership with the National Trust, resulting in a successful application for 'follow-on funding' from AHRC for the one-year 'Building Commons Knowledge Project’, which was held at the Centre for North West Regional Studies at Lancaster University, 2012-2013.
As of December 2013, research data and working papers generated by the project continue to be made available to a worldwide audience through the project website. It is hoped that the research will continue to influence the management of the commons.
Award details
Duration: 2007-2010 (36 months)
Principal Investigator:
Professor Chris Rodgers
Higher Education Institution:
Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University
Project team:
- Dr Angus Winchester, Lancaster University (Co-I)
- Professor Patrick Olivier, Newcastle University (Co-I)
- Dr E Straughton, Lancaster University
- Dr D G Jackson, Newcastle University
- M Pieraccini, Newcastle University (PhD)
Selected publications
Project publications have included a monograph, published by Earthscan, as well as peer-review papers.
Rodgers, C.P., Straughton, E.A., Winchester, A.J.L., and Pieraccini, M. (2010). Contested Common Land. Environmental Governance Past and Present. (London: Earthscan).
Winchester, A. J. L. and Straughton, E.A. (2010). Stints and sustainability: managing stock levels on common land in England, c.1600-2006. Agricultural History Review. 58(1):30-48.
Rodgers, C.P. (2009). Property rights, land use and the rural environment: A case for reform. Land Use Policy. 26 (1):134-141
Related links