‘Green spaces’ provide important cultural ecosystem services in our towns and cities. ‘Green’ space may come in many forms – for example parks, village greens, urban commons, or just neglected and undeveloped wasteland. But all of it is important as it can provide much needed space for open air recreation and exercise in crowded urban areas. The covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdown has shown just how important it is for us to have easy access to open space for recreation and exercise. But much of our green space is, in an age of austerity, under threat. Covid-19 has shown that we need to reappraise planning policy for the designation and protection of new areas of green space in our urban environment; to better protect existing open space, including village greens and commons; and to seek to rebalance planning policy to ensure that the drive for new housing does not take place at the expense of ensuring that adequate green space is provided for existing and future communities.
Conservation covenants over private land are extensively used in some jurisdictions to secure a wide range of public benefits: in some cases primarily to promote nature conservation, while elsewhere to foster conservation alongside greater public access to ‘green’ space. This article considers the use of conservation covenants in New Zealand, Scotland, and England and Wales. It argues that they can play a unique role in balancing nature conservation, property rights and increased public access to private land. It reviews proposals for new legislation in England and Wales and argues that, if it is to be successful, the potential of conservation covenants to secure greater public access to private land should be more strongly emphasised. Their successful use in New Zealand shows that, while recognising the important balancing function that they can perform, this emphasis is critically important if covenants are to fulfil their potential to ‘reconnect’ people and nature.
The Commons Act 2006 is the first statute since the Commons Registration Act 1965 to address the problems associated with the management of common land in England and Wales. A key focus for the 2006 Act is the introduction of mechanisms for the sustainable management of common land, including self‐regulatory commons councils. This article examines the ‘sustainable’ management of common land in historical and contemporary perspective. It sets the 2006 Act, and the sustainable management of common land, in the wider context of the ongoing debate triggered by Hardin's ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ and subsequent institutional and post‐institutional scholarship on common pool resource management. It uses historical and qualitative research data drawn from three case studies to demonstrate the irrelevance of Hardin's thesis in an English context, and identifies the Commons Registration Act of 1965 as the true ‘tragedy’ of the English and Welsh commons. The case studies also illustrate the challenges posed by the introduction of legal mechanisms to promote the ecologically sustainable management of the modern commons, and inform the critique of the Commons Act 2006 developed in the article.
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