Credit: Edinburgh Law School

Global commons, areas outside national jurisdiction of states such as the high seas, Antarctica and outer space, are under pressure from ever-expanding human activity. States manage shared and competing interests in these spaces through different international organisations.

The project aims to bridge international law and critical development studies to explore the overlooked role of international organisations in determining who benefits and who bears the socio-ecological costs of contemporary global commons governance.

Dr Roland Holst will be working on the project together with PhD candidate Siobhan Heagney.

Dr Roland Holst said: “I am very grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for the opportunity to develop this project. Global commons remain out of sight and out of mind for most of us, yet they are more intertwined with our daily lives than we think.

“Even from just following the news, it becomes apparent that there is a big discrepancy between the characterisation of certain spaces as ‘global commons’ and the ways in which they are managed in practice. I look forward to critically investigating the role of international law in this process over the next few years.”