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Relational Commons: An Ontological and Governance Framework Beyond Protected Areas and the Boundaries of Conservation

Katie Moon,D. Marsh,Benjamin Cooke,R. Kingsford

Published 2025 in Conservation Letters

ABSTRACT

As conservation efforts accelerate to meet global targets like 30 × 30, they risk deepening exclusion, enclosure, and ecological fragmentation. We interrogate the legal and institutional foundations of conservation to reveal how territorialization, centralized authority, and human‐nature separation persist in dominant governance models. In response, we propose relational commons as “an ontological and governance framework that centers the interdependence of human and more‐than‐human beings, and the abiotic entities and ecological processes that sustain them, where care for these dynamic relations becomes the basis for shared responsibility and decision‐making.” Relational commons are not tenured spaces but practices that unsettle the illusion that individual rights, fixed boundaries, independence, or human‐centered governance ever provided a meaningful foundation for conservation. Extending commons scholarship, this approach shifts focus from managing resources to cultivating the conditions for multispecies flourishing. We articulate four principles: (1) relations, where rights structure reciprocal responsibilities; (2) power‐sharing, where boundaries become interfaces of collaboration; (3) interdependence, which foregrounds care and co‐flourishing; and (4) multispecies–ecosystem justice, which distributes agency across human and more‐than‐human worlds. Together, these principles offer an inclusive and future‐oriented alternative to fragmented conservation logics.

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