The goal of legal and human rights support is to help marginalised communities, such as indigenous ones, to negotiate with public and private stakeholders regarding legal matters. This is particularly relevant in the case of the management of natural commons, which might be contested resources.
The goal of a definition of the commons as a legal category is to ensure the acknowledgement and the legalisation of the work of grassroots organisations that manage and promote the commons. This also facilitates the long-term sustainability of organisations and their access to opportunities such as funding and awards.
The goal of partnerships is to achieve benefits for all the parties involved, and for the communities connected to these parties. Partnerships are also instrumental in addressing legal obstacles: one partner might possess the legal status that is necessary to achieve certain goals that might otherwise be unattainable for the other.
The Declaration of Urban Civic and Collective use, implemented by L’Asilo (Naples) is an example of how a grassroots organisation can make a creative use of the law (see tool 4) in partnership with public authorities, and create a legal tool for self-government.
The goal of copyfair, copyleft and copyfarleft is, in different forms and degrees, to prevent the enclosure of intellectual property in the form of copyright and to allow more rights (that might be commercial or non-commercial) to users who have access to creative products of various kinds.
The goal of Creative Commons is to ensure the recognition of authorship whilst, at the same time, allow for flexibility and creativity in non-commercial use of intellectual property. This ensures wider access to creative works and encourages imaginative forms of engagement with them.
In a context where the legal recognition of the concept of commons is complex and fragmented, organisations and communities have to innovate existing laws to make them more suitable to communities’ needs. Rather than adapting to existing frameworks, they can make a creative use of the law to generate new legal tools.
This tool aims to support marginalized communities on a short-medium term whilst they pursue other projects that can ensure them financial and environmental sustainability in the long term. The goal of bridge funding is to empower communities by providing them with funding to obtain economic resilience by involving them in projects aimed at preserving the local environment.
