Map the world's shared resources, strengthen the rules that govern them, and pay the people who keep them.
Started at the COP31 Climate Campus in Antalya, November 2026. Everything here is open and in development: read it, question it, and add to it.
The global commons already exists, and most of it already runs on some rules. Commons fail at one of three steps.
Nothing is agreed, so whoever takes first takes most.
Rules exist but aren't monitored or enforced.
The rules hold, but the people who keep the commons aren't paid for it.
Early work, shared before it's finished so the people who know the most can shape it. Each project says what it needs.
An open, public registry of blue carbon ecosystems (mangroves, seagrass meadows and salt marshes): where they are, who keeps them, what is measured there, and what has been promised and paid. Every claim carries its sources and settles only when independent lines of evidence agree. It records; it does not issue or sell credits.
Input wanted
Open ocean data, refreshed every week: tide gauges, buoys and Argo floats checked against ocean models, coral reef heat stress, and marine protection and ocean finance for every Atlantic Rim country, as map layers any GIS tool can read.
Input wanted
A registry of commons, each placed on the rules ladder (no rules, weak rules, no payout) with its boundaries, users, rules and remuneration, and every claim backed by evidence from independent sources.
Input wanted
A map of Elinor Ostrom's academic lineage, starting with the 149 Workshop PhDs and affiliated scholars, as the start of a brain trust that can answer place-specific questions about governing a commons.
Input wanted
One marine protected area, governed with the people who fish and dive there: clear boundaries, local rules, monitoring that pairs community testimony with independent measurement, and payouts to its keepers.
Input wanted
Turning the voluntary global benefit-sharing rule for genetic sequence data into payouts that reach the places and peoples the data comes from.
Input wanted
Rules for the shared networks where AI agents meet: identity, an accountable owner, a charter they accept, verification that counts agents of one model as one voice, and a levy that funds the commons.
Input wanted
Each commons is placed on the rules ladder. A claim about a commons settles only when independent lines of evidence agree. These are the first 5, as candidates.
| Commons | Kind | Where it fails | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medicine from biodiversity | genetic resources | 2. Weak rules | Much of modern medicine traces to plants, animals and microbes. A global benefit-sharing rule for genetic sequence data exists, but contributions are voluntary and almost none have been made. |
| Marine protected area pilot (with the Ocean Climate Fund) | ocean | 2. Weak rules | MPAs range from strict no-take reserves to paper parks. Outcomes depend on how the MPA is structured, not on how much the area is used, as Sharm el-Sheikh and Cancún show. |
| Renewable energy citizen share | energy | 3. No payout | Operating solar and wind assets earn high margins because the fuel is free and staffing is light. A codified share of revenue could fund a citizen right to energy instead of discretionary community benefits. |
| Planetary protection | space | 3. No payout | Space is not rule-free. States must avoid harmful contamination of other worlds and of Earth, a working global-commons rule since 1967. |
| AI agent commons | agents | 1. No rules | AI agents increasingly meet and act in shared networks with almost no rules on use. A billion or more agents are expected within a year. |
A first map of Elinor Ostrom's academic lineage: the Workshop PhDs and affiliated scholars who carry her work on governing the commons, as the start of a brain trust.
scholars mapped
commons PhDs
institutional analysis PhDs
affiliated faculty
Cloud Mirror is the layer underneath. The Global Commons is a community on it, with its own charter, stewards, public record and treasury.