Ethics and the Commons

Dr. Stefan Partelow is a Professor of Environmental Governance at the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany. He leads the Governance and Transformation group at the Center for Life Ethics, and is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project called SharedSeas (2025-2029), which examines how to scale effective governance in our oceans. Dr. Partelow is a Lead Editor at the journal People and Nature, and the co-host and co-founder of the In Common Podcast, the official podcast of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). His research areas include ocean governance, small-scale fisheries and aquaculture, social-ecological systems analysis, commons, commoning, and institutional change. He completed his Doctoral and Postdoctoral research at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) and Jacobs University (now Constructor University) in Bremen, Germany. Dr. Partelow further studied Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden, and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

• Ethics and the commons: an introduction to why building ethical Awareness matters.- Justice and the Commons: A Review.- Many Worlds, One Earth: towards a diverse ethics of the commons.- Ethical commoning: A framework for identifying and comparing values, practices, and capacities.- A Look at the Commons through the Lens of Buddhist Ethics.- Knowledge ethics for Marine Spatial Planning: balancing critical and constructive engagement with small-scale fisheries.- Trade-offs conducting action research on the commons: balancing the ethics of research and practice.- Navigating ethical spaces in common property research.- Ethical dimensions and practical guidance for transdisciplinary research on the commons.- Commons as boundary objects for ethical awareness: key questions  and directions forward.