Common land and ELMS: a need for policy innovation in England and Wales

Common land is valued by a wide range of interest groups. It is thus characterized as a multi-functional land type with a complex construction of property rights. These factors underlie the extant environmental threats to common land. Environmental land management schemes (ELMS) have been deployed as the principle solution to these threats in England and Wales. However, as this paper seeks to reveal, the relationship between ELMS and common land is complex, presenting a challenge to policy makers and implementers and common land interest groups. Nevertheless, examples of good practice have arisen, permitting the inclusion of new concerns within traditional common land governance and management frameworks. The paper concludes with a consideration of whether wider lessons from these developments can be learnt for common land, ELMS and environment policy in general.