“Commons are styles of management that support people to exercise self-organization, have access to land rights and natural resources in their community so that people can mutually utilize, protect, and develop resources without claiming their ownership,” (Sunit Shresta, 2020).
Sunit Shrestha manifested 4 cases involving commons initiatives in Thailand: Hug Muang Nan, Locall Bangkok, fish-rice barter project, and “Local Alike, Local Aroi, or Local A lot.” According to Sunit’s opinion, he believes that the importance of the Thai commons movement in the future can emancipate people from capitalists and Thai society truly has as an attribute of economic freedom. However, whether commons can appear in the future or not, they depend on two things; first is the law that facilitates the emergence of commons such as the community right in self-management their natural
resources, and second is successful cases or models that can extend or increase in the bigger scale. Furthermore, co-governance is a critical part of supporting the emergence of commons. Thus, we have to raise a fundamental issue of how commons are helpful for people in the community, and the government sectors should decentralize their power to the community so that people can protect and maintain their mutual resources efficiently.
About Sunit Shrestha
Sunit Shrestha is founder & Managing Director of ChangeFusion, a non-profit institute under Thai Rural Reconstruction Movement Foundation under the Royal Patronage. ChangeFusion supports social enterprises in various areas including mobile-based disease surveillance, appropriate technology for sustainable agriculture for lower income rural farmers, sustainable tourism and more. He also is a lead partner and designer in the setup of innovative social investment programs / funds / platforms for emerging social entrepreneurs in Thailand including;
– UnLtd Thailand and Banpu Champions for Change programs that supports 10 new teams of young social entrepreneurs per year via incubation process and seed funding over the past 9 years with survival rate of 60%.
– ChangeVentures, an early stage social enterprise investment holding company that invest and provide loans to social enterprises.
– B-KIND Fund, Thailand’s first Socially Responsible Investment Mutual Fund that invests in listed companies that passed sustainability criteria with built-in philanthropic investment mechanism (0.8% of fund size, current fund size is over 30+ million USD.) The mutual fund is a partnership between Bualuang Asset Management, Kon Thai Foundation and ChangeFusion.
– Thai Governance Funds Initiative, a scale-up of B-Kind fund model with specific focus on governance and anti-corruption issues. The initiative is a partnership between 13 asset management companies, through its association, in launching 13 ESG mutual funds with focus on governance issue with built-in philanthropic mechanism to support anti-corruptions projects and initiative in Thailand. Current funds size total is over 200+ million USD.)
He also engaged in different areas of social innovation researches such the development of ecosystems for sustainable agriculture in Asia with Oxfam as well as the feasibility study of Asian Social Stock Exchange with the ADB.
