This article engages with Peter Barnes’s work on commons trusts as a model to confront mounting social and ecological crises. The authors begin by locating Barnes’s model within the context of other approaches to this issue and by describing the main elements of his work and applying them to the case of carbon reduction strategies. Throughout, the article highlights the key strengths, limitations, and implications of Barnes’s model. Although Barnes offers a proposal for institutional change that could democratize decision making with a view to protecting the ecosphere, it does not go far enough to challenge the current capitalist order or in explaining how commons trusts would be protected from corporate influence. Implications include the connections between Barnes’s institutional model and a confederal model of global governance, as well as the potential of commons trusts to alter the practice of law and create new channels for ecological literacy and grassroots activism.
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