Creating a Transnational Green Knowledge Commons for a Socially Just Sustainability Transition

Humanity faces numerous deeply interconnected systemic risks to sustainability—a global polycrisis. We need economic institutions that produce the knowledge required to address this polycrisis at the lowest cost, maximize the benefits that knowledge generates, and distribute those benefits fairly. Knowledge improves through use; its value is maximized when it is freely available. Intellectual property rights (IPRs), a form of monopoly, direct knowledge production towards market goods, raise the cost of doing research, and reduce the benefits by price-rationing access. Building on theories of the commons, the anticommons, and market failures, we propose the creation of a transnational green knowledge commons (TGKC) in which all knowledge that contributes to solving the polycrisis be made open access on the condition that any subsequent improvements also be open access. We argue that a TGKC is more sustainable, just, and efficient than restrictive IPRs and well suited to the motivations and governance institutions of public universities. We show how a single university could initiate the process and estimate that the cost would be more than offset by reduced IPR expenses. A TGKC would reduce the costs of generating and disseminating knowledge directed towards a sustainable future and help stimulate the transnational cooperation, reciprocity, and trust required for sustainable management of the global biophysical commons.