Applying Ostrom’s commons governance principles to maritime straits for sustainable navigation: case study of the Dover Strait

This paper examines maritime straits’ traditional geographic, legal and economic understanding by proposing a conceptual framework that views them as shared resources, drawing on the commons approach. Building on Elinor Ostrom’s seminal work, which defines commons as shared resources governed through collective action, and using the case study of Dover Strait between France and Great Britain, we demonstrate how applying her principles contributes to sustainable navigation. Theoretically, this paper demonstrates that the interpretation of resources as a group’s resource relates to maritime resources in the straits. Besides, this paper highlights potential avenues for investigating fishing policies and disputes in maritime straits using the commons approach. Ultimately, it illustrates how these strategies can help address the challenges of managing shared water and energy resources within these straits. This paper does not suggest that straits are res communis in the legal sense. Instead, commons theory is applied here as an analytical framework to explore how navigation in straits functions as a shared-use system governed by collective arrangements.