Privatization of Public Areas

In legal terminology, the “commons” refers to a shared space or resource where individuals or communities have rights to access and use it. Many scholars and environmentalists are raising concerns about how the use of oceans and other bodies of water are being “privatized” by the aquaculture industry, with access being removed from the general public. 

As Mark Bittman, former New York Times columnist, writes, “These large-scale farms are situated in public waters that are leased to large companies who are essentially privatizing (and polluting) what was historically “the commons,” a shared public resource.”