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 the oceans and other bodies of water are being “privatized” by the aquaculture industry and access being removed from the general public. As Mark Bittman, former NY 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.”