Landscape, forests, and commonwealth.

All of these terms and their associated concepts are related, ancient expressions of value which can sustain societies for some length of time.

Does the Government protect the commonwealth on behalf of all the community members, or does it allow wealth and political clout to steal the commons from the people?

p. 43

"The best way to judge the effectiveness of a democracy is to measure how it allocates the goods of the land:"

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Crimes Against Nature

John Locke's labor theory of value:

Explanation

	Land	X	Labor	=	Capital
Wealth
Category:	Natural resources		Human resources		goods
• synonyms:	raw materials		techniques		technology
√ examples:	water, fisheries, forests		slaves, serfs, peons		investments

Forests in the Caribbean are an example of a commons or the air, wildlife, energy, landscape features and watersheds that are needed by all people.

Green shaded areas are the remaining forested lands.

Forest provide sources of fresh water for residents because they intercept clouds, hold the snow & rainfall, allowing enough snow melt and rainwater for sufficient time to seep deep into the ground and become a source for springs at the base of mountains, or even out in the sea, where sufficient fresh water bubbles up, to float above the salt water.

Trees are more than just timber as they provide shade, fruit, fuel wood, charcoal, or more importantly, other materials that can be harvested without necessarily clearing the terrain of timber and thus having to deforest whole areas. When trees are removed serious "downstream" problems become evident such as increasing the erosion due to rainfall and exaggerating temperature extremes causing soil moisture patterns to decline, especially on steeply sloping terrain. Soil organisms that sustain life are disrupted leading to long-term decline in productivity of the land.