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Larry Lohmann is a climate change specialist. He works for The Corner House, a British NGO supporting democratic and community movements for environmental and social justice. In this article, he points out that environmental specialists and activists generally see the history of the forest as one of continuous decline, straying ever further from a past where things were more balanced and toward an era in which forests are increasingly scarce, leading to an intensification of violent struggles between stakeholders as they scramble for the remaining resources. Against this “population, progress, ancestral conflicts” model, which bypasses political conflicts, he looks back at the long history of forest commons in England and the struggles to defend them.