Conscious of the importance of a practical approach towards global issues, the IUC has been a promoter of the Italian Movement for advocating water as a common good. Two IUC legal scholars, Stefano Rodotà and Ugo Mattei, have drafted queries that represent the core of the incoming national referendum, while the entire IUC community has been acting as source of critical analysis for civil society and the Italian political spectrum. Strengthened by the great achievements of the preparatory phase of the referendum (which gathered more than 1.4 million signatures in a few months), and enthusiastic about the incoming referendum, the IUC intends to continue its commitment for maintaining water as a common good, an issue which does not concern Italy alone, but the life of everyone of us and the entire Planet.
Since 2009, when the economist Elinor Olstrom was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics for her research regarding the commons, the notion of the “commons” lost the negative connotation that derived from Harding's “tragedy of the commons”, and represents now a “key word” in the international arena. On the basis of the current global framework, and starting from the peculiar nature of WATER –a common good fundamental for the existence of all living beings and not a commodity subordinated to the notion of economic efficiency and priced on the basis of offer and demand – the International University College of Turin has identified the defense of water as a common good as one of its main fields of research and study. Thanks to the application of a multidisciplinary and multicultural approach, that form the pillars of the IUC philosophy/method, the primacy and unilateralism of the dominant economic vision are put under scrutiny, and challenged in their universalism. Economics becomes one of the several tools of analysis, along with law, anthropology and sociology. With recognizing/acknowledging all these elements, water is finally perceived and studied in its completeness, thereby new solutions are proposed, which not only recognize the needs of people, but include their strict relationship with the peculiar nature of water and its essential role in the planet.
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