The Reparative Commons Lab explores how technological commons can function as reparative ecosystems—redistributing agency and sovereignty to marginalised communities while resisting extraction and supporting ecological regeneration.

$8.8 trillion: the equivalent development cost of free and open-source software. The Linux kernel alone powers over 90% of cloud infrastructure, 85% of smartphones, and all of the world’s top 500 supercomputers. This extraordinary value flows freely—anyone can use, modify, and redistribute it. Yet we lack frameworks for understanding whether such massive technological value transfers could deliberately remedy historical appropriation.

That’s what our Lab is building.

The challenges we face

• AI systems appropriate collective knowledge at unprecedented scale.
• Communities lack the collective capacity to govern technological development.
• Technological responses to environmental breakdown will either reinforce or disrupt extractive patterns.

The reparative commons proposal

Reparative commons are ecosystems where governance structures, capability transfers, and sovereignty redistribution work together to remedy historical appropriation and embed regenerative relationships with non-human entities.