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This chapter aims to use the theory of commons to reflect on the mechanisms that supported the recent (micro)financial crisis. This approach naturally extends the analysis of the growing field of green microfinance and the financialization of commons and in particular the environment.

The study provides a theoretical analysis of the recent crisis and the introduction of the environmental dimension to microfinance. This theoretical analysis is supported by extensive experience in many years of field research and qualitative and quantitative analysis of the (micro)financial crisis and green microfinance. The theoretical analysis is based on the results of previous research developed using primary and secondary data.

Using the theory of commons we interpret the recent crisis and the financialization of the environment as the tragedy of commons.

We highlight that when the private profit prevails over community benefit, both at the financial and environmental level, efforts toward financial inclusion and environmental conservation could instead lead to financial crisis and environmental damage.

Financial inclusion and environmental economy cannot be analyzed simply in terms of economic utility; a systemic view that embraces the complexity of poverty and the human–environment system is required to assess the actual outcomes of programs dealing with financial inclusion.

Policymakers, international agencies, and implementing institutions such as financial intermediary institutions should question an oversimplistic view of financial inclusion and the economic value of environmental goods. They should instead include in their analysis and program design considerations of the complex interactions between actors, collective behavior, and emerging properties of human and environmental systems.

The theory of commons is employed to analyze both financial inclusion and green microfinance. We propose that (micro)finance should be understood and managed as a common good to support the development of a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable financial system.

The chapter looks for the conditions of a contribution of microcredit to poverty alleviation.

It uses socioeconomical hypotheses for defining a direct and fast positive effect of microcredit on the income of the poorest. The contribution raises ten issues or conditions at a micro, meso and macro level.

It is not often that these ten conditions are all completely met. So, the impact of microcredit is generally low as regards the alleviation of poverty. The problems to achieve them are linked to the specificities of the clients and of the prevailing institutions in various sub-Saharan Africa countries.

The chapter clearly identifies the limits of microcredit and their reasons.

This chapter reconsiders commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly in relation to how a firm shareholder governance model has shaped society. This consideration is motivated by the scale and scope of the modern global crisis, which has combined financial, economic, social and cultural dimensions to produce world disenchantment.

By contrasting an exchange value standpoint with a use value perspective, this chapter explicates current conditions in which neither the state nor the market prevail in organising economic activity (i.e. cooperative forms of governance and community-created brand value).

This chapter offers recommendations related to formalised conditions for collective action and definitions of common guiding principles that can facilitate new expressions of the principles of coordination. Such behaviours can support the development of common resources, which then should lead to a re-appropriation of the world.

It is necessary to think of enterprises outside a company or firm context when reflecting on the end purpose and means of collective, citizen action. From a methodological standpoint, current approaches or studies that view an enterprise as an organisation, without differentiating it from a company, create a deadlock in relation to entrepreneurial collective action. The absence of a legal definition of enterprise reduces understanding and evaluations of its performance to simply the performance by a company. The implicit shift thus facilitates the assimilation of one with the other, in a funnel effect that reduces collective projects to the sole projects of capital providers.

Because forsaking society as it stands is a radical response, this historical moment makes it necessary to revisit the ideals on which modern societies build, including the philosophy of freedom for all. This utopian concept has produced an ideology that is limited by capitalist notions of private property.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to challenge the common idea that microfinance, which is part of alternative finance, was created by Professor Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2006. This chapter aims to outline past initiatives which can be compared to contemporary microcredit practice.

Methodology/Approach – In this chapter we look at historical aspects of finance and all kinds of alternative finance in order to demonstrate that microcredit existed in an archaic form long before Professor Yunus's theorization.

Findings – We find that microcredit has barely always existed in different forms, but has benefited from technic innovations to get a wider outreach.

Originality/Value of chapter – These findings are novel since nobody evoked this clearly before.

Hann, C. & Hart, K. (Eds) (2009). Market and society: The great transformation today. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, cloth, $110.00, pp. xi, 320, index.