A coalition of more than 75 civil society groups, unions, mayors and progressive parties running major European cities has come out to oppose a controversial proposed EU directive that has been pushed by business lobbies and would create major new obstacles for progressive municipal policies and initiatives.

Photo by Stuart Herbert

The post Stop the EU’s Services Notification Procedure – municipalities need democratic space to protect the interests of citizens! appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Radical Realism for Climate Justice. A Civil Society Response to the Challenge of Limiting Global Warming to 1.5°C

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial is feasible, and it is our best hope of achieving environmental and social justice, of containing the impacts of a global crisis that was born out of historical injustice and highly unequal responsibility.

To do so will require a radical shift away from resource-intensive and wasteful production and consumption patterns and a deep transformation towards ecological sustainability and social justice. Demanding this transformation is not ‘naïve’ or ‘politically unfeasible’, it is radically realistic.

This publication is a civil society response to the challenge of limiting global warming to 1.5°C while also paving the way for climate justice. It brings together the knowledge and experience of a range of international groups, networks and organisations the Heinrich Böll Foundation has worked with over the past years, who in their political work, research and practice have developed the radical, social and environmental justice-based agendas political change we need across various sectors.

Radical Realism for Climate Justice includes the following eight volumes:

A Managed Decline of Fossil Fuel Production by Oil Change International shows that the carbon embedded in already producing fossil fuel reserves will take us beyond agreed climate limits. Yet companies and governments continue to invest in and approve vast exploration and expansion of oil, coal and gas. This chapter explores the urgency and opportunity for fossil fuel producers to begin a just and equitable managed decline of fossil fuel production in line with the Paris Agreement goals.

Another Energy is Possible by Sean Sweeney, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) argues that the political fight for social ownership and democratic control of energy lies at the heart of the struggle to address climate change. Along with a complete break with investor-focused neoliberal policy, this “two shift solution” will allow us to address some of the major obstacles to reducing energy demand and decarbonizing supply. “Energy democracy” must address the need for system-level transformations that go beyond energy sovereignty and self-determination.

Zero Waste Circular Economy A Systemic Game-Changer to Climate Change by Mariel Vilella, Zero Waste Europe explains and puts numbers to how the transformation of our consumption and production system into a zero waste circular economy provides the potential for emission reductions far beyond what is considered in the waste sector. Ground-breaking experiences in cities and communities around the world are already showing that these solutions can be implemented today, with immediate results.

Degrowth – A Sober Vision of Limiting Warming to 1.5°C by Mladen Domazet, Institute for Political Ecology in Zagreb, Croatia, reports from a precarious, but climate-stabilized year 2100 to show how a planet of over 7 billion people found diversification and flourishing at many levels of natural, individual and community existence, and turned away from the tipping points of catastrophic climate change and ecosystem collapse. That world is brought to life by shedding the myths of the pre-degrowth era – the main myth being that limiting global warming to 1.5°C is viable while maintaining economic activities focused on growth.

System Change on a Deadline. Organizing Lessons from Canada’s Leap Manifesto by The Leap by Avi Lewis, Katie McKenna and Rajiv Sicora of The Leap recounts how intersectional coalitions can create inspiring, detailed pictures of the world we need, and deploy them to shift the goalposts of what is considered politically possible. They draw on the Leap story to explore how coalition-building can break down traditional “issue silos”, which too often restrict the scope and impact of social justice activism.

La Via Campesina in Action for Climate Justice by La Via Campesina in Action for Climate Justice by the international peasants movement La Via Campesina highlights how industrialized agriculture and the corporate food system are at the center of the climate crisis and block pathways to a 1.5°C world. In their contribution, La Via Campesina outline key aspects of system change in agriculture towards peasant agro-ecology and give concrete experiences of organized resistance and alternatives that are already making change happen.

Re-Greening the Earth: Protecting the Climate through Ecosystem Restoration by Christoph Thies, Greenpeace Germany calls to mind that greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and the destruction of forests and peatlands contribute to global warming and dangerous climate change. His chapter makes the case for ecosystem restoration: Growing forests and recovering peatlands can sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and protect both climate and biodiversity. This can make untested and potentially risky climate technologies unnecessary – if emissions from burning fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas emissions are phased out fast enough.

Modelling 1.5°C-Compliant Mitigation Scenarios Without Carbon Dioxide Removal by Christian Holz, Carleton University and Climate Equity Reference Project (CERP) reviews recent studies that demonstrate that it is still possible to achieve 1.5°C without relying on speculative and potentially deleterious technologies. This can be done if national climate pledges are increased substantially in all countries immediately, international support for climate action in developing countries is scaled up, and mitigation options not commonly included in mainstream climate models are pursued.

We hope that the experiences and political demands, the stories and recommendations compiled in this publication will be as inspiring to all of you as they are to us.

Lili Fuhr and Linda Schneider

Please help us spread the word about this 1.5°C collection:

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Photo by Jason A. Samfield

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Jakarta’s governors have traditionally been (quietly) supportive of ending water privatization in the city, and in 2013, the governor of Jakarta heeded residents’ calls and declared a plan to take over water services from the private sector. Public water company PAM Jaya demanded a contract renegotiation with the private water operators, and the provincial government of Jakarta announced a plan to purchase private water operators’ shares. In 2013, the provincial house of representatives approved a budget for PAM Jaya to proceed with share repurchase.

One particularly effective strategy in November 2012 involved residents, represented by legal aid organisation LBH Jakarta, filing a citizen lawsuit against water privatization in Jakarta. Amrta Institute supported the challenge with evidence for use in court. This long and successful legal challenge played a major role in maintaining political pressure.

The labor union’s demonstration in front of Palyja’s office, in the elite buildings of Central Jakarta, April 2011

The backdrop to this – two decades of failed water privatization in Jakarta and half the population having no piped water – led the Amrta Instite to run public media campaigns, produce popular publications about the issue, and make documentaries.

At first most people were not aware that water problems were the result of privatization, and that the solution was to return water services to public management. But now we have decisions from three courts supporting public water management; the Constitutional Court decision, Central Jakarta District Court decision and Supreme Court decision. In October 2017, the governor told the media that he will implement the court decision.

A woman who was washing in Penjaringan, North Jakarta, admitted that the cost to buy water consumed almost 70% of her husband’s income.

“The most impressive thing is that the initiative did not give up fighting against systematic/structured powers – from domestic to international, from governments to corporations – which look impossible to challenge.”

– Satoko Kishimoto

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us.

Or visit amrta-institute.org

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

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In 2006, Tanzania’s government demolished 7,351 houses in Kurasini to expand Dar Es Salaam port, leaving about 36,000 people homeless. In response, the community swung into action, securing 30 acres of land for resettlement and collecting about 24 million Tanzanian shillings (US$ 24,000) from 300 of its members to buy the land.

Trained Federation women doing construction work

The project also improved access to water and sanitation – as well as a borehole and solar powered water pump, sewage is now treated using a constructed wetland with recyclable water technology. A major win for the project was that it identified potential financial sources for the urban poor, who often cannot access finance from formal institutions.

All of this was achieved through the setting up of the Chamazi Community Based Housing Scheme known as Muungano Housing Cooperatives, and the Tanzanian Urban Poor Fund. Together they raised a US$ 100,000 loan from Slum Dwellers International (SDI), US$ 40,000 from UK-based organization Homeless International (Reall) for water and sanitation and the solar pump for the community borehole from Temeke Municipal Council.

Street scene

CCI trained the community in construction skills, enabling construction materials to be fabricated on-site by community members, who also helped build the houses. Other partners contributed expertise and professional advice on surveying and acquiring land, developing building plans and designing the houses. To date, 75 new homes have been provided.

House-owner Rose Liheta seated in front of her house talking to her Neighbor.

“Considering the rapid urbanization in Africa and across the globe, plus the growth of urban informal settlements, this would be a highly relevant initiative to replicate for sustainable use of land and to fulfil the right to decent housing for all.”

– Agnes Midi Keita

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog.

Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

The post Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Dispossessed community finances and builds affordable homes appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Republished from Materials for Two Theories: TIMN and STA:C

Notes about the noosphere and noopolitik — #7: new hope for the noosphere and noopolitik — the global commons

UPDATE — May 4, 2018: Here’s my second draft for this section of our forthcoming paper on “The Continuing Promise of the Noösphere and Noöpolitik — Twenty Years After.” I’ve deleted what I originally posted here. This second draft contains considerable new material, but the analytical thrust remains the same.

Thus we’ve noted early cases of NGOs successfully using noopolitik — e.g., the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), a coalition of NGOs that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. And we’ve listed a range of issue areas where state-non-state cooperation can help foster the noosphere and noopolitik: e.g., human-rights, conflict resolution, democracy promotion, and the environment.

To this list, we now add the “global commons” — traditionally, the parts of Planet Earth that fall outside national jurisdictions, and to which all nations have access, such as the high seas, the atmosphere, and outer space. The global commons may turn out to be a pivotal issue area.

While the noosphere and noopolitik are not faring well in the power centers discussed in the prior section, the noosphere concept is progressing better among actors around the world who are concerned about the global commons. This concept is of interest here because it relates closely to the notion of the noosphere. Moreover, actors concerned about the global commons seem naturally attracted to noopolitik.

Indeed, it may well turn out that the noosphere and noopolitik concepts will fare better in the future, the more they are associated with the global-commons concept — and the latter will flourish, the more it is associated with the noosphere and noopolitik. This may be so partly because both the global-commons and noosphere are everywhere viewed as being linked to the biosphere. Recognizing the noosphere’s association with the global commons may then help put noopolitik back on track in various strategic issue areas, despite the negative trends discussed in the prior section.

What makes the global-commons concept potentially pivotal is that it has taken hold from two seemingly contrary directions: One is civilian, arising mainly at the behest of NGOs, IGOs, and other non-state actors who are motivated by environmental and social concerns. The other has been military, motivated by state-centric security interests. Furthermore, while the term “commons” has been used for centuries, the term “global commons” is quite recent. It first appeared in civilian environmental circles — implicitly in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) during 1973-1982, then explicitly in the Brundtland Committee’s report on Our Common Future in 1987. The term spread into military and strategy circles a decade later, notably in the National Defense Strategy document in 2008, then to greater effect in the Quadrennial Defense Review of 2010. Both these civilian and military views were important to President Obama and his Administration. (Among other sources, see Yan, 2012; Kominami, 2012; Ikeshima, 2018)

The “global commons” is thus bracketed by differences in its meanings in environmental science and civil-society circles, on one hand, and on the other, its meaning in military circles. In the past, these different circles rarely interacted; some pro-commons civil-society activists even objected to seeing the term show up in military circles (Bollier, 2010; Morris, 2011). Now, however, as more and more actors recognize the potentially adverse effects of climate change and other global environmental shifts, the views held in these seemingly contrary circles are starting to intersect, as are their calls for reforms and remedies.

In this section, we first discuss perspectives from the environmental science and civil-society circles. Next come military perspectives on the global commons. Finally, we highlight their intersections and the implications for policy and strategy, and particularly for noopolitik.

Environmental science and civil-society perspectives on the global commons:

Among civilians, interest in the global-commons concept comes from two different circles. One consists of scientists and associated actors (international organizations in particular) who are primarily concerned about environmental matters. They have grown into a large, influential circle (or set of circles) and have billions of dollars at their disposal. The other circle consists largely of pro-commons civil-society activists whose agendas include not only environmental issues but also the radical transformation of societies as a whole. This circle is growing around the world too, though in a low-key, low-budget, bottom-up manner.

The two circles have much in common regarding the protection of the global commons. But they are also distinct: The big environmental science circle generally seeks to have government, banking, business, civil-society, and other actors work together to protect the biosphere. This circle tends to lean in progressive liberal internationalist directions. In contrast, the social-activist civil-society circle is decidedly of the Left — but it’s a new kind of Left, for it wants commons-based peer production and other kinds of “commoning” to spread to such an extent that societies experience a phase shift to new commons-based forms of society. This circle has more on its agenda than environmental science and the biosphere.

We discuss each circle in turn, regarding the ways they approach the global commons.

The big science circle: The biggest advances in thinking about the global commons come from scientists and related actors focused on global environmental matters. They have formed into a global circuit of IGOs, NGOs, research centers, private individuals, and government, banking, and business actors — with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) serving as key collective network hubs. These scientists and their cohorts take the biosphere concept seriously (and at times allude to the noosphere or Gaia). Indeed, the GEF (2017, pp. 8-11) proposes to create a grand Movement of the Global Commons that will “develop a compelling story about needs and opportunities for the Global Commons” and engage people “from communities to corporations to cabinets.” (Also see unenvironment.org and thegef.org)

Initially, decades ago, environmental concerns were mainly about specific local matters, such as pollution. Late in the 20th C., after decades of seeing problems worsened by “global forces of consumption, production, and population,” environmentalists realized their challenge was planet-wide, involving what they began calling “the global commons” — “the shared resources that no one owns but all life relies upon” (Levin & Bapna, 2011) As the global commons-concept took hold, mostly after the Brundtland Committee’s report on Our Common Future (1987), its proponents came to identify the high seas, the atmosphere, Antarctica, and outer space as the resource domains of interest. And they did so “guided by the principle of the common heritage of mankind” and a sense of “common responsibilities”. Which makes for considerable overlap with the military view that the global commons consists of four operational domains: sea, air, space, and cyber.

Some proponents have wanted to expand the global-commons concept further. Thus, “Resources of interest or value to the welfare of the community of nations — such as tropical rain forests and biodiversity — have lately been included among the traditional set of global commons as well, while some define the global commons even more broadly, including science, education, information and peace” (UN Task Force, 2013, pp. 5-6). Proponents for including biodiversity often mention preserving the quality of soil and marine conditions. Which would mean expanding the global-commons concept in social directions that are most pronounced within the civil-society circle discussed in the next sub-section.

Throughout, their analyses (notably, Nakicenovic et al., 2016, pp. 16-17) urge viewing the global commons and “the large-scale subsystems of the Earth system — ocean circulations, permafrost, ice sheets, Arctic sea ice, the rainforests and atmospheric circulations” — as a complex system characterized not only by stable equilibria but also by “regime shifts, tipping points, tipping elements, nonlinearities and thresholds” that may experience “bifurcation points” and then “a new equilibrium state” or a sudden collapse. The threat is that “If one system collapses to a new state, it may set up positive feedback loops amplifying the change and triggering changes in other subsystems. This might be termed a “cascading collapse” of key components of the Earth system.” Which, as discussed later, overlaps with how the military has come to view the domains comprising their global commons as a complex interactive system.

Of particular note for the big science circle, Johan Rockström, Director of Sweden’s Stockholm Resilience Center, has provided seminal studies for years about “biosphere interactions” and “planetary life support systems”. He also formulated new concepts about “nine planetary boundaries that provide a safe operating space for humanity”. In his and his colleagues’ view, several boundaries have already been transgressed, and further slippage looms. Accordingly, humanity threatens to cause catastrophes that can overwhelm the biosphere and thus the Anthropocene age, for “The high seas, the atmosphere, the big ice sheets of the Arctic and
Antarctica, and the stratosphere — traditionally seen as
the Earth’s global commons — are now under suffocating pressure. Yet we all depend on them for our wellbeing” (Rockström. 2017, p. 26). (Also see Rockström. 2009, 2011; Nakicenovic et al., 2016)

As a result, not only further scientific research but also new global perspectives, narratives, organizations, and strategies are needed to assure planetary resilience, sustainability, and stewardship — if possible, to achieve a holistic transformation. According to Rockström and his colleagues, “Governance of the global commons is required to achieve sustainable development and thus human wellbeing. We can no longer focus solely on national priorities” (Rockström, 2011, p. 21). Looking farther out, they (e.g., Nakicenovic et al., 2016) insist that “all nation states have a domestic interest in safeguarding the resilience and stable state of all Global Commons, as this forms a prerequisite for their own future development” (p. 26). Therefore, “Stewardship of the Global Commons in the Anthropocene, with its three central principles of inclusivity, universality and resilience, is an essential prerequisite to guide national and local approaches in support of the Sustainable Development Goals for generations to come” (p. 46).

Rockström (2017, pp. 26-27) goes so far as to predict that, if the right steps could be taken on behalf of the global commons, then “planetary intelligence could emerge on Earth by 2050.” His language sounds much like that of Teilhard and Vernadsky — but falls just short of explicitly mentioning the noosphere:

“Here’s a prediction: planetary intelligence could emerge on Earth by 2050. …

“… planetary intelligence emerges when a species develops the knowledge and power to control a planet’s biosphere. …

“For planetary intelligence to emerge on Earth within three decades we need to change our worldview, our goals and our rules. …

“… we must redefine the global commons. In these new circumstances we can now define them as a resilient and stable planet. That is every child’s birthright, and our common heritage; but it is now at risk. The Anthropocene and the new global commons represent a new worldview — a paradigm shift — as fundamental as Darwin’s theory of evolution or Copernicus’s heliocentricity. …

“If we take the biosphere positive pathway, then the signs are good that we’ll find intelligent life on Earth by 2050.”

As for steps yet to be taken, Rockström (2017) and many of his colleagues believe “We desperately need an effective global system of governance” (p. 25). The concern is that “In a period of increasing interdependence and complexity, global governance remains fragmented, hampered by loud national interests, and unable to address global risks that present non-linear dynamics and repercussions.” What’s needed for the global commons are: new legal norms about planetary boundaries; stronger roles for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP); stronger commitments by “governments, private actors and the international community” to adopt innovations to safeguard the biosphere; along with “a recognition that transformative change requires engagement and mobilization “from below” … endorsed by the population” (Rockström, 2016). And while much work is focused on defining thresholds and rights for using the commons, other work, notably by the Global Thresholds & Allocations Council (GTAC), is focused on defining fair allocation mechanisms, in a “partnership between leading organizations and individuals from science, business, investment, government, and civil society” (From reporting3.org/gtac/).

Again, these sound much like points made by some military proponents of the global commons, as discussed later.

The social activist circle: For the military, the sea was the first global commons. But, for civil-society activists, “the commons” concept originated centuries ago in England to refer to open land shared “in common”. By now, according to pro-commons civil-society theorists and activists, the concept includes not only natural physical commons — land, air, and water, as “gifts of nature” — it also extends to digital commons (online terrain and knowledge). More than that, some activists include social commons — e.g., cooperatives, where creative work amounts to a shared asset. Culture is sometimes viewed as belonging to the commons as well.

Pro-commons proponents in civil-society circles define commons as shared resources, co-governed by a community (users and stakeholders), according to the rules and norms of that community. All three components — resource, community, rules, in other words, the what, the who, and the how — are deemed essential. Together, they mean “the commons” is not just about resources or terrains; it’s about a way of life called “commoning”. Furthermore, an eventual aim of these “commoners” is to create a new “commons sector” alongside but distinct from the established public and private sectors. If/as this develops, a revolutionary societal transformation will occur. Indeed, a goal of some pro-commons theorists and activists is to “build “counter-hegemonic” power through continuous meshworking at all levels” so that “the destructive force of global capital and its predation of the planet and its people can be countered.” (See Bauwens et al., 2017; Bauwens & Ramos, 2018; Ronfeldt, 2012)

Fifty years ago, the commons concept had no clout in advanced societies — especially not after Garrett Hardin famously wrote “The Tragedy of the Commons” (1968). Today, however, pro-commons social movements are growing around the world. They were inspired initially by people experiencing the Internet and Web as a kind of commons, even as a harbinger of the noosphere. Then Elinor Ostrom’s book Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990) and her Nobel Prize in economics in 2009 enabled many people to realize, contrary to Hardin and other critics, that common-pool resources can indeed be managed productively. By now, commons movements are slowly, quietly expanding throughout North America, Western Europe, and Scandinavia, gaining inspiration and guidance from a host of new civil-society NGOs, notably the P2P Foundation led by Michel Bauwens, as well as from individual theorists, like David Bollier and Yochai Benkler. In some instances, further impulse comes from Green political parties. In comparison to the big environmental science circle, this is not a hugely influential circle (yet); but it is generating a social movement that is helping raise interest in the global commons and the noosphere.

Much of this innovation is occurring on the Left. German commons advocate Silke Helfrich (quoted in Bollier, 2014) has noted accurately that “commons draw from the best of all political ideologies” — for example, from conservatives, the values of responsibility; from liberals, the values of social equality and justice; from libertarians, the value of individual initiative; and from leftists, the value of limiting the scope of capitalism. Yet this is still largely a set of movements from left-leaning parts of the political spectrum. So far, few conservatives have realized the potential benefits of allowing a commons sector to emerge. Indeed, on the Right, separation from the commons is a central theme — from “America First” to Brexit, the Alternative for Germany, and others.

At first, say two or three decades ago, pro-commons activists focused primarily on local and national matters. But as visions have evolved, more and more activists are redirecting their focus beyond local and national commons toward expansive “global commons” concepts. This turn is well underway. For example, German economist Gerhard Scherhorn (2013) would include in the global commons not only natural resources, but even “employment opportunities, public health systems, educational opportunities, social integration, income and wealth distribution, and communication systems such as the Internet.” A further example is James Quilligan’s analysis, as an international development expert and commons advocate, that,

“While watching markets and states mismanage the world’s
cross-boundary problems, it has dawned on many individuals, communities
and civil society organizations that the specific objectives we are
pursuing — whether they are food, water, clean air, environmental
protection, energy, free flow of information, human rights, indigenous
people’s rights, or numerous other social concerns — are essentially global commons issues.” (Quilligan, 2008)

Meanwhile, many leftist pro-commons civil-society proponents have sought organizational changes that resemble those from the big science and military circles. For example, James Quilligan proposed “that we would gain considerably more
authority and responsibility in meeting these problems by joining 
together as global commons organizations” (2008). In his view, “The challenge is to assemble international representatives from all regions and sectors to discuss global commons issues in a negotiating format which integrates these three [geosphere, biosphere, noosphere] streams of evolution” (2010). He, like others, has also recommended that local communities of users and producers agree to new kinds of “social charters” and “commons trusts” to assure their hold on commons property. If more and more people do so, then “commons management would be deliberated through local, state, interstate, regional, and global stakeholder discussions” — ultimately leading to systems of “global constitutional governance” that favor the commons (2013). However, an early 2008-2009 to create a Coalition for the Global Commons evidently foundered, and no new formal grand movement has re-emerged since.

In contrast to the big science proponents of the global commons, few leftist civil-society actors are so willing to envisage cooperating with today’s government, banking, and business actors. Yet they do generally want to see shifts to network forms of global governance — to network-based governance systems — for they know that uncertainties about global governance mean difficulties for protecting and preserving the global commons. Indeed, encouraging for us to see, Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation has remarked that “Right now, the nation-state is no longer a key instrument of change, so we must focus on building transnational open source communities of collective intelligence, i.e. a noopolitik for the noosphere” (Bauwens, 2018).

Military perspectives on the global commons:

The military idea of a commons is uniquely American. It originated from the sea — notably in 1890 when naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote about the sea as “a wide common, over which men may pass in all directions.” Over time, the ensuing construct, “command of the sea,” was expanded, with the identification and inclusion of air and other domains, into “command of the commons” — the construct that prevailed during the mid- and late-20th C. The term “global commons” — hence, “command of the global commons” — arose in U.S. military thinking quite recently, notably with the National Defense Strategy of 2008 and especially the Quadrennial Defense Review of 2010.

In the U.S. view, the global commons contains four military domains: sea (or maritime), air, space, and cyber (five if land were added, by counting Antarctica). What makes them a “global commons” is that they are “areas that belong to no one state and that provide access to much of the globe.” And since no single entity owns or controls them, they become “assets outside national jurisdiction.” Of these military commons, access to and use of the sea domain has been crucial for centuries, air for a century, outer space for about six decades, and cyberspace for about three decades. (See Posen 2003; Jasper, 2010, 2013; Denmark & Mulvenon, 2010; Barrett et al., 2011, p. xvi)

The global commons is thus a multi-domain concept, and many military strategists prefer to view them as a “a complex, interactive system” (Redden & Hughes, 2011, p. 65). Its domains, though not exactly an integrated system, are so interconnected and interdependent that, in operational terms, they function as a whole, not just as an assemblage of parts — thus, “Their value lies in their accessibility, commonality, and ubiquity as a system of systems.” (Barrett et al., 2011, p. 46) Moreover, a weakness or loss in one domain (say, cyberspace) may jeopardize operations in another (say, for an aircraft carrier at sea). Accordingly, “the global commons only functions effectively because each aspect is utilized simultaneously” (Denmark & Mulvenon, 2010, p. 9). With a few word changes, this is not unlike how environmental scientists and civil-society activists view their global commons as a complex adaptive system. (Also see Brimley, 2010)

What makes the military’s global commons strategically important is that they amount to “the underlying infrastructure of the global system … conduits for the free flow of trade, finance, information, people, and technology”(Jasper & Giarra, 2010, p. 2). Our world is so intricately connected across these four domains that “dependable access to the commons is the backbone of the international economy and political order, benefiting the global community in ways that few appreciate or realize.” (Denmark & Mulvenon, 2010, p. 1) Thus, as often pointed out, these commons should be treated as “global public goods” and “global common goods”. It’s even been said —perhaps in an overstated manner — that “every person’s fate [is] tethered to the commons” (Cronin, 2010, p. ix). (Also see Brimley et al., 2008; Edelman, 2010)

Because of the nature of America’s values and interests, the U.S. military has had strategic interests, especially since the end of World War II and throughout the Cold War, in assuring that U.S. military capabilities suffice to keep these commons openly accessible and usable by all actors, especially our allies and partners. What began as “freedom of the seas” evolved into favoring freedom in all the commons — most obviously for vessels, goods, and people, but also to spread neo-liberal values and ideas about openness, freedom, and democracy around the world. U.S. strategy for the global commons thus favored inclusion, not exclusion. All quite reflective of what Teilhard might have recommended, though it’s doubtful that military strategists were thinking about noosphere construction at the time. (See Flournoy & Brimley, 2009)

In that period, U.S. presence in the global commons was so powerful, pervasive, and singular that military strategists commended our primacy, superiority, dominance, and/or hegemony as being of enormous benefit — e.g., as “the key military enabler of the U.S. global power position” (Posen, 2003, p.8 ), “an important enabler of globalization” (Posen, 2007, p. 563), “intrinsic to safeguarding national territory and economic interests” (Jasper and Giarra, 2010, p. 5), as well as “a source of US primacy and also a global public good that supported general acceptance of the unipolar world order” (Edelman, 2010, p. 77). Indeed, most of this has been true, especially in light of the opportunities that U.S. command of the commons provided for acquiring transit rights and forward bases that compounded the ability to operate as a global power and contain the ambitions of adversaries.

Today, however, as the world has become even more globalized and multipolar, the era of the United States as guarantor of the global commons looks increasingly compromised, even jeopardized. As often noted, all four domains have become congested, competitive, and contested; contact in any domain often risks confrontation now. The challenges are conceptual and political as well as military and technological, for apart from NATO, many nations — notably China and Russia — disagree with U.S. views that a “global commons” really exists and the world benefits from U.S. maintenance of it. Such states have laid claims to nearby sea and air spaces, objected to treating outer space as a commons, and/or denied letting cyberspace be a commons, instead asserting sovereignty over portions of it — thereby expanding their security perimeters into all domains. One nation in particular, China, has ambitious plans to extend its political, economic, and military reach abroad, notably via its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), in ways that are sure to create problems in all domains of the global commons, alarming India above all. Other new challenges for the commons come from armed non-state actors — pirates, smugglers, and terrorists. Meanwhile, most all actors, state and non-state, are strengthening their capacities for access-and-area denial by acquiring advanced weapons and communications systems — a lesson they’ve learned from watching recent wars and conflict and seeing “how much U.S. power projection has depended on its dominant access to and use of the global commons” (Denmark & Mulvenon, 2010, p. 15). (Also see Brimley, 2010)

No wonder lawfare expert Craig Allen cautioned a decade ago (2007, pp. 15, 18) “that an aggressive command of the commons posture may backfire and motivate other States to undertake measures to reduce the would-be commander’s access or transit rights” — for “claims to a “command of the commons” seem unnecessarily provocative.” No wonder defense analyst Patrick Cronin (2010, p. ix) wrote a few years later that “Securing freedom in the global commons may be the signal security challenge of the twenty-first century.” No wonder moreover that former Secretary of State George Shultz (2017) warned recently, as he has for many years, of a looming “breakdown of the global commons” — for “that commons is now at risk everywhere, and in many places it no longer really exists.”

Thus, even though U.S. military strategists might wish to continue exercising, if not imposing, a unilateral U.S. role in the global commons, the time for that appears to be passing. A very uncertain new era is emerging. Many analysts still recognize the value of the global commons for America’s global power and influence, but they also increasingly see that new conceptual and organizational approaches are needed to protect and preserve its value. As one report put it, in the heyday of such analysis during the Obama administration:

“These trends are … harbingers of a future strategic environment in which America’s role as an arbiter or guarantor of stability within the global commons will become increasingly complicated and contested. If this assessment is true, then a foundational assumption on which every post-Cold War national security strategy has rested — uncontested access to and stability within the global commons — will begin to erode.” (Flournoy & Brimley, 2009)

The disposition of the Trump administration toward the global-commons concept is far from clear. But in military circles, it’s still alive. In late 2016, the Pentagon superseded its years-old Air-Sea Battle (ASB) concept with the Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC), enshrining the concept in the title. Whereas ASB focused on defeating an adversary’s anti-access//area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities, JAM-GC lays out a much broader approach — a “unifying framework” — for assuring freedom of action in all five warfighting domains (including land). Accordingly, “JAM-GC acknowledges that “access” to the global commons is vital to U.S. national interests, both as an end in itself and as a means to projecting military force into hostile territory.” Moreover, besides military elements, JAM-GC recognizes that “other elements of national power — that is, a whole-of-government and coalition approach — including diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement should also be well integrated with joint force operations.” This document is supposed to help determine strategy and doctrine for the rest of this decade and into the next. (Hutchens et al., 2017, pp. 137, 138, 139)

However, following the change of administrations, the Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy (DOD, 2018) never mentions the “global commons” per se, referring only to “common domains” in a couple spots. Thus, “Ensuring common domains remain open and free” is in the list of defense objectives (p. 4). And — to Beijing’s subsequent rebuke — the document states that “We will strengthen our alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific to a networked security architecture capable of deterring aggression, maintaining stability, and ensuring free access to common domains” (p. 9).
At least the global-commons concept lingers here by implication — but as we note below, challenges have begun to loom from outside military circles.

Against this background, analyses about how to continue preserving and protecting the global commons to the benefit of U.S. military and security interests now mostly conclude with calls for negotiating the creation of new multilateral governance regimes, international agreements, and norms of behavior to assure the openness of the commons. Most analysts would prefer that these efforts reflect U.S. leadership, for it’s a widely held view that “America must take a leadership role to ensure that access to the global commons remains a public good” (Brimley et al., 2008, p. 15). But, at this point, the United States is not in a position to impose such regimes, nor would it want to use hard power to do so. It’s become a matter of having to share responsibility and work with allies and partners, in diplomatic soft-power ways akin to noopolitik.

The challenge is that efforts to establish governance regimes for the global commons have to involve not only other countries’ militaries (e.g., NATO) but also various public and private actors. That can result in complex network cooperation and coordination problems. As Jasper & Giarra (2010, p. 3)observe,

“It is misleading to conceptualize or deal with the interests of stakeholders in the global commons independently, that is, to differentiate between the military, civil, or commercial spheres, or to segregate military service roles. This is because the domains of the commons are inherently interwoven — military maritime, space, aerospace, and cyberspace operations overlap with civilian and commercial activities — and because the networks that enable operations or activities in the various overlapping sectors are themselves threaded together.”

Denmark & Mulvenon (2010, p. 2) further clarify the challenge by concluding that “the United States should renew its commitment to the global commons by pursuing three mutually supporting objectives:

“• Build global regimes: America should work with the international community, including allies, friends, and potential adversaries, to develop international agreements and regimes that preserve the openness of the global commons.

“• Engage pivotal actors: The United States should identify and build capacities of states and non- state actors that have the will and ability to responsibly protect and sustain the openness of the global commons.

“• Re-shape American hard power to defend the contested commons: The Pentagon should develop capabilities to defend and sustain the global commons, preserve its military freedom of action in commons that are contested, and cultivate capabilities that will enable effective military operations when a commons is unusable or inaccessible.”

Of potential interest here, their first two recommendations are commonly found not only in military circles but also in civilian circles concerned about the global commons, as discussed above. Variants of their third point also appear in civilian circles, but without the bit about reshaping hard power — unless that reshaping were interpreted to mean a conversion into soft-power measures.

By some accounts, there are also serious organizational challenges at home. Several reports during 2010-2011 advised strategists and planners to revamp their approach to the global commons. One proposed to “depart from the domain-centric mindset” and “employ a holistic approach that breaks down domain stovepipes and treats the global commons not as a set of distinct geographies, but rather as a complex, interactive system” (Redden & Hughes, 2011, p. 65). Another, to reform our “decentralized system of responsibility, in which dozens of agencies and departments are charged with securing specific aspects of the air commons” (Denmark & Mulvenon, 2010, p. 23). Yet another, to overcome “inadequate governance, insufficient norms and regulations, a lack of verification measures to ensure compliance, and more often than not ineffective mechanisms for enforcement” (Barrett et al., 2011, xvii). We’ve found no indications that these organizational challenges no longer exist at home.

So, what we can start to say here is that U.S. military perspectives on the global commons have evolved in directions we’ve been forecasting about the noosphere and noopolitik. What may make this more interesting is that the U.S. military and Department of Defense have lately determined that climate change is real, and that it has potentially threatening security and military implications for the global commons, not to mention other matters. It’s deemed a “threat multiplier” and “an accelerant of instability or conflict”. Key concerns include ways that climate change may affect the military’s roles in humanitarian and disaster relief missions — roles that may require accessing and using all the commons quickly and efficiently. (La Shier & Stanish, 2017)

However, we may have to remain patient about our hopes that positive attention to the global commons will favor a turn to noopolitik anytime soon. For one matter, as pointed out for years, “Washington has yet to articulate a diplomatic strategy to sustain access to the commons.” (Denmark, 2010, p. 166) Making matters worse, the current administration and its attendant policymakers and strategists have so far shown no interest in the global-commons concept. To the contrary, one administration appointee, National Space Council director Scott Pace, recently disparaged it in harsh dismissive terms:

“Finally, many of you have heard me say this before, but it bears repeating: outer space is not a “global commons,” not the “common heritage of mankind,” not “res communis,” nor is it a public good. These concepts are not part of the Outer Space Treaty, and the United States has consistently taken the position that these ideas do not describe the legal status of outer space. To quote again from a U.S. statement at the 2017 COPUOS Legal Subcommittee, reference to these concepts is more distracting than it is helpful. To unlock the promise of space, to expand the economic sphere of human activity beyond the Earth, requires that we not constrain ourselves with legal constructs that do not apply to space.” (Pace, 2017)

Could this be a position that the current administration will extend to the other domains? Will it be touted as another purported repudiation of Obama (even though prior administrations also favored the American role in nurturing the commons)? Too soon to tell. But if so, it augurs a return to a neo-mercantilist approach to taking hold of territories and resources in all four domains, a denial that the global-commons concept has validity or legality, the alienation of the pro-commons environmental science and civil-society movements, a further repudiation of U.S. allies and partners, and new difficulty if not confrontation with China as it expands its global reach to all domains.

If the current White House does indeed go in this direction, it will interrupt America’s long positive progression from supporting freedom of the seas to securing the global commons. Instead, it will mean an inadvisable return to realpolitik, and a further decline in America’s capacity for public diplomacy. We will have to put our hopes for the noosphere and noopolitik on hold for a few years.

Intersecting implications — a new combination of forces for the future?

Comparing the views held in civilian and military circles about the global commons leads to noticing significant overlaps and intersections:

• All their definitions overlap as to the meaning of “global commons” — essentially, material and immaterial terrains and/or resources located outside national jurisdictions, tantamount to global public goods, thus available for mutual sharing and governance.

• All view the global commons as a set of interconnected interdependent domains that, together, comprise a complex interactive if not adaptive system, or system of systems, that girds Planet Earth.

• All see crucial interests in protecting and preserving the global commons, some for humanity’s sake, others more for security’s sake. At the same time, all detect that the global commons are under increasing pressures, if not threats, as a result of people’s behaviors of one kind or another.

• All believe that current governance regimes are inadequate for preserving and protecting the global commons, and that work is urgently needed to create new global governance regimes, associations, and frameworks that are multilateral in myriad senses — they’re inter-governmental, state–non-state, public-private, IGO-NGO, civil-military, local-global, and/or combine hierarchical and networked forms of governance — for purposes that include mutual stewardship and shared responsibility.

• All regard the global commons as strategic resources and/or assets, essential factors for humanity’s future, around which grand strategies should be formulated, at least in part. For military as well as civilian actors, a strategy based on applying soft-power, not hard-power, is considered the way to pursue whatever grand strategy is proposed — in other words, noopolitik, not realpolitik.

There’s something else which all global-commons proponents seem to agree deserves greater attention: sensors to detect and monitor what’s transpiring throughout the global commons. This isn’t missing from current discussions, but it’s rarely highlighted as a crucial matter, especially compared to the attention devoted to organizational matters. Yet the two matters are related — networked sensor arrays and “sensory organizations” look to be part of what’s urgently needed, for social as well as scientific monitoring, including to support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions.

In addition to these overlaps and intersections, two significant differences stand out between civilian and military intentions toward the global commons:

• The military’s intentions are focused on domain security matters; they say nothing, or very little, about societal matters. In contrast, the civilian circles discussed above do intend to transform societies, in order to make them better suited to living with, and from, the global commons. The big environmental science circle has issued proposals for myriad social, economic, and political reforms, some quite radical. The leftist civil-society social-activist circle foresees societies being radically transformed, entering a next phase of social evolution, as a result of pro-commons forces.

• Both military and civilian proponents of the global commons talk about the importance of “hegemony” — but in opposite ways. An oft-mentioned goal of the military has been hegemonic command of the global commons (though less so now). In contrast, an oft-mentioned goal of civil-society commoners is “counter-hegemonic power” — seeing pro-commons forces grow so strong that they can counter the hegemonic power of today’s established public and private sectors, indeed of capitalism itself. This makes it difficult to imagine today’s pro-commons social activists relating well to today’s global-commons military strategists. But the day may come, especially if/as climate change and its effects become a mutual concern.

These findings support our up-front observation that the noosphere and noopolitik concepts will fare better in the future, the more they are associated with the global-commons concept — and the latter will flourish, the more it is associated with the noosphere and noopolitik. This may be so partly because both the global-commons and noosphere are everywhere viewed as linked to the biosphere. Recognizing the noosphere’s association with the global commons may then help put noopolitik back on track in various strategic issue areas.

True as that may be, optimism and enthusiasm are barely warranted right now. Looking ahead with the current political environment in mind — especially the orientations of today’s leaders in Washington, Beijing, and Moscow — what may be most in need of near-term protection and preservation are not so much the global commons and their domains per se, but rather the very concept itself — “global commons”. The current administration in Washington seems poised to deny and disparage this long-standing strategic concept — hopefully not, but if so, it could play into the hands of Beijing and Moscow, who have never accepted the concept and would rather pursue their grand strategies without it. Leadership on behalf of the global commons — and thus the prospects for the noosphere and noopolitik — would then fall more than ever to the mostly non-state circles we identified earlier.

David Ronfeldt: Professional status: retired. Fields: first 20 years, U.S.-Latin American security issues (esp. Mexico, Cuba); last 15 years, worldwide implications of the information revolution (cyberocracy, cyberwar, netwar, swarming, noopolitik, the nexus-state). Goals: finish “STA:C” framework about how people think; and finish “TIMN” framework about social evolution (past, present, future). Publications: mostly online at rand.org and firstmonday.org.

Photo by SurfaceWarriors

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Executive summary by Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation, research) and Yurek Onzia (project coordination)

This study ^[1] was commissioned and financed by the City of Ghent, a city in northern Flanders with nearly 300,000 inhabitants, with the support of its mayor Daniel Termont, the head of the mayor’s staff, the head of the strategy department, and the political coalition of the city which consists of the Flemish Socialist Party SPA, the Flemish Greens (Groen) and the Flemish Liberal Party (Open VLD).

The request was to document the emergence and growth of the commons in the city, to offer some explanations of why this was occurring, and to determine what kind of public policies should support commons-based initiatives, based on consultation with the active citizens in Ghent.

The authors of the report are Michel Bauwens as investigator and Yurek Onzia as coordinator of the effort.

Timelab, an artistic makerspace under the leadership of Evi Swinnen, and the Greek scholar of the P2P Lab Vasilis Niaros, played important supportive roles in the realization of this project. Wim Reygaert and partners provided the graphics used in the original report. Annelore Raman coordinated the connections within the city council.

The consultation, which took place during the spring of 2017, took the form of:

1. A mapping of 500 or so commons-oriented projects per sector of activity (food, shelter, transportation, etc), through a wiki, which is available at http://wiki.commons.gent
2. 80+ one to one interviews and conversations with leading commoners and project leaders
3. A written questionnaire that was responded to by over 70 participants
4. A series of 9 workshops in which participants were invited per theme, ‘Food as a Commons’, ‘Energy as a Commons’, ‘Transportation as a Commons’, etc ..
5. A Commons Finance Canvas workshop, based on the methodology developed by Stephen Hinton, which looked into the economic opportunities, difficulties and models used by the commons projects

The report consists of four parts.

The first part provides the context on the emergence of urban commons, which has seen a tenfold increase in the Flanders in the last ten years. It focuses on the challenge it represents for the city and the public authorities, for market players, and for traditional civil society organisations, and how the new contributive logic of the commons challenges (but also enriches) the logic of representation of the European democratic polities, in this specific case, at the level of a city. It also looks at the opportunities inherent in the new models such as more active participation of inhabitants in co-constructing their cities, in solving ecological and climate change challenges, and in creating new forms of meaningful work at the local level.

The second part is an overview of urban commons developments globally, but especially in European cities, and takes a closer look at the experiences in Bologna (with the Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of the Urban Commons, now adopted by many other Italian cities), Barcelona (the pro-commons policies of the new political coalition of En Comu), Frome, UK (for its civic coalition that replaced the political parties in the running of the city), and Lille, for its experience with a Assembly of the Commons as a voice and expression of the local commons.

The third part is the analysis of the urban commons in Ghent itself, highlighting some of its strengths and weaknesses.

And finally, in the fourth part, based on our analysis in the three first parts, we offer our recommendations to the City, in terms of an institutional adaptation of the city to the new commons-centric demands that emerge through the commons activities. It’s a set of 23 integrated proposals for the creation of public-commons processes for citywide co-creation. In some way, it represents the shift from urban commons to a more ambitious vision of the ‘city as a commons’.

The P2P Foundation’s Michel Bauwens and Vasilis (Billy) Niaros

The context for the Emergence of the Urban Commons

We define the commons as a shared resource, which is co-owned or co-governed by a community of users and stakeholders, under the rules and norms of that community. There is no commons without active co-production (commoning), and without an important measure of self-governance. Thus, it differs from both public and state- or city-owned goods, and from private property managed by its owners. Both a Dutch study by Tine De Moor (Homo Cooperans), and a study for the Flanders by the Oikos think thank have confirmed a steep rise in the number of commons-oriented civic initiatives (commons-oriented means that important aspects of the initiatives have commons’ aspects). This rise is related to a growing awareness amongst a layer of citizens that a social and ecological transition is necessary given the relative state and market failures, but also by the effects of the great economic and systemic crisis of 2008, which has seen an austerity-driven retreat from public authorities in terms of common infrastructures.

These new urban commons however do not exist ‘on their own’ as fully autonomous projects and entities but by necessity interact with both public and market forces, for access to resources and support.

Thus the commons is a challenge for the other institutions as well:

• It is a challenge for the city, as commons are a claim to both public and private resources that were governed by the city, or which may have been private properties currently in disuse . Self-governance in the commons most often takes a contributory logic, i.e. the contributors and participants manage the projects, but this doesn’t necessarily involve all the citizenry. This also poses a challenge for representative democracy. Conversely, commoners may want support, but may resent control and limitations to their autonomy.
• It is a challenge for market forces, which may feel challenged by commons projects as alternatives to privatized provision, or may profit from them in ways that are considered extractive by the commoners, or their actions may ‘enclose’ and destroy the commons, creating conflictual relations.
• But is is also a challenge to established civil society organisations, which were based on memberships, a professional cadre, and bureaucratic forms of organisation and management; elements which are often rejected in the commons initiatives.

The commons requires a ‘partner’ city, which enables and empowers commons-oriented civic initiatives. It also requires generative market forms which sustain the commons and create livelihoods for the core contributors as well as facilitative types of support from civil society organisations.

An important discovery in our analysis of the 500+ urban commons projects in Ghent, is that their structure strongly resembles that of the commons-driven digital economy. This means that at the heart of urban commons we find:

• Productive communities based on open contributions.
• That these urban commons and their platforms may generate (and are obliged to if they are to be resilient and self-sustaining over time) generative market forms — i.e. entrepreneurial coalitions that have a positive relationship with the commons and the commoners.
• The communities, platforms and possible market forms require, and receive, facilitative support from the various agencies and functionaries of the city, and the Civil Society Organisations, which have adapted to the needs of the new citizen-commoners.

This relationship is shown by the following graph:

Graphic 6: Polygovernance model.

This graph shows the five entry points of the commons economy in which the city is actively intervening (bottom), the 3 elements of the commons economy, and the public-commons processes and institutions which could be set up as a meta-structure to frame the cooperation between the city, the commoners and the generative economic entities.

It is also clear that the commons initiatives and their emerging economy, hold great potential for the social and economic life of the city.

The three main potentials are in our opinion the following:

1. The commons are an essential part of the ecological transition: shared and mutualized infrastructures have a dramatically lower footprint than systems based on ‘possessive individualism’, but on the condition that ‘it is done in the right’ and systemic way. A good counter-example is how the competition between drivers in the Uber model negates the environmental advantages of ride-hailing. Huge reductions in the material footprint (and carbon footprint) are possible with the commons-centric models.
2. The commons are a means for the re-industrialization of the city following the cosmo-local model which combines global technical cooperation in knowledge commons with smart re-localization of production; an example is how city procurement could be used to reintroduce healthy local meals for children in public schools (5 million a year, not counting other anchor institutions which could join); a combination between procurement from the urban/rural short-circuit farmers in the organic sector, carbon-free transportation (Ghent is flat, which allows for bike-cargo transport), and local cooking, would create hundreds of jobs for the local economy. Socially, this means jobs not just for the technically-savvy but for the desperate blue collar workers who have been hit hard by the ecologically unsustainable neoliberal globalization model
3. Representative democracy is, for a number of interlocking reasons, in deep crisis and facing a crisis of trust. And the world of production is still nearly entirely un-democratic. The commons however are based on the self-governance of the value producing systems and are therefore one of the few schools of true democracy and participation. Inclusive and diverse commons could be at the very least an adjunct to representative democracy, creating a system of Democracy+, augmented with participation , deliberation and multi-stakeholder governance models in cooperation with the commons initiatives.

The analysis of the situation in Ghent

The city of Ghent is a dynamic city of nearly 300k inhabitants including a huge number of young people and students. It’s a city in which the commons already have a distinct presence, with support from an active and engaged city administration.

• A tradition of center-left coalitions have created a distinct political and administrative culture with many engaged city officials. The city is actively engaged in carbon reduction, traffic reduction, and has neighborhood and social facilitators, connectors in schools, street workers and other types of staff that is actively engaged in enabling roles at the local level. This includes different kinds of support for commons-initiatives.
• The city has an important policy to support the temporary use by community groups of vacant land and buildings.
• The city counts around 500 commons-oriented initiatives in all sectors of human provisioning, such as food, shelter, mobility, etc. Many of these are active around the necessity of socio-ecological transitions in their respective domains and neighborhoods.

These positive aspects should be tempered by the following issues:

• Both the efforts of the city and the commoner’s initiatives are highly fragmented;
• There are many regulatory and administrative hurdles to hinder the expansion of commons initiatives, for example in the field of mutualized housing; (for example, we received a 7 page memo of such obstacles from housing activists).
• Though there are a number of fablabs/coworking spaces and some craft-related initiatives, there is at present a lack of activity around open design linked to real production;
• Though blessed with a large university, which is active around sustainability issues, there is very little evidence of relations between the university and the commons projects, and some of its spinoffs and players are sometimes distinctly hostile to open source and design projects;
• Though many of the leading commons activists are facing precarious lifestyles and incomes, they usually have good social and knowledge capital and mostly consist of long established inhabitants. There are many commons project in the post-migration communities, but they are mostly limited to ethnic and religious memberships, and there is as yet relatively little cross-over. They are however successful counter-examples such as the initiatives in the neighborhood Rabot.
• Old and newer Civil Society Organisations play a significant infrastructural and support role for maintaining urban commons projects, but perhaps perceive them to be mainly directed towards vulnerable population groups and not as key and highly productive resources.
• Despite the city support, the major potential commons are largely enclosed and vulnerable to private extraction; the current models do not challenge the mainstream consensus but find a way to co-exist with the major imbalances.
• Despite its long history of self-organization with the guilds in the middle ages and a very strong labor movement in the 19th century, the cooperative sector and its support mechanisms are quite weak; there is a weak if not inexistent support infrastructure for a specifically generative and cooperative economy that could work with commons infrastructures.

The proposals for the city administration

The general logic of our proposals is to put forward realistic but important institutional innovations that can lead to further progress and expansion of the urban commons in Ghent in order to successfully achieve its ecological and social goals. We propose public-social or public-partnership based processes and protocols to streamline cooperation between the city and the commoners in every field of human provisioning.

We are not summarizing all proposals here, merely the underlying logic.

Graphic 7 (“proposed transition infrastructure for the city of Ghent’”) shows the general underlying logic.

Graphic 7 (“proposed transition infrastructure for the city of Ghent’”) shows the general underlying logic.

Commons initiatives can forward their proposals and need for support to a City Lab, which prepares a ‘Commons Accord’ between the city and the commons initiative, modeled after the Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of the Urban Commons. Based on this contract, the city sets-up specific support alliances which combine the commoners and civil society organisations, the city itself, and the generative private sector, in order to organize support flows.

Graphic 9 describes a cross-sector institutional infrastructure for commons policy-making and support, divided in ‘transition arenas’.

Graphic 9 describes a cross-sector institutional infrastructure for commons policy-making and support, divided in ‘transition arenas’.

The model comes from the existing practice around the food transition, which is far from perfect and has its problems, but nevertheless has in our opinion the core institutional logic that can lead to more successful outcomes.

The city has indeed created an initiative, Gent en Garde, which accepts the five aims of civil society organisations active in the food transition (local organic food, fairly produced), which works as follows. The city has initiated a Food Council, which meets regularly and could contribute to food policy proposals. The Food Council is representative of the current forces at play, and has both the strength and weaknesses of representative organisations. The Food Council contain a contributive ‘food working group’ which mobilizes those effectively working at the grassroots level on the food transition by following a contributive logic, where every contributor has a voice. In our opinion, this combination of representative and contributory logic is what can create a super-competent Democracy+ institution that goes beyond the limitations of representation and integrates the contributive logic of the commoners. But how can the commoners exert significant political weight?. This requires voice and self-organisation. We therefore propose the creation of an Assembly of the Commoners, for all citizens active in the co-construction of commons, and a Chamber of the Commons, for all those who are creating livelihoods around these commons, in order to create more social power for the commons.

This essential process of participation can be replicated across the transition domains, obtaining city and institutional support for a process leading to Energy as a Commons, Mobility as a Commons, Housing, Food, etc.

We also propose the following: (not exhaustive)

• The creation of a juridical assistance service consisting of at least one representative of the city and one of the commoners, in order to systematically unblock the potential for commons expansion, by finding solutions for regulatory hurdles.
• The creation of an incubator for a commons-based collaborative economy, which specifically deals with the challenges of generative start-ups.
• The creation of an investment vehicle, the bank of the commons, which could be a city bank based on public-social governance models.
• Augmenting the capacity of temporary land and buildings, towards more permanent solutions to solve the land and housing crisis affecting commoners and citizens.
• Support of platform cooperatives as an alternative to the more extractive forms of the sharing economy.
• Assisting the development of mutualized commons infrastructures (‘protocol cooperativism’), through inter-city cooperation (avoiding the development of 40 Uber alternative in as many cities).
• Make Ghent ‘the place to be’ for commoners by using ‘Ghent, City of the Commons’ as an open brand, to support the coming of visitors for commons-conferences etc.
• As pioneered by the NEST project of temporary use of the old library, use more ‘calls for commons’, instead of competitive contests between individual institutions. Calls for the commons would reward the coalition that creates the best complementary solution between multiple partners and open sources its knowledge commons to support the widest possible participation.

We also propose

• A specific project to test the capacity of ‘cosmo-local production’ to create meaningful local jobs (organic food for school lunches) and to test the potential role of anchor institutions and social procurement.
• The organisation of a CommonsFest on the 28th of October, with a first Assembly of the Commons.
• A pilot project around ‘circular finance’ in which ‘saved negative externalities’ which lead to savings in the city budget can directly be invested in the commons projects that have achieved such efficiencies (say re-investing the saved cost of water purification to support the acquisition of land commons for organic farmers).
• The setting up of an experimental production unit based on distributed manufacturing and open design.
• Projects that integrate knowledge institutions such as the university, with the grassroots commons projects.

^[1] A slightly graphically improved version of the official Dutch language version of the report can be found here. Suggested citation: Commons Transitie Plan voor de Stad Gent. Michel Bauwens en Yurek Onzia. Ghent, Belgium: City of Ghent and P2P Foundation, 2017
Header photo by estefaniabarchietto

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This is an excerpt from the upcoming book Funding the Cooperative City: Community finance and the economy of civic spaces.

In the past decade, with the economic crisis and the transformation of welfare societies, NGOs, community organisations and civic developers – City Makers – established some of the most important services and spaces in formerly vacant buildings, underused areas and neglected neighbourhoods. Consolidating their presence in the regenerated spaces, these initiatives are increasingly looking into the power of the local community, the dispersed crowd and new financial actors to invest in their activities.

Two years ago, the cultural centre La Casa Invisible collected over 20.000 euros for the partial renovation of the building including the installation of fire doors and electric equipments to assure the safety of their revitalized 19th century building in the centre of Málaga. A few months later, East London’s Shuffle Festival, operating in a cemetery park at Mile End, collected 60.000 pounds for the renovation and community use of The Lodge, an abandoned building at the corner of the cemetery. In order to implement their campaigns, both initiatives used the online platforms Goteo and Spacehive that specialise in the financing of specific community projects. The fact that many of the hundreds of projects supported by civic crowdfunding platforms are community spaces, underlines two phenomena: the void left behind by a state that gradually withdrew from certain community services, and the urban impact of community capital created through the aggregation of individual resources.

The question if community capital can really cure the voids left behind by the welfare state has generated fierce debates in the past years. This discussion was partly launched by Brickstarter, the beta platform specialised in architectural crowdfunding, when it introduced to the public the idea of crowdfunded urban infrastructures. Those who opposed Brickstarter, did in fact protest against the Conservative agenda of the “Big Society”, the downsizing of welfare society and the “double taxation” of citizens: “Why should we spend on public services when our taxes should pay for them?”

Nevertheless, in the course of the economic crisis, many European cities witnessed the emergence of a parallel welfare infrastructure: the volunteer-run hospitals and social kitchens in Athens, the occupied schools, gyms and theatres of Rome or the community-run public squares of Madrid are only a few examples of this phenomenon. European municipalities responded to this challenge in a variety of ways. Some cities like Athens began to examine how to adjust their regulations to enable the functioning of community organisations, others created new legal frameworks to share public duties with community organisations in contractual ways, like Bologna with the Regulation of the Commons. In several other cities, administrations began experimenting with crowdfunding public infrastructures, like in Ghent or Rotterdam, where municipalities offer match-funding to support successful campaigns, or with participatory budgeting, like in Paris, Lisbon or Tartu. Yet other public administrations in the UK, the Netherlands or Austria invited the private sphere to invest in social services in the form of Social Impact Bonds, where the work of NGOs or social enterprises is pre-financed by private actors who are paid back with a return on their investment in case the evaluation of the delivered service is positive.

Largo Residencias, Lisbon. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Alternatively, some cities chose to support local economy and create more resilient neighbourhoods with self-sustaining social services through grant systems. The City of Lisbon, for instance, after identifying a number of “priority neighbourhoods” that need specific investments to help social inclusion and ameliorate local employment opportunities, launched the BIP/ZIP program that grants selected civic initiatives with up to 40.000 euros. The granted projects, chosen through an open call, have to prove their economic sustainability and have to spend the full amount in one year. The BIP/ZIP project, operating since 2010, gave birth to a number of self-sustaining civic initiatives, including social kitchens that offer affordable food and employment for locals or cooperative hotels that use their income from tourism to support social and cultural projects. In 2015 the experience of the BIP/ZIP matured in a Community-Led Local Development Network, as identified by the European Union’s Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, which will grant the network access to part of the Structural Funds of the City of Lisbon. The CLLD is a unique framework for the democratic distribution of public funds: it foresees the management of the funding to be shared between administration, private and civic partners, with none of them having the majority of shares and votes.

While, as the previous cases demonstrate, the public sector plays an important role in strengthening civil society in some European cities, many others witnessed the emergence of new welfare services provided by the civic economy completely outside or without any help by the public sector. In some occasions, community contribution appears in the form of philanthropist donation to support the construction, renovation or acquisition of playgrounds, parks, stores, pubs or community spaces. In others, community members act as creditors or investors in an initiative that needs capital, in exchange for interest, shares or the community ownership of local assets, for instance, shops in economically challenged neighbourhoods. Crowdfunding platforms also help coordinating these processes: the French Bulb in Town platform, specialized in community investment, gathered over 1 million euros for the construction of a small hydroelectric plant in Ariège that brings investors a return of 7% per year.

ExRotaprint, Berlin. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Besides aggregating resources from individuals to support particular cases, community infrastructure projects are also helped by ethical investors. When two artists mobilised their fellow tenants to save the listed 10.000 m2 Rotaprint in the Berlin district of Wedding, they invited several organisations working on moving properties off the speculation market and eliminating the debts attached to land, to help them buy the buildings. While the complex was bought and is renovated with the help of an affordable loan by the CoOpera pension fund, the land was bought by the Edith Maryon and Trias Foundations and is rented (with a long-term lease, a “heritable building right”) to ExRotaprint, a non-profit company, making it impossible to resell the shared property. With its sustainable cooperative ownership model, ExRotaprint provides affordable working space for manufacturers as well as social and cultural initiatives whose rents cover the loans and the land’s rental fee.

Creating community ownership over local assets and keeping profits benefit local residents and services is a crucial component of resilient neighbourhoods. Challenging the concept of value and money, many local communities began to experiment with complementary currencies like the Brixton or Bristol Pounds. Specific organisational forms like Community Land Trusts or cooperatives have been instrumental in helping residents create inclusive economic ecosystems and sustainable development models.

Homebaked, Liverpool. Photo (cc) Eutropian

In Liverpool’s Anfield neighbourhood, a community bakery is the symbol of economic empowerment: renovated and run by the Homebaked Community Land Trust established in April 2012, the bakery – initially backed by the Liverpool Biennale – offers employment opportunities for locals, and it is the catalyst of local commerce and the centre of an affordable housing project that is developed in the adjacent parcels. Similarly, a few kilometres east, local residents established another CLT to save the Toxteth neighborhood from demolition. The Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust, with the help of social investors and a young collective of architects (winning the prestigious Turner prize), organised a scheme that includes affordable housing, community-run public facilities and shops.

The economic self-determination of a community has been explored at the scale of an entire neighbourhood by the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative in Southern Rotterdam. The cooperative is an umbrella organisation that connects workspaces with shopkeepers, local makers, social foundations, and the local food market: they have developed an energy collective in cooperation with an energy supplier that realises substantial savings for businesses in the neighbourhood; a cleaning service that ensures that cleaning work is commissioned locally; and a food delivery service for elderly people in the neighbourhood.

With community organisations and City Makers acquiring significant skills to manage welfare services, urban infrastructures and inclusive urban development processes, it is time for their recognition by established actors in the public and private sectors. The EU’s Urban Agenda, developing guidelines for a more sustainable and inclusive development of European cities, can be a catalyst of this recognition: it can prompt the creation of new instruments and policies to enable such community-led initiatives. While the Cohesion Policy 2014-2020 has developed the CLLD framework, not many Member States chose to use this instrument. The Urban Agenda could therefore envision the adoption of more methods to be experimented by City Administrations, to allow for a more sustainable and inclusive allocation of resources. Whether through matchfunding, grant systems, or simply removing the legal barriers of cooperatives, land trusts and community investment, municipalities could join the civil society in developing a more resilient civic economy with accessible jobs, affordable housing, clean energy, and social integration.

Lead image from homebaked.org, Liverpool UK. All other images from Eutropian.

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Pixelache Festival in Suvilahti cultural complex, Helsinki, 22nd-24th September 2017

Pixelache Festival happens in and around Oranssi‘s Valvomo building, in Suvilahti cultural complex Helsinki, 22nd-24th September 2017. The festival activities aim to reflect on decentralisation of power by collectively designing the programme and building its venue in 2018.

After the 2015 festival that travelled through public and private Living Spaces, and the 2016 festival delving deep into Interfaces for Empathy, Pixelache Helsinki festival 2017 gathers stories of local & decentralised governance. Tapping into the shift from centralised-capital based economies to decentralised peer-based resource distribution, we offer the festival as a meeting point for local initiatives working on similar experiences, as well as a forum to plan a future together. In this way we build and expand upon our experience of Camp Pixelache past events, where the festival content was shaped together, and Open Source Festivals project, where knowledge about production was shared.

The 2017 festival edition is titled Local & Decentralised and it hosts an assembly to reflect on decentralisation of power in different fields. Local and decentralised governance seems to happen when collective design and a tangible group effort come together. In order to materialize the festival theme itself, reflecting perhaps on the current construction of Helsinki city and how buildings relate with their environment and the needs of inhabitants, during the festival in 2017 we aim to form an assembly inviting the local community into the collective design of a public venue and the content for the 2018 edition of the festival.

In 2017 the festival activities will happen in and next to Oranssi premises from 22.9 to 24.9. The role of Oranssi organisation, of Suvilahti permanent tenants, and of Pixelache members’ contributions is an important as part of the main program in 2017, for the identity of Local & Decentralised, and as a trigger for the activities in 2018.

The 2018 iteration of Pixelache festival is also committed to take place again in Suvilahti, featuring a collaboratively-built venue next to existing DIY areas such as the skate-park. The new spatial and conceptual configurations, made together with the festival participants over two festival editions, aim to create fluid places where collaborative knowledge is applied, and where new ideas emerge for future cooperations.

Major developments of decentralization can and do occur: currency, energy, resources, and feelings are being decentralised and distributed. These developments bring about problems that cannot be solved on a purely conceptual level; they need to be embodied and lived through for a shift to yet different models. Thus fear of the unforeseen and unpredictable must also be addressed.

From the festival activities stories emerge that depict how governance functions between civil society, individual initiatives and government, and also how citizens themselves connect into structures where governance happens locally, and where we can come to terms with inefficiencies, passivity, interests, time, jargon.

How is it possible to express a multiplicity of will, is the present practice of a State effective enough to convey it? Often the movements towards local and decentralised structures are related to privatisation in economical models, how can diverse collective interest meet on economical terms? Can we be local and decentralised and yet be connected globally, micro-organisms breathing within a vast complex macro system?

Local & Decentralised festival does not let you down, it will be your local event to differentiate consensus from silence: talking of ecological issues, promoting visual culture as a shield against pessimism, presenting how democracy benefits from digital media -or not, playing games to prove that we are as connected as we are, offering workshops to learn again the pleasure of learning things together, finding music and contemporary art that make sense more than science, and divulging science as creative as drama.

The festival is free entrance and suitable for families, you are welcome to share food and bring your towel for sauna.

VENUES, PLACES AND SCHEDULE

— Local & Decentralised festival program at Oranssi and MUU Galleria

From 22.9 to 24.9.2017 – Festival and Public Assembly at Oranssi, Valvomo building in Suvilahti.

From 21.9. To 26.9.2017 – Exhibition ‘Pixelache and Koelse 15 years’ curated by Antti Ahonen, at MUU Galleria, Lönnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki.

— Pixelache Helsinki 2018 festival preliminary program at Suvilahti

From 13.9 to 19.9.2018 – Construction site for the Decentralised venue at skate-park, next to Valvomo building in Suvilahti.

From 21.9 to 23.9.2018 – Festival activities both at Oranssi, Valvomo building, and at the Decentralised venue, close to skate park
next to Valvomo.

Consult map of Suvilahti area.

CONTACT FESTIVAL DIRECTORS

Egle Oddo, egle [-ät-] pixelache.ac

Local & Decentralised festival is supported by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, the City of Helsinki Cultural Office, and Svenska kulturfonden.

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“Something is stirring in the Greek capital – and in more ways than one Navarinou Park has come to represent it.

Stavrides calls it a movement, a new form of commons in which public-spirited individuals reclaim public space; others an informal urbanism born of a spirit of solidarity that has taken hold since Europe’s economic crisis erupted in Greece in 2009. For in Navarinou – a place run by neighbourhood committee – citizens have sought new ways of overcoming the trauma of economic collapse. And they have done so by creating a place where, self-contained and seemingly beyond the reach of authority, they can meet, converse, play and produce food.

Bereft of civic protection and the great umbrella of the welfare state, grassroots groups across Athens have followed suit.

‘What we are witnessing is an explosion of social networks born of bottom-up initiatives,’ says Stavrides, who was among the activists whose spontaneous efforts stopped the lot being turned into a parking space in late 2009. ‘Navarinou heralded this new culture, this new spirit of people taking their lives into their own hands. They know that they can no longer expect the state to support them and through this process, they are discovering how important it is to share.’

It is a movement that has confounded expectation. Greece is both an anarchic and a self-absorbed nation, where notions of civil society have never been strong. Instead, individualism has always burned bright.

But the crisis, first glimpsed in the esprit de rage of the December 2008 street riots that followed the police shooting of a teenage boy only streets away from Navarinou Park, has turned that on its head.

Increasingly, local associations, resident committees and solidarity groups are forging ties, exchanging know-how, giving shape to new concepts of co-existence, and in so doing, reshaping public space.

‘The crisis has made a lot of Greeks want to work together,’ says Lydia Carras, who oversees the long-established Elliniki Etairia Society for the Environment and Cultural Heritage from a building at the foot of the Acropolis. ‘There is a new mood of cooperation because people understand that the only way to get their voice heard is to make alliances.’

If Navarinou provides a compelling example of neighbourhood revitalisation, it is not the only one. The rediscovery of public space is at the heart of Greece’s grassroots urbanism – and it comes in sharp contrast to the practices of big donors shaping urban form that, from the first days of Athens being made the capital of a state romanticised as the cradle of western civilisation, have prevailed until now.”

…

“…the country’s debt crisis has also facilitated bottom-up initiatives. Hollowed out by the corrosive effects of austerity, large tracts of Athens’ inner city have become a landscape of decay that has allowed others to move in. Public buildings – from abandoned municipal offices to theatres, market places and cafes – have been squatted and taken over.

An unofficial support network has evolved with self-managed health clinics, collective kitchens, neighbourhood assemblies, community groups and language schools mushrooming. Backed by people from all walks of life, the initiatives have taken off on a wave of solidarity following the demise of the welfare state. At last count there were over 400.

‘There are initiatives scattered throughout the city that show it is not paralysed by the crisis,’ Stavrides says. ‘And they are happening when most of us feel powerless in front of policies and decisions taken in our name.’

One such organisation is the Social Cultural Centre of Vyronas, named after the hillside suburb north-west of Exarcheia. Established by local residents for ‘workers, the unemployed, pensioners, migrants and youth’, the centre’s utopian charter declares: ‘We put human needs above commerce and business interests. [Our] basic aim is the revitalisation of the neighbourhood’s social fabric in a way that puts collective enquiry and action above individualism, egotism, indifference.’

From an abandoned municipal building, the centre gives lessons in foreign languages, history, philosophy, tai chi, traditional dance, guitar and photography. A collective kitchen operates twice a week alongside a library and cinema.

‘We took the building over and stopped it being privatised in 2012,’ says Nikos Gretos, a father of two and activist, seated beneath a sign that reads: Misery ends where solidarity begins.

‘It’s our answer to the crisis. We don’t care about politics. There are leftists here, trade unionists, people from all the parties, who have united for the common good.’

‘Had we not moved in,’ he insists, pointing towards children playing in the park, ‘no one would have benefited and everything here would have gone to ruin. Our country is bankrupt; our state is falling apart. This is the future, our future in our hands; it is us.’

Has Greece become the poster child for informal urbanism? Activists and architects say not. Eleni Oureilidou, a leading landscape architect involved in several projects, counters that Greece is far from the point where bottom-up processes have become the norm. Top-down initiatives, such as the Niarchos Foundation – with its attendant gentrification processes around a space where culture is merchandised and sold – are still in the ascendancy. Giorgos Kaminis, Athens’ progressive mayor, has created a municipal post that actively courts community initiatives in a bid to modernise local administration and improve the quality of life. Amalia Zepou, a former documentary-maker who holds the post as vice mayor for civil society and municipality decentralisation, has created a platform for community projects, SynAthina, where citizens exchange information, find partners, and get in touch with city hall and potential sponsors. The aim, she says, is to reinvigorate the democratic process.”

…

“‘We are making steps forward but, given the economic crisis, I believe we could have achieved much more,’ she says. ‘And I think this is partially due to the lack of confidence of Greeks, their suspiciousness in new ideas and new ways of experiencing urban open spaces.’

But, she adds, her compatriots are also deeply dissatisfied with the state and the policies that regulate the use of public space. ‘There’s a more romantic approach now, one that says we are no longer in need of fancy, over-designed spaces,’ she says. ‘Instead, we want smaller, ‘pocket’ spaces like Navarinou Park that are accessible for everyone – spaces where we can create memories, meet with our neighbours, talk and learn to culturally co-exist.'”Photo by © Mario Gutiérrez Photographer Photo by Kaan Ugurlu

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The Assembly seeks to unite citizens in trans-local and trans-european solidarity to overcome Europe’s current challenges and reinvigorate the political process for the 21st century. The commons can be understood as a bridging paradigm that stresses cooperation in management of resources, knowledge, tools, and spaces as diverse as water, Wikipedia, a crowdfund, or a community garden. Their Call describes commoning as:

…the network-based cooperation and localized bottom-up initiatives already sustained by millions of people around Europe and the world. These initiatives create self-managed systems that satisfy important needs, and often work outside of dominant markets and traditional state programmes while pioneering new hybrid structures.

The Assembly emerged in May from a diverse, gender balanced pilot community of 28 activists from 15 European countries, working in different domains of the commons. New people are joining the Assembly every week, and ECA is inclusive and open for others to join, so that a broad and resilient European movement can coalesce. It seeks to visibilize acts of commoning by citizens for citizens, while promoting interaction with policy and institutions at both the national and European levels.

Part of a broader movement

The rapid embrace of commons as an alternative holistic, sustainable and social worldview is in part an expression of unease with the unjust current economic system and democratic deficiencies. The commons movement has exploded in recent years, following the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom in 2009 for her work on managing common resources. It has also seen overlap with other movements, such as the Social and Solidarity and Sharing Economy movements, peer to peer production, and Degrowth.

Michel Bauwens, part of the ECA and a prominent figure in the peer-to-peer movement, explains:

“All over the world, a new social movement is emerging, which is challenging the ‘extractive’ premises of the mainstream political economy and which is co-constructing the seed forms of a sustainable and solidary society. Commoners are also getting a voice, for example through the Assemblies of the Commons that are emerging in French cities and elsewhere. The time is ripe for a shoutout to the political world, through a European Assembly of the Commons.”

The Call includes an open invitation to Brussels from November 15 to 17, 2016 for three days of activities and shared reflection on how to protect and promote the commons. It will include an official session in the European Parliament, hosted by the Intergroup on Common Goods and Public Services, on November 16 (limited capacity).

You can read and sign the full text of the Call, also available in French, Spanish, and soon other European languages, on the ECA website. There is an option to sign as an individual or an organization.

For more information, visit http://europeancommonsassembly.eu/ or follow @CommonsAssembly on Twitter for regular updates.

Media Contact: Nicole Leonard contact@europeancommonsassembly.eu

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