Southern European countries were among the hardest hit by the 2008 economic crisis. In response to the economic pressure, declining public services and drastic unemployment situation generated by the crisis and the corresponding public policies, the Southern regions of the continent became terrains of experiments in self-organisation and gave birth to new forms of the civic economy. In this contribution, Tiago Mota Saraiva analyses the consequences of austerity policies on Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, focusing on how people tried to create networks of solidarity and resistance.

n his brilliant book about the history of Latin America – “Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina”, (The Open Veins of South America) originally published in 1971 – Eduardo Galeano (1940-2015) starts by writing that the international division of work consists of defining that some countries specialise in winning and others in losing. Galeano describes a history of the region that is made by its own People, a history that does not depend on the greatness and the richness of the Country. A system where development deepened inequalities and popular sovereignty had to be bonded because There Is No Alternative. “It’s a problem of mindsets”, would declare the canny eurocrat after reading Galeano’s introduction. But the system is not far from what is now happening in Europe. This article is about the PIGS, the continental countries of Southern Europe.

The PIGS

This racist acronym has never been claimed by any author. Some sources refer to its use during the end of the 70’s, but it definitely started to be used more often after the 2008 financial crisis as PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) to refer to the five countries that were considered weak economies and possible threats to the eurozone. After 2013, with the Irish exit of eurozone bailout program, PIGS became four again as they were before. While each of these countries had different political and historical contexts and scales, over the last five years they have shared the similar financial impacts of EU austerity measures.

The PIGS countries. Image (cc) Eutropian

The People

From 2001 (the European economic and monetary union fully started on 1st January 2002) until the 2013 crisis peak, Southern Europe’s employment situation changed drastically according to Eurostat. In Portugal (unemployment increased from 3,8% in 2001 to 16,2% in 2013), Italy (9,6% to 12,1%), Ireland (3,7% to 13,0%), Greece (10,5% to 27,5%) and Spain (10,5% to 26,1%) unemployment rates increased dramatically. In the same period, unemployment increased in other European countries, more or less following the EU average, besides Germany and Finland where unemployment decreased, respectively, from 7,8% to 5,2% and 10,3% to 8,2%. These rates assumed an impressive impact on youth unemployment. The April 2014 Eurostat report unveils that one month prior to the official census in unemployment in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain the figures were, respectively, 35,4%, 42,7%, 56,8% and 53,9%.

Poverty in Europe. Image (cc) Eutropian

Despite the brain drain (for example in Portugal the emigration numbers were higher than in the 60’s peak, when the country was living under a fascist regime and fighting several wars in its former colonies), this data shows the massive number of people with no jobs and more free time. If we add to this those people living from precarious labour, with low salaries or low pensions, we may find a number of people that are in need of support to barely survive. Always according to the Eurostat it is in Southern Europe that we find the countries with the largest part of the population in risk of poverty with Greece (36,0% in 2014) and Spain (29,2%) at the top of the ranking.

The Politics

In opposition to what is happening in almost all other parts of Europe, the nationalist and far right parties in Southern European countries are not fighting in order to win elections or lead the opposition towards EU policies. The Greek Golden Dawn, probably the most exuberant party, is far from winning national elections. On the other hand – in Italy, Greece and Spain – there are social movements and local activists gathered in so-called anti-systemic parties/political movements, all with different characteristics, but presenting themselves as the face for the change. Although Syriza – the only one of those parties that, until now, has won national elections – is being severely criticised for its acceptance of the very strong EU austerity policies against which it once was established, in Spain, civic movements won local elections in large cities with a diverse set of new public and city policies that are being implemented.
In Portugal, the massive demonstrations during the Troika’s official period of intervention, did not translate itself into a significant change in the architecture of national parties. However, despite the primacy of the coalition of right wing parties at the 2015 national elections, it did not achieve the majority of MPs to form the government. Instead of a right wing government, the Socialist Party was invested with the parliamentary support of the Left Block, the Communist Party and the Greens, under the agreement of progressively reversing the cuts on wages, pensions and the Social State. For the first time since 1974, when the long fascist dictatorship of Portugal was defeated, the Socialist Party is now leading the country, only backed by the left wing parties in the Parliament.

The State

Even though with different characteristics and at different levels, all these four countries have been witnessing the dismantling of the State. Privatisations of fundamental public sectors and the decrease of the public presence in economy have never been as evident as nowadays.
In Greece and Portugal the situation was extreme. The Troika’s program forced governments to quickly sell the most powerful and profitable public companies at low prices. On the other hand, the Welfare State has proven to became an Assistentialist State only programmed to act in desperate situations and not working on people’s emancipation from poverty. With the increase of sovereign debt, states have increasingly lost their independence in a process that inevitably damaged the democratic system. The “oxi” vote at the Greek referendum and the following reaction of the EU leadership, forcing on the Greek government an even more severe agreement, constitute a historical event we should never forget when analysing the growth of anti-EU feelings and the rising popularity of sovereignty movements among the working classes and poorest urban areas.

Esta es una plaza, self-organised garden in Madrid. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Self-organisation

Despite the high proportion of people unemployed and retired, people in Southern European countries do not have more time left to participate in common or community issues. Precarious and low-wage jobs, the insecurity of personal futures, longer daily commuting, or the family assistance of children and older people are some of the new issues that overload working days. These may be some of the reasons why people tend to participate more in initiatives that start from a will of reaction or resistance to a specific problem – either locally based or humanitarian – than from a global and theoretical ambition of structural and global societal change.
Whilst, on the one hand, PIGS are living under the described extreme economical pressure where people generally think the future will be worse then the present and focus their energies on everyday issues that require immediate responses, on the other hand, locally based self-organised initiatives are flourishing as a consequence of specific and local problems as illustrated by many examples:

Coop57 is a financial services co-op that started in Catalonia, emerging from workers’ fight to keep their jobs at Editorial Bruguera, during the 1980s. Over the last decade, the action of the cooperative spread all over Spain. Its main declared goal is to help the social transformation of economy and society, assuming that money and the Coop57 cannot do it on their own, but that they can play a role in helping people, organisations, collectives and groups that promote policies for investment and quality jobs in food and energy sovereignty, inclusion and spaces for culture and socialisation.

Sewing workshop in Largo Residencias, Lisbon. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Carrozzerie | n.o.t is a theatre space in Testaccio, a former working class neighbourhood in Rome – now in the process of gentrification. The space was renovated in 2013 and it hosts dance, theatre and performative projects of younger generations of artists. It defines itself as a space for slow time, courageous and far-sighted projects. Carrozzerie | n.o.t works in the same artistic areas as Largo Residências, in the Intendente neighbourhood of Lisbon. Until 2012, Intendente was seen as one of the most dangerous areas in the city centre and an area to be renewed on a large-scale urban operation. Largo Residências started in 2011, renting a building on the square, and assuming the goal to fight against the gentrification of the area. The cooperative that organises all of Largo’s activities is now running in the building a floor of artistic residences, a hostel, a café open in to the square and a massive cultural program developed with and for the inhabitants of the area. Portugal is a good example of the unbalanced states of civic initiatives, whose development depends on the political approaches of local governments. Whilst in Lisbon, these initiatives have been flourishing over the last few years, in Oporto they have been under attack by the former authoritarian and conservative mayor Rui Rio. Lisbon’s local government created a program (BIP/ZIP) that, each year, finances around 30 different projects in priority intervention neighbourhoods/areas (Largo Residências was also supported by this programme) At the same time, projects like “es.col.a,” held in a squatted school with a very important social and cultural program at Fontinha (one of the poorest areas of Oporto) have never had any political or financial support from the municipality: es.col.a was evicted and consequently eliminated by the municipality’s decision.

Navarinou park, a self-organised garden in Athens. Photo (cc) Eutropian

The consequences of austerity were the most severe in the Greek context,. where state structures were partially destroyed. Nowadays, local and national governments tend to be involved with citizen initiatives even though with almost no resources, since the funds are all being directed towards structural or emergency goals. Almost everywhere in Greece, the exodus of refugees to Central Europe appears to be one of the most important challenges of the present and near future. Mostly addressing people who aim at crossing the country, EU policies has turned Greece into Europe’s buffer country before nationalist walls. Even though the walking routes are not passing through Athens, when I visited them last July, both the Elionas and Piraeus camps – the first one organised by the government, the second set up informally by a local citizen initiative (now, apparently dismantled) – accommodated thousands of people, waiting. In these camps, local or national governments are not receiving any direct support from EU funds for refugees.

Parco delle Energie, self-organised sports facility in Rome. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Probably more than other PIGS countries, Italy has already had, since the 1980-90s, a very strong and politicised structure of self-organised movements and local citizen initiatives. During the last decades, those initiatives worked as a kind of a blow-off to political institutional collapse. However, the lack of strong national networks and, probably, the missing ambition to upscale local initiatives has prevented the initial energies from unfolding.

Despite the deception of the June 2016 national elections, Spain, where the networks of citizen initiatives and protests created strong networks, now face their second stage: disputing power. Local movements that emerged from the 15M movement succeeded in winning elections in the most important cities in Spain – Madrid, Barcelona or Valencia. Even though Podemos. in coalition with other political forces, did not achieve the expected share of votes at the last elections, city governments are already networking, organising new forms of decision-making and empowering citizenship initiatives. However, it is still too soon to measure the results of these new cooperations. A country or a society in crisis is not a “time of opportunities“ as we often hear when stock markets are translated into real life. From what I could see and live, during the last years in these four countries, crises are thrilling times of resistance, but also desperate moments of destruction. The decisive question for these initiatives is how to move from the idea of resistance, within this society frame, towards construction. This will be the only way to step forward from precariousness to resilience.

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Rob Hopkins: Something really amazing is happening in Liége in Belgium.  I was last there 4 years ago, where I gave talks and did meetings in support of Liege en Transition, and to attend a meeting to promote a project they had just launched called ‘Ceinture Aliment-Terre Liégeoise’ (‘The Liége Food Belt’).  When I was there, their event brought together academics, politicians, farmers, and many other people with an interest in food, to explore the practicalities of a co-ordinated relocalisation of the food system.  That was four years ago.  Now I’ve been back after four years and, as I said, something really amazing is happening in Liége…

I had been invited by Ceinture Aliment-Terre Liégeoise (CATL) to be the Patron of their ‘Nourrir Liége’ festival, a 10 day event designed to raise the profile of their work.  When I last visited, a cooperative vineyard, Vin de Liége (of which more later), had just raised €2 million in shares, much to everyone’s surprise and delight.  That was the first one, which gave CATL the confidence that this was possible.

Now, in 2018, 14 cooperatives exist under the CATL banner, 10 of which have been created after the official launch of the CATL in Nov. 2013. These include Les Petits Producteurs (two shops), Fungi up, a co-op growing mushrooms on coffee waste, Rayon 9, another using bicycles to distribute goods around the city, Cycle en Terre, a seed saving coop, Les Compagnons de la Terre, a farm growing a wide diversity of produce, La Brasserie Coopérative Liègeoise, a co-operative brewery, Vin du Pays de Herve, a second vineyard in the same model as Vin de Liège, ADM Bio, tranforming the vegetables of seven local farmer to reach collectivities kitchens, HesbiCooop, a food cooperative, Marguerite Happy Cow, a local fair trade milk transformation project, plus three distribution coops, Point Ferme, La Coopérative Ardente et Le Temps des Cerises, which are forming, together with Les Petits producteurs, a network of local food distribution. And running like a thread through all of these is Le Val’Heureux, the region’s local currency.

So what I want to explore in this post is what this ecosystem of co-operatives looks like, to introduce you to some of the key players, to how the imagination runs through this and to how this looks to be scaling up.

To kick us off, I sat down one evening with Christian Jonet, one of the people who has been constant in CATL since the beginning, and who now co-ordinates this network of coops, producers, researchers, institutions and associations (my full conversation with him is below).  He told me that when Liege en Transition started there were lots of working groups, but the ones that lasted were the money and the food groups.

With Christian Jonet of CATL (left) and Pascal Hennen, manager of Les Petits Producteurs, and the €5 Les Val’Hereux note which features CATL.

It became clear that they were not going to Transition the city just with volunteers, and that what they needed was to change the scale and, as he put it, “professionalise the movement”. Belgium has lost 100,000 agricultural jobs since 1990, and some new thinking was clearly needed.

They started with an event in November 2013 where they hired a big venue, invited everyone in the city with an interest in food, and asked them the question “what if within one generation the majority of food consumed in Liège was grown locally in the best ecological and social conditions?” Good question. One after another people took the mike and identified elements of what needed to happen access to land, finance, seeds, know-how, etc. The first co-op to get running was Compagnons de la Terre, and then the brewery and the others started to follow.

The event that launched CATL

“What was most important”, Christian told me, “was that we created a narrative”:

It was about mobilising citizens for the transition of the food system (fixing the environment with agroecology, empowering the community for the good of future generations, creating local jobs, etc), in three complementary ways. First evidently, it was about voting with your consumption, being a virtuous consumer. But it was also about saying if you can, invest in local economy. And if you invest, then also get involved in running things, volunteer, get your hands dirty. And it was a message that really resonated with people”.

And it worked. Together with Vin de Liège (which raised €3 million on its own), the 14 co-ops have nearly raised €5 million in investment from local people so far.

I was curious as to what, for Christian, were the elements behind the project moving from the ‘What If?’ stage into action. “Firstly, we had a good narrative. CATL is based on the narrative of projecting the future and how it could be, and also the fact that Vin de Liège had been a success gave the whole initiative a foundation of confidence. Each new project inspires more confidence in the next one“. Now, the good narrative was only just a start:

Many people had to step up to imagine, create and run collectively all of these cooperatives, and each time it meant had work. Some projects have been lots of fun, but some others have really been about blood, sweat and tears, and holding on strong until the boat was afloat”. The fact that a local endogenous dynamic can be created must also not be taken for granted. “People in other localities have tried to launch projects similar to Ceinture Aliment-Terre, mimicking the methodology used in Liège, gathering the local food chain actors in an open space to draw a collective strategy for local food system transition, but if in the immediate continuation you don’t create projects in which people can put their enthusiasm, energy and money; nothing just happens.”

Les Petits Producteurs

The first of the co-ops that we visited was Les Petits Producteurs, a shop in the centre of the city that has been open for just over a year.  I asked the shop’s manager, Pascal Hennen, to tell me what it is (you can hear our full conversation below).  He told me, “Les Petits Producteurs’ is a co-operative of 200 co-operators (members of the co-op), around 15 local farmers plus a few further afield (they source their oranges from a farm in Sicily for example), 2 shops, 7 workers and lots of energy”.

When they found the shop unit, they had just 5 weeks to transform it into a shop, something they achieved by mobilising their friends, wielding sledgehammers and paintbrushes. It’s a very simple concept. A big space, painted white, with pallets on the ceiling, pallets on the floor, food displayed on pallets, in boxes, with a note about the farmer and their story.

They did a financial forecast with a worse case, middle and best case scenario. The shop has been such a runaway success that they are exceeding the best case scenario, and it is already a challenge managing storing stock and the queues that form in the shop. “All positive problems to have…”, Pascal told me.

They raised €100,000 in shares from local people, although the shop took off so fast that they didn’t end up using much of it. So, I asked, what’s the money for? “For us, this is an agriculture project, not just a shop. The goal is to reinvest profits and exceeding capital for the farmers. Will we use it to buy land? To invest in helping new farmers? In buying buildings to help farmers?” It has been such a success that a second shop is already open elsewhere in the city, and Pascal dreams of opening “15 shops, perhaps 10? We never expected to be so successful, never”, he told me.

Les Petits Producteurs tell their story in their window

hey have a principle of not negotiating the farmer on price, and of keeping costs low. So they spent the minimum on fitting the shop out, and have a policy “one need,one product”. So they stock one kind of jam, one kind of beer and so on, the whole shop containing less than 200 products. Les Petits Producteurs is mostly organic, and their prices for organic produce are, on average, 15% lower than in Carrefour. Part of their staff’s job is to tell the stories of where the food comes from.

Being part of CATL really helps. It provides the links between the different co-ops, and they trade with each other, and share resources. Where might it all go, I wondered? “If we have 20 stores, we will reach the point where the supermarkets will start to say “oh shit”. We would love to fragilise (great word) them locally”.

I asked Christian about what a difference community investment makes for a business like Les Petits Producteurs. “As I said, in CATL we have created beautiful stories, we must now create beautiful stories of success, and Les Petits Producteurs is one of them. It is not easy to have a profitable business in food. This is about inventing new economic models and testing them until they work”.

The second CATL coop we visited, on an organic farm on the edge of Liège, was Brasserie Cooperative Liégeoise, a small brewery brewing 2 different types of organic beers using barley grown in the region, wheat grown on the organic farm where they’re based, and Belgian hops.  They are planning to grow all their hops on the farm and are expecting their first harvest this year.

Raphaël Lambois, the brewer at Brasserie Coopérative Liégeoise

They are currently brewing on a scale at which it is difficult to be profitable, so they are looking to double capacity soon, although within the same space.  Raphaël Lamblois, who showed us round, told me that it was very useful to be part of CATL, as the other members are some of their best customers, and it really helps the business to have good connections with the town.

We also paid a visit to Vin de Liege, in many ways the co-op which gave confidence to what followed that this kind of citizen investor-led approach is possible.  Vin de Liege is amazing.  We were taken on a tour around the production facilities and also the cellar.  It’s impressive to walk around and think that 3 years ago none of it existed.  Now it is a state-of-the-art facility, producing 12 wines, with about 30 acres of vines already planted, and plans to at least double that.  They are already winning awards.

Their cellar was fascinating, hearing how they commission each barrel so it is a particular mix of different woods, so that the woods are able to impart certain flavours and tannins to the wine. Creating a vineyard is a long term investment, they take many years to be profitable. As a testament to having a dream, telling a powerful story and creating something amazing, Vin de Liege is a remarkable thing.

Where it is all starting to get very interesting is in the impact that CATL is having on the city’s local government. While in Liege, I met with the city’s Mayor and councillor responsible for agriculture, and is it clear that something is really shifting. As Christian told me:

Now the local authorities are stepping up and saying wow, this is really interesting. They can see that what we are doing is good for society, that it can create jobs, build social links between people, that it is good for health and for the environment. I think that in the future, new projects will be a combination of the forces of the public and citizen-led initiatives. This week the City of Liège launched a new project called CreaFarm. We had many discussions with them about what was blocking agricultural Transition, and one of the key themes was the price of land.

They were convinced they could help because they own a lot of land in and around the city which is not really used properly. So they have identified all the sites, characterised the kinds of uses they’d be best for, and tested them for contamination (as a former industrial city, land contamination is not uncommon). They have then invited suggestions from people who would like to use the land, and created a panel to decide applications, which we are part of, and once they’ve decided, the land will be made available at low rents”.

Talking to the Mayor it is clear that for him, CATL is what the city sees as being its future story. Ten years ago, the city was set to move towards being a “smart city”. “Now we want to be a Transition City” he told me.

Members of Nourrir Liege, CATL and the Liege municipality sharing breakfast

I was fascinated to get a sense from Christian of how the projects underway and their success had impacted his, and others’, sense of the future, how imaginative and positive they felt about it.  “A lot of people were very pessimistic”, he told me:

Someone who’s been changed by this? Me! I had been very worried and concerned about the possibility of an imminent social collapse. It was very hard. My therapy has been doing these positive projects. I still believe the future might not be very bright. But being active means I feel much better. For me, it’s the connection with other people that changed everything for me, and for many others too!! The antidote was to do something. My sense is that when you read about collapse, you collapse yourself. Doing this work sets you into movement”.

Sitting in the back office at Les Petits Producteurs, Pascal is quietly excited about the increasing involvement of the municipality. “At the beginning, the municipality laughed, but now they think we are quite interesting. We are doing so well, that the municipality will have to follow – I don’t think they have a choice actually! I think it’s going to work. I’m positive because I am a pragmatic guy. I manage a shop. They can’t say no, because we exist and we are making things…”

Pascal Hennen

The following day, in Louvain-le-Neuve, Olivier de Schutter gave a presentation in which he used the term ‘Partner State’, his vision of the state getting alongside bottom-up community action, allowing the ideas and inspiration to rise up from below, and seeing their role as being to remove obstacles and to help things to flourish. My strong sense from everyone I spoke to in Liege was that that looks like the very model that is unfolding in Liege.

About the author: Rob Hopkins, co-founder of both Transition Town Totnes and Transition Network.  I am a serial blogger, author of The Power of Just Doing Stuff and 21 Stories of Transition, and I tweet as @robintransition.  I previously wrote The Transition Handbook and The Transition Companion, and was awarded a PhD by the University of Plymouth and more recently Honorary Doctorates by the University of the West of England and the University of Namur. In 2012 I was voted one of the Independent’s top 100 environmentalists and one of ‘Britain’s 50 New Radicals’.

I have appeared on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Four Thought’ and on ‘A Good Read’, appear in the French film phenomenon ‘Demain’ (‘Tomorrow’), have spoken at TED Global once, and at 3 TEDx events. I am an Ashoka Fellow, a keen gardener and one of the founders of New Lion Brewery in Totnes and a Director of Totnes Community Development Society, the group behind Atmos Totnes, a very ambitious community-led development project.  If you’re wondering why I’m writing a book about imagination, you can find out here.

Republished from the author’s blog, Rob Hopkins, Imagination Taking Power

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The crowd funding campaign for the startup of platform cooperative Incubator.coop has now been launched – you can learn more and support it here.

There’s problems with traditional incubators that no-one in “startup land” wants to admit. The problem is simple: incubators serve investors, not incubatee’s. That’s why we created incubator.coop – it addresses a real-world economic failure. Incubators can’t find enough fee’s from a target market that by definition is cash and resource poor. So incubators serve their investors as a deal-flow mechanism. They do not serve startups. In Australia, Pollenizer, the first startup incubator shuttered after just 9-years of business and after several pivots. The rest will follow if they don’t serve up good deal flow.

The quest for a better incubator leads to a better form of business

The future – according to those that hang out in the Co-Op sector – belongs to collective endeavours. It belongs to Platform CoOps not Venture-Backed 2-sided marketplaces.

The future is not a new AGL powered by wind and solar. The future belongs to hundreds if not thousands of community-level energy co-ops.

Introducing incubator.coop at the New Economy Conference

Short-fallings of Conventional Incubators

1. Conventional Incubators are not viable in themselves. Instead they act as a business development tool for “side-car” investors trying to pick winners. We think you need an incubator that exists to serve its incubatees.
2. Conventional Incubators look for a 1-in-1000 unicorn to repay their many wrong bets. We think you need an incubator that creates businesses of value that go the distance.
3. Conventional Incubators looks for exceptional talent. We think you need an incubator for collective endeavours.
4. Conventional Incubators function with a top-down approach. We think you need an incubator that harnesses the wisdom of the crowd.
5. Conventional Incubators promote returns for the 1%. We think you need an incubator where 1 Member = 1 Vote.
6. Conventional Incubators run for 6-months. We think you need an incubator that supports the whole period of development from formation through to operation.

Crowd Is Key

In the future, every business will continue to live and die by its service to the group of stakeholders a company may refer to as ‘shareholders, customers, employees and community’. But, in the future we’ll call these stakeholders the “crowd”.

The strength of the “crowd” will determine success more than historically as transparency, block-chain and social-media mean traditional market barriers become obsolete.

Crowdsource Instead of Top-Down

A crowd needs a place to develop ideas of mutual interest. This harnesses the wisdom of the crowd.

Given a bit of guidance and time crowd-sweat can bring ideas to the stage of maturity, where a crowd-fund campaign can test “product-market fit” whilst qualifying future customers and investors.

The best ideas will attract a crowd and develop. The ones without a crowd won’t develop. This is somewhat Darwinian on purpose. We think it’s better to put startup ideas through a ‘natural selection’ process than a ‘VC selection’ process.

Crowdfunding

We believe crowdfunding is an essential role in new venture development. So we are running our own through this soft launch phase until November 1, 2017.

Photo by Thad Zajdowicz

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Indonesia is one of the world’s hottest and fastest growing digital markets. “With around 90 million Internet users and more than 281 million active mobile phone subscriptions, we can anticipate the development of the digital ecosystem in Indonesia that will lead the growth,” Shinta W. Dhanuwardoyo wrote in “Strategic Review: The Indonesian Journal of Leadership, Policy and World Affairs” last year. “E-commerce has been one of the vital driving forces of Indonesia’s digital economy.”

Unfortunately, this growth has been uneven, and not all Indonesians have access to this burgeoning digital economy. Although it’s improving, only a little more than half of Indonesia’s population has regular internet access, and outside major cities, broadband access is severely limited. Smartphones — the most common method for accessing the internet in Indonesia — are almost all either manufactured abroad or domestically by international companies.

Koperasi Digital Indonesia Mandiri (KDIM), a cooperative based in the country’s capital, Jakarta, is trying to bridge this digital divide. It’s developing a locally-produced, low-end smartphone for Indonesians left out of the digital boom. It’s also building a platform for users to access services from other cooperatives on their phones.

“Unlike commercially distributed phones, this smartphone can only be obtained by becoming a member of the cooperative via its website, after which one needs to pay Rp 100,000 (US $7.48) per month for one year,” The Jakarta Post reported.

The phone had its soft-launch in late March, and will be available for all members in the coming months. We spoke with Adie Marzuki, chair of KDIM, to learn about how the organization uses the cooperative model to bring digital technologies and services to underserved Indonesians.

Can you tell us about how KDIM started, and why you decided to form a cooperative rather than a regular, for-profit company?

KDIM was initiated by two organizations, APJII [Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association] and MASTEL [Telematics Society]. We believe that we need to build inclusive economy for Indonesia. We have a very huge market here — more than 80 million smartphones users in the [Indonesian] market right now. But we still we have 60 million of our population un-served — this means that 60 million people in Indonesia have never had a smartphone. That’s why we need to have a domestic smartphone industry that serves the underserved in Indonesia — and that’s why we are creating an entry-level smartphone. They are not served by the current industry right now.

photo courtesy of KDIM

For that, the model of a cooperative makes the most sense. It is a fundamental economic system in Indonesia. We have the power of population, that’s why we built KDIM as part of an inclusive economy, so that we can leverage our numbers.

We don’t have power of capital — but we have power of the people.

What are your operating costs? How did you raise the capital to start the cooperative?

Our operating costs covered by collecting membership share from members. Membership share is a term used to refer to the contribution required for a person to become a member of the cooperative. The initial funding/equity capital [was] provided by the founding members, which consists of KDIM members of APJII and MASTEL.

Indonesia has many cooperatives. Can you tell us how you are similar, and different, from other cooperatives in the country?

We are the first Indonesian digital cooperative. There are other efforts to support the un-served people, but they are not in the digital industry — we thought that now, we need to engage all the population to emerge in the digital life, and benefit from it.

We created KDIM based on our own formulation — this is a completely new model for Indonesia. Other cooperatives in Indonesia are all in conventional businesses. We want to work with them, and we are asking the other cooperatives to follow in our way, and we are ready to serve them and give them the platform they need.

We are not trying to make our cooperative the biggest cooperative — we are offering the other cooperatives to use our platform to benefit and go to the digital era.

Once consumers become members of the cooperative, do they have to remain involved in the cooperative for as long as they’re using the phone? What do your members gain besides the phone itself, and how are they involved in KDIM?

Our members will use the phone itself as their membership tool. Members will benefit from the use of the phone as we have digital advertising system embedded in the platform. Members also gain points when they use the apps in the phone e.g. digital transaction, purchasing, and other digital activities, which are provided by the KDIM phone. Their points will be reflected in annual closing book, and members will redeem their points in rupiahs. In our annual meeting, each member will have one vote.

What’s your current membership base, and what are your medium-to-long-term goals? What kind of impact would you like KPIM to have on the country’s technology sector?

Currently we have 25,000 members. Of those, 5,000 of are directly, KDIM members, and the rest are from other cooperatives. Our medium-term goals are to invite lots of other cooperatives to benefit from our platform, while still allowing them to use their own cooperative brand. We will give white label B2B services to other cooperatives while we also inviting more members to join. Our long-term goal is to have our own digital industry ecosystem, which will serve all the 49 percent digitally un-served sector of society.

We are hoping our business model will inspire other tech players to be more inclusive and eventually close Indonesian digital divide. We haven’t officially launched yet, and we are aiming for an official launch of our phone in May, probably before the start of Ramadan.

Photo by AdamCohn

The post How a Cooperative in Indonesia is Bridging the Digital Divide appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Degrowth in Movements: Strengthening Alternatives and Overcoming Growth, Competition and Profit

About the authors and their positions

We write this text as editors and coordinators of the project Degrowth in Movement(s) with Dennis Eversberg. We see ourselves as part of the degrowth movement in Germany and Europe.

Corinna Burkhart first discovered degrowth during her studies through an internship at Research & Degrowth and has been working for Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie¹ since 2014. Dennis Eversberg is a sociologist and scientific collaborator at the DFG-funded Research Group on Post-Growth Societies at the University of Jena, where he studies the social composition, motivations and practices within the degrowth movement. Matthias Schmelzer is an economic historian and activist who works as a scientific collaborator at the University of Zürich and as a freelance collaborator at Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie. Nina Treu cofounded Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie in 2011 in Leipzig and has been carrying out work related to degrowth since 2014.

This text only answers questions 1 and 2 of the project. Questions 3, 4 and 5 are planned to be answered in autumn 2016 after a collective evaluation process with the authors in order to complete the general goal of the project.
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1. What is the key idea of Degrowth?

Overcoming growth, competition and profit – for a social-ecological and globally fair economy and way of life

The guiding economic and social principle of ‘higher, further, faster’ forces us into a social order of permanent competition in all areas of life. On the one hand, this leads to imperatives of social acceleration that overwhelm and exclude a great many people. On the other hand, this obsession with economic maximization is destroying the natural basis of human life and the ecosystems of plants and animals.

Degrowth represents a transformative path towards forms of economic activity and social (self-)organization centred on the welfare of all human beings and the preservation of the ecological basis of life. This requires both a fundamentally different way of interacting with each other on a daily basis as well as a profound cultural transformation, and the overcoming of capitalist ways of production with their imperatives of competition, growth and profit. Degrowth is not a finished model or plan that can be designed and then implemented —it is far more about re-politicizing the main aspects of our lives and economies in order to jointly conceive, test and fight for alternatives. The common values of this transformation are awareness, solidarity and cooperation. The goal: a life of dignity and self-determination for all human beings. And to make this possible, it is necessary to develop social practices and concepts in which humans see themselves as part of the planetary ecosystem and live accordingly.

A poster which is part of the game and education method “Game of good life”. (Image: Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie)

Degrowth is a movement explicitly focused on the highly industrialised countries of the Global North, even though social movements from the Global South are important allies and partners —for example, those discussions shaped by indigenous traditions such as buen vivir, post-extractivism and the grassroots ecological movements of the poor. Rich countries must reduce their consumption of raw materials, resources and land, as well as their emissions and waste production, to a level that is sustainable in the long run and that allows the countries in the South to have equal access to development opportunities.

Alternatives envisioned by the degrowth movement

The following concepts for an alternative society are central to the degrowth movement:

• A focus on a good life for all and therefore on the satisfaction of concrete human needs. This includes concepts such as slowness, ‘time prosperity’² and conviviality, in other words, quality in human relationships and the greatest possible freedom from all forms of domination.
• An emphasis on the changeability of social orders and an orientation towards sufficiency — instead of a fixation on technological novelties and increased efficiency— as strategies for solving ecological problems. From the point of view of degrowth, the idea that it is possible to completely decouple economic growth from the use of resources has been refuted by history and is technologically and politically unrealistic. This makes it necessary to search for alternatives beyond the concepts of ecological modernization and green growth.
• A truly collective political process to decide what products and services there should be more of and —especially— what there should be less of in the future. From the degrowth perspective, areas which could be dismantled are e.g. the fossil-fuel and industrial sectors, the military, the arms industry and the advertising sector, and individual and air transport. Areas that could be expanded, on the other hand are e.g. social and collective infrastructures, an ecological circular economy, decentralised and renewable energy sources existing as commons, care work, education and a solidarity economy.
• A redistribution of income and wealth on a national and global level, and a transformation of social security systems. In addition to an unconditional basic income —not only as money, but also in the form of social infrastructure— many are demanding a maximum wage.
• A focus on the reproduction of life, where the production and processing of goods is subordinate to human welfare, instead of the other way around. A potential first step in this sense would be a radical reduction in wage labour for all.
• Freedom from the one-sided Western development paradigm, in order to enable a self-determined shaping of society and a good life in the Global South.
• An expansion of democratic forms of decision-making in all areas, including the economy, in order to enable true political participation. Testing and practising of grassroots and consensus-oriented processes are fundamental to the movement.
• Regionally-based, but also open and interconnected economic circles. Because international trade deepens social divisions and prevents ecological sustainability, it is necessary to move towards a deglobalization of economic relations. However, degrowth does not stand for cultural isolation, homogenous ‘bioregions’, or economic protectionism for the sake of competitiveness, but for open forms of democratic relocalisation.

All these elements share the central idea that changes towards a socially just and ecologically sustainable society and economy at a global level are only possible through a combination of different strategies: In this sense, science and research are just as important as activism and practical projects that seek to provide alternatives in the here and now.

Degrowth is also far more than just a criticism of economic growth —it is about creating the conditions for a good life for everybody. Thus, conservative, racist-nationalist and sexist currents of thought that also criticise growth go against the essence of degrowth and its fundamental orientation towards a good life and equal rights and freedoms for all human beings worldwide; there is no place for them in degrowth.

The full courtyard of the University of Leipzig during the Degrowth Conference 2014. (Image: CC-BY-SA, Eva Mahnke)

A brief history of the degrowth movement

Now an international movement, the beginnings of degrowth can be found in France in the early 2000s. However, the concept of economic growth has been the subject of criticism for almost as long as it has existed. Since the 1970s, both the widely-read study, The Limits of Growth (1972), and the work of a wide range of intellectuals and economists such as André Gorz, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen or Claudia von Werlhof have contributed significantly to the development of this current of thought.

In 2002, the publication in France of a special edition of the magazine Silence on the subject of décroissance (French for ‘degrowth’) sparked a new wave of debate surrounding the criticism of growth; and the first International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity took place in Paris in 2008. During the conference the English word ‘degrowth’ was used, leading to its subsequent adoption in the international scientific debate. After this, international conferences on degrowth took place in Barcelona in 2010, in Venice in 2012 and in Leipzig in 2014. Since the first conference in 2008, the number of attendees has risen continuously and has included scientists from a wide range of areas as well as activists and practitioners. The conferences are a meeting point and a place of debate, learning and networking for the degrowth movement; and at the same time, they provide it with greater public attention. So far, the most important events for the degrowth movement in the German-speaking countries have been the degrowth conference in Leipzig in 2014 with more than 3000 participants, the Beyond Growth?! congress in Berlin in 2011 organised by Attac, and the recently created Degrowth Summer School, which took place for the second time in 2016 at the Climate Camp in the German Rhineland.³
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Critical self-reflection as a path to anti-capitalism: socially homogenous, but diverse in its contents – and critical of capitalism

The degrowth movement in Germany is highly decentralised, and has neither a formal network nor an organizing centre. Rather it is composed of a great diversity of individual and collective actors.

There are, firstly, certain organizations that work directly in the context of the degrowth movement, for example the Netzwerk Wachstumswende together with the Förderverein Wachstumswende⁴ , or the Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, which maintains the German degrowth web portal and initiates and supports projects listed there. Since the Beyond Growth?! congress in Berlin in 2011, there has also been an Attac working group with the same name that is active throughout Germany —and some local Attac groups work on the subject as well. In addition to these relatively large or well-known groups and institutions, there are also many smaller, generally local, actors working in the area of growth criticism and alternatives to growth. This has become especially apparent thanks to the positive response to the degrowth conference in Leipzig in 2014 and the wide range of events it hosted. Furthermore, a variety of individuals or departments in other large organizations not solely focused on degrowth, such as political foundations and environmental organizations, also contribute actively to the degrowth debate through events, participation in discussions, or publications. Finally, many ecologically-oriented economists also study the subject of degrowth, particularly in the context of the Vereinigung für ökologische Ökonomie (VÖÖ) (German Society for Ecological Economics) and the Vereinigung für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung (VÖW) (German Association for Ecological Economic Research). Last but not least, the Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung (IÖW) (Institute for Ecological Economy Research) maintains the blog www.postwachstum.de, and since 2008 the University of Oldenburg has regularly hosted lecture series on the post-growth economy.

On the whole, the greatest amount of progress in the degrowth movement has been achieved thanks to the large, grassroots organizational teams involved in the international degrowth conference 2014 in Leipzig and the Degrowth Summer Schools in 2015 and 2016 in the lignite-mining region of the German Rhineland.

Degrowth in Europe

In addition to the above actors in the German degrowth movement, there has also been a growing degrowth movement in other regions, especially Southern Europe. For example, the international conferences started in Paris in 2008 were then continued by the group Research & Degrowth (R&D), which is active in Spain and France. R&D works mainly in the area of science, is especially active in Barcelona and surroundings, and seeks to promote the dissemination of degrowth ideas in the academic world. In France, the movement mainly revolves around the periodicals Silence and La Décroissance; as well as the Parti pour la Décroissance (‘Party for Degrowth’), which in addition to its political activities is also active in the dissemination of information. In Italy, the group Rete per la decrescita (‘Network for Degrowth’) conducts scientific research, whereas the Movimento per la Decrescita Felice (‘Movement for Happy Degrowth’), strongly rooted in local groups, promotes the idea of voluntary simplicity and seeks to provide an example of an alternative, ‘good practice’. Eastern European groups working for degrowth have received increased attention and acquired momentum thanks to the degrowth conference in autumn 2016 in Budapest. Furthermore, there is an ever-increasing range of research in addition to small-scale practical projects in various European countries (e.g. Can Decreix⁵ in France) related to a greater or lesser degree to degrowth.

Alliances and cooperation

In addition to the groups directly carrying out growth-critical work, there are, both in Germany and in other regions of the global north, close ties with and within the alternative economies scene: commons, solidarity economies, transition towns, common good economies, sharing economies, plural economies, common gardens, free and swap shops, etc. — and often the borders between these movements and degrowth are not necessarily clear-cut. There are also noteworthy instances of cooperation with scientific institutes, development aid organizations and political foundations, and individual representatives of political parties.

Publishing and practicing

Degrowth is, on the one hand, a proposal for profound societal transformation; and in this sense, much of the work focuses on firing up social and academic debate through publications⁶ , websites, events and conferences. On the other hand, degrowth is also the common element of a great many hands-on projects, where it manifests itself through concrete political and everyday practices. Thus, the large degrowth events are organised by grassroots organizational teams —the food is regional, organic and vegan and is prepared collectively, and financing comes exclusively from politically compatible organizations. Typical practices in degrowth circles are, for example: mobility that is as ecological as possible, cooperation with vegetable co-ops, living in common housing spaces or other alternative forms of living, and participation in direct actions.

 

The general consensus in the German degrowth movement

A survey carried out with participants at the degrowth conference in Leipzig in 2014 provides information on the ideas and ideals of those individuals that are practically active within the degrowth spectrum.⁷ The study shows that the people active in the degrowth scene are mainly from student, academic and urban middle-class circles; the majority are between 20 and 35 years old; most are white; and many of the younger individuals become politicised through degrowth. Irrespective of any other possible differences between them, the people that see themselves as part of the degrowth movement share a common, growth-critical vision. This vision can be summarised in general terms as follows:

Growth without environmental destruction is an illusion. Therefore, economic shrinkage in the industrialized countries will be inevitable. This includes that we will have to abstain from certain amenities we have grown used to. The transformation towards a post-growth society needs to be peaceful and emerge from below; it amounts to overcoming capitalism, and female emancipation must be a central issue in the process

(see Eversberg/Schmelzer 2015).⁸

Currents in the post-growth discourse

At the same time, the growth-critical discourse is characterised by the heterogeneity of its contents. Still attempts to categorise the diverse actors critical of growth are made. In the German post-growth debate, it is possible to distinguish through the texts of certain key figures the conservative current, represented prominently by Meinhard Miegel, the social-reformist current, represented by Angelika Zahrnt, and the sufficiency-oriented current, personified mainly by Niko Paech. In addition, there are also feminist and anti-capitalist currents —although these, unlike the previous cases, revolve less around specific individuals. The differences mainly reflect typical positions found within the post-growth spectrum that can be read about in many books and articles. It is important to note, however, that the post-growth debate cannot be unequivocally equated with degrowth as a discourse and movement. For example, discussions and events in recent years have shown that in particular the conservative current of criticism à la Miegel is not reflected in the younger and more international degrowth scene.

Political and content-related currents in the degrowth movement

Another way of describing the range of contents and internal tensions within the degrowth movement is provided by the aforementioned survey, which reveals five main currents: Sufficiency-oriented Critics of Civilization, the moderate Immanent Reformers, a transitory group of Voluntarist-Pacifist Idealists, the Modernist Rationalist Left and the Alternative Practical Left (for a detailed overview see Eversberg/Schmelzer 2016). This shows the diversity within the degrowth movement with regard to, among other things:

• content and perspective (from a closeness to nature, to techno-optimism, to radical anti-capitalism);
• forms of organization (from large organizations, to alternative projects, to associations of activists);
• political practices (from petitions, to direct action, or even to dropping out of society altogether)
• political backgrounds (from a low level of politicization, to alternative circles, to the classic left-wing).

Demonstration “enough is enough for all” at the end of the Degrowth Conference 2014 in Leipzig. (Image: Klimagerechtigkeit Leipzig)

This breadth of interest provides the degrowth movement with a wide range of potential alliances and many degrowth activists also see themselves as a part of other movements and currents of thought —among others, those represented in the project Degrowth in Movement(s). Degrowth is thus often seen as a common ground or platform; a collective space for both action and debate.
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Literature and links

Degrowth is not only a label for an ongoing discussion on alternatives, and not just an academic debate, but also an emerging social movement. Regardless of many similarities, there is quite some lack of knowledge as well as scepticism, prejudice and misunderstanding about the different perspectives, assumptions, traditions, strategies and protagonists both within degrowth circles as well as within other social movements. Here, space for learning emerges – also to avoid the danger of repeating mistakes and pitfalls of other social movements.

At the same time, degrowth is a perspective or a proposal which is or can become an integral part of other perspectives and social movements. The integration of alternatives, which are discussed under the discursive roof of degrowth, into other perspectives often fails because of the above mentioned scepticisms, prejudices and misunderstandings.

The multi-media project “Degrowth in movement(s)” shows which initiatives and movements develop and practice social, ecological and democratic alternatives. Representatives from 32 different fields describe their work and history, their similarities & differences to others and possible alliances. From the Solidarity Economy to the Refugee-Movement, from Unconditional Basic Income to the Anti-Coal-Movement, from Care Revolution to the Trade Unions – they discuss their relationship to degrowth in texts, videos, photos and podcasts.

The project was run by the “Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie” (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas) in Germany, so most of the authors are from there. However, there are a couple of clearly international perspectives and most of the movements work far beyond the national level.

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