My friendship and work with ecological design expert Dave Jacke have only intensified my conviction that permaculturists and commoners need to connect more and learn from each other.  The value of such dialogues was brought home to me by a public talk and an all-day workshop that I co-organized with Dave.  The events, which in combination we called “Reinventing the Commons,” were an opportunity for 35 participants to learn about ecosystem dynamics and the commons, and for Dave and me to learn from each other in public.  How might we build better commons by mimicking the principles and patterns of natural ecosystems?

Dave’s talk on the evening of January 20 was a great introduction to this topic.  He started by showing a chart plotting the “industrial ascent” of human civilization as fueled by cheap fossil fuels, growing populations and profligate pollution and waste.  (See the yellow line in the chart; based on a diagram originally by David Holmgren (http://futurescenarios.org.)

Dave’s quick historical overview started with tribal commons in the prehistoric era, a time when people self-organized to obtain enough food and shelter to survive.  Societies began to take the shape of feudal commons in Roman and Medieval times, at least in England and Europe.  Lords owned the land and claimed privileged access to certain resources of the landscape while allowing commoners to manage other resources themselves.

When the feudal system began to collaborate with the budding market system in the 17^th century, we saw the rise of a new sort of state and market system with a very different logic and ethic.  Soon a series of enclosures privatized and marketized wealth previously managed collectively.  Enclosures were a violent dispossession of commoners, who were left as landless peasants with little choice but to become wage-slaves and paupers in the early industrial cities.

The commons, once a dominant form of social organization, was supplanted by the state and then the market.  In no time the market and state were colluding to build a new vision of “progress” based on an extractive growth economy.  The market/state system has in fact built the modern, technological society that we inhabit today.

But can this system continue?  Can the planetary ecosystem – and climate – survive capitalism?  One of the most revealing slides that Dave showed was this one showing the role of different governance systems over history – commons, state and markets.

The chart also shows four scenarios for our future from humanity’s current high point of energy consumption, which probably can only decline.  Each of the four scenarios is likely associated with a dominant type of governance system– the market, state, commons, or none of the above.

The market system is clearly the mode for continuing our current trajectory of tech-driven economic growth – a scenario that many argue is bio-geophysically impossible.  Growth at this scale would simply entail too much ecological destruction and instability.

A second scenario, which many European nations are pursing and that well-intentioned US liberals often support, seeks to achieve a stable, long-term balance between growth and ecological limits.  This “green economy” approach would require a dominant state role to discipline and guide markets – not exactly a plausible scenario in today’s world of unfettered capitalism.  It may also not be ecologically sustainable given the decreased and decreasing carrying capacity of the planet due to human impacts.

A third approach would seek to navigate a “regenerative descent” from the peak-oil consumption that has characterized modern times—reducing our footprint by descending from the energy peak, while simultaneously regenerating the health of the ecosystems that support us.  But instead of looking to either the market or state to be the dominant force of governance (both are too deeply committed to economic growth), the commons scenario would look to decentralized nonmarket provisioning, community-accountable markets, and new limits on extraction.  Permaculture obviously has much to say about these themes.

A final scenario amounts to a “you’re on your own” approach in which every individual is pitted against everyone else and a survivalist “lifeboat ethic” prevails.  Not an option to which we wish to aspire!

Commons & Permaculture as Ways to Manage “Regenerative Descent”

You can guess which one we commoners believe is most ecologically credible and necessary.  The question then becomes, said Jacke, “How do we learn how to rebuild ecosystems from the ground up and the sky down?  How do we make a graceful and ethical descent from the energy peak that we have probably reached?”

Much of the answer, he believes, lies in “devising new—or ‘new/old’—types of human cultures.”

This is why the commons and permaculture need to enter into a new dialogue.  Permaculture is not just about agriculture and ecological design, but concerns designing whole human cultures, including social and economic structures for stewarding ecosystems.  The commons, for its part, is very focused on the socio-ecological principles of self-governance.  Commoning is all about aligning social practices, governance and culture with the special character of local landscapes.

A big question is how we should understand culture.  Jacke believes that culture consists of four primary components.  The first three – resources, technology, and social and economic structures – can be designed in different ways, but Jacke argued that what really animates a culture is its “inner landscape,” which functions as a set of operating instructions.  (See chart below.)

Somehow, a culture’s inner values, myths and aspirations must be brought into alignment with deep ecological principles, said Jacke.  That encapsulates the challenge we face in pursuing a “regenerative descent,” or the “commons scenario,” in the wake of peak energy.

Fortunately, said Jacke, the human species has a vast upside potential.  Quoting Stuart Hill, Jacke said:  “The human species is psycho-socially highly underdeveloped — and paradoxically, that is our greatest reason for hope.”  If we were as psycho-socially developed as we could be, genetically, we’d be screwed.  But because we have so much potential for psycho-social growth, we can work our way out of this mess.  And the commons is a key piece of this.  But we need to look for solutions that challenge us on the inside.”

That is why the commons is not just about “managing resources,” but equally an exploration of how to change our “inner landscape.”  Jacke noted that the problem is that, as The Talmud says “We see things not as they are.  We see things as we are.” Who we think we are affects everything else.

Beyond Human Separation and Alienation

Jacke noted that, when he does workshops and asks people why ecosystems and societies fail, the heart of the problem always boils down to “human separation, disconnection and alienation.”  “Our culture believes that humans are separate from nature, that mind and matter are separate, and that consciousness and matter are separate.  That’s what the story of Adam and Eve is all about – our separation from nature, which is the story of Western culture.”

Of course, Jacke added:  “It’s not true – we’re not separate.  But the self-separation, induced through trauma, is itself a trauma, and has split ourselves internally.”

The best way to heal this separation within ourselves, and between ourselves and the more-than-human, is to mimic natural ecosystems, Jacke urged.  “The core strategy is conscious ecological design – design that is intentional, deliberate and mindful of nature.”

Jacke said that he once thought of “design” as “planning in a systematic manner.”  But he has come to realize that the design process really amounts to promoting “deliberate emergence” as a “co-creative participant.”  The point is not to impose solutions, which only continues our separation from nature and each other, inevitably leading to failure.  Our goal should be to “mimic natural systems” by trying to achieve “close external functional resemblances with it.  We have to ‘re-member’ ourselves as part of nature.  Ecosystem mimicry is a frame for reminding ourselves that we are nature.”

The Paleolithic Fish Weir Commons

We moderns tend to forget that we are deeply embedded in nature, and not apart from it.  Jacke helped emphasize this point by describing what could be one of the earliest documented commons in human history, represented by an 8,000-year-old fish weir off the coast of Denmark.

Archeologists discovered the quarter-kilometer-long fence-like wooden structure beneath the ocean, with its tight web of wood still intact (Divers couldn’t even put their fingers between any cracks!)  The weir was built to direct fish and eels along the underwater fence to a wooden cage where they were trapped and held for consumption over the winter months.  Such fish weirs had to be rebuilt every year, and sometimes more frequently if there were storms.  Each weir required 6,000-7,000 very straight hazelwood poles 4-5 meters long — hard to come by unless one manages the hazel bushes through coppicing.  This means the hazel would be cut, and then allowed to sprout more shoots that then grew for about ten years to produce a new crop of straight poles of a size needed for the weir.  Hazel bushes managed this way can yield poles again and again for hundreds of years.

“The implications of this fish weir are vast,” said Jacke.  Its existence means that there was a well-organized community of people who were systematically harvesting vast quantities of coppice to build the weir.  “Based on current coppice-forestry design figures, such as the spacing of stumps and the time needed to grow new wood,” said Jacke, “it would take at least 1.7 acres to be able to harvest 6,000-7000 wooden poles.”

If we consider that each plot of 1.7 acres would require ten years to grow wood of sufficient size, then continuously producing the fish weirs would require a minimum of 17 acres under the most intensive coppice-management practices we know of today.  This would represent a major organized work effort and the transmission of cultural knowledge from generation to generation, especially considering that a single ten-year rotation would consume a significant percentage of a Paleolithic human’s lifespan.

Remember:  This was a time before agriculture had been invented and glaciers were not long gone from Europe.  There were no state power structures or market structures.  So this fish weir could only have been produced through some sort of collective social structure – a commons, said Jacke.

At this, a kind of stunned silence settled over the audience.  Wow.  The commons has clearly been a part of our deep history as a species.  Surely it will be a big part of our future as we cross the threshold of peak energy.

Cross-posted from Bollier.org

Photo by littlenomada

The post What Permaculture Can Teach Us About Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

So Dave and I decided to share our mutual interests and ignorance, and host a public workshop to investigate this critical nexus between nature and humanity (which of course are not so separate and independent, after all). Our workshop is called “Reinventing the Commons:  Social Ecosystems for Local Stewardship & Planetary Survival.”

The event will consist of a Friday evening talk by each of us on January 20, 2017, and an all-day participatory workshop the next day, January 21, at the Montague (Massachusetts) Common Hall (“Grange”). Pre-registration is required; the public lectures will be $10; the workshop & public lectures $85 to $125.  More details here or by writing Dave Jacke at [email protected]. Or register through Brown Paper Tickets (fees apply) at ReinventingCommons.brownpapertickets.com.

Here is our overview of the workshop and the ground we wish to cover.

For all its benefits, the dominance of capitalist economics has also generated a world of predatory, extractive markets based on short-term self-interest that is literally destroying the planet. What feasible alternatives exist? This workshop will explore the potential of the commons as a practical and fair system of local provisioning, governance, and culture for transforming society.

From early in human cultural evolution until only a few centuries ago, the vast majority of resources was held and managed in common. Certain groups of people formed agreements about how to use and manage specific shared resources, from woodlands and farm fields to pastures and water, and they managed those resources sustainably for generations. It took the privateers hundreds of years to consolidate their power, control the structures of the state, and exploit cheap energy to destroy the commons systems of Europe and the global South. The unbridled privatization and commoditization of commons that inaugurated the Industrial Revolution continues today, with catastrophic results for planetary ecosystems and social well-being.

Reinventing “commoning” can begin to counterbalance these market and state forces. Commons systems provide human-scaled social structures for shared resource management and the nurturing of community relationships. They foster regenerative stewardship, ethical long-term relationships, and the common good. Commoning requires cultures of skillful social negotiation and coordination, and the development of trust and shared purpose. The question is: How can we consciously, creatively, and practically adapt and reintegrate practices and patterns of commoning into our modern cultural contexts?

This evening talk and participatory one-day workshop will engage that question.

The two-hour Friday evening public talk will introduce the essence of the problems we face and how commoning can help us solve them.  We’ll also explore some of the history, principles, and concepts of commoning as a new and old social form, and examine a few case studies of commons systems that can inspire us and give us practical direction.  You can register for the Friday evening talk by itself and come away with new eyes, hope for a better future, and sense of how we might get there.

The Saturday workshop will build on Friday evening’s talk through lectures, discussions, exercises, and case studies in an environment fostering co-learning and co-creation. How do principles of ecology and the commons converge? What do commons systems entail philosophically and experientially, and imply politically and culturally? What contemporary, cross-cultural examples exist? We’ll also explore how we might apply commons principles to the design of Brook’s Bend Farm, a nascent community farm in Montague, MA. Workshop leaders David Bollier and Dave Jacke will combine forces and ideas with participants to see what we can learn together as we begin to reinvent commoning here and now.

You can attend the Friday night talk by itself, or come for Friday night and the Saturday workshop as a package, which includes a soup lunch on Saturday.

Facilitator Bios:

Independent scholar, activist, and blogger David Bollier focuses on the commons as a new paradigm of economics, politics, and culture. He pursues this work primarily as co-founder of the Commons Strategies Group, an advocacy/consulting project, and as Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  Bollier has written or edited eight books on the commons, including Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons (2014) and, with co-editor Silke Helfrich, Patterns of Commoning (2015). He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, and blogs at Bollier.org.

Dave Jacke has studied and practiced ecological culture design since the mid-1970s, sometimes under the banner of permaculture, but mostly through his firm Dynamics Ecological Design.  Since writing the now-classic two-volume tome Edible Forest Gardens with Eric Toensmeier, he has come to firmly believe that we must spend at least as much time designing our human social structures as our ecological landscapes. Dave’s research on ancient land use in Britain led him to appreciate the long, close relationship between commoning and land management practices like coppicing, both of which will likely become essential again in the near future.

The post Announcing: A January Workshop on Social Ecosystems for Local Stewardship appeared first on P2P Foundation.