“If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do […] HOW WOULD I BE? WHAT WOULD I DO?”

—R. Buckminster Fuller

“We cannot individually comprehend the range, depth and detail of the consequences we are collectively generating for ourselves.”

—Tom Atlee (2002)

My plane is inbound to Amsterdam. For the next two days I will be joining a group of innovators, futurists, designers, activists, and technologists who have been invited on behalf of the Dubai Futures Foundation to brainstorm and envision what the Museum of the Future exhibition for the 2017 World Government Summit might reveal to its visitors about the world of 2050. How did I end up in this film and on this plane?

Museum of the Future, Dubai

For more than five years I would not fly to avoid the carbon emissions and environmental impact associated with this mode of transport. I wanted to walk my talk. I was somewhat indignant of people who jetted around the planet, in a similar way I had been indignant about meat-eaters when I was a vegetarian for a year. I still don’t eat much meat, but I don’t judge others for it anymore.

I started flying again, to teach sustainable design and futures techniques to activists, innovators, policy-makers, and students. I traveled by plane to do foresight work on climate change impact and community resilience with government agencies, to take part in climate summits and activist gatherings. I also built up a fair few “love miles” when visiting family and friends.

On digging trenches, creating an other,and fighting against

There was a time when I would have questioned my own integrity and commitment to the cause over these actions. Have I sold out? Well, I am not sure if I earn enough to call it that. At least I make myself believe that I do most of my work to contribute to the emergence of diverse regenerative cultures, thriving local communities, and vibrant regional economies in global solidarity and collaboration.

Do I really not earn enough to call myself a sell-out? Enough seems to me a curiously relative concept that is subject to very different interpretations depending on someone’s point of view or level of consciousness. Our perceived needs seem to increase rather than decrease as we get wealthier and move in wealthier circles.

Over the last few years I made it my regular practice to “count my blessings”: health, a loving partner, good friends, meaningful work, access to beautiful nature, a roof over my head, running water, clothes to wear, and food to eat. None of that can be taken for granted in today’s world. Not to mention the rank and privilege that come with being a white male in his mid-40s with a B.Sc. in Biology, a Masters in Holistic Science, a Ph.D. in Design, and a German passport, who speaks three languages fluently. Who am I to ever complain about income or really anything else?

I do make it a practice to gently point out to self-righteous activists—still stuck in the fight-the-system or blame-the-perpetrators loop—who are angrily mobilizing against the evil “one percent,” that most of the folks who camped out in front of Wall Street during Occupy were in fact themselves part of the top 10, many of the top five, and some even the top one percent of the global wealth pyramid.

I personally know more than a handful of anti-globalization or climate change activists who are expecting an inheritance approaching a million dollars, simply because the properties their parents and grandparents live in have shot up in value. Expecting to own a million dollars in assets puts you into the top one percent yourself. According to the Credit Suisse “Global Wealth Report 2015,” 80 people (who would find a seat on a London double-decker-bus) own more than half of the world’s wealth, while the bottom 71 percent of humanity share only three percent of global wealth.

Have a look at www.globalrichlist.com and enter your annual income and where you live in the world. I did that for someone getting by on less than 12,000 dollars a year in Spain, and guess what, that person is still in the lucky top 10 percent of the global comparison.

My point? What is the purpose of self-righteous finger-pointing and feeling superior about our transport or dietary habits, our political convictions, our oh-so-evolved level of awareness, or for being a little further down the global wealth pyramid constructed on hundreds of years of colonialism and exploitation of people and planet?

What is the point in beating oneself up over one’s own imperfections or privileges we were born with? We need to start with self-compassion and gratitude for what we have, and then reach out to others to co-create a world that works for all of humanity and all of life. Trench-digging activism, based on more of the “them-against- us-thinking” that got us into this mess in the first place, will not heal this ailing world.

On building alternatives and activating a more beautiful world

“To make the world work in the shortest possible time for 100 percent of humanity, through spontaneous cooperation and without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”

—Buckminster Fuller

R. Buckminster Fuller stands in front of a depiction of his domed city design at its first public showing at a community meeting in East St. Louis, Illinois. Photo: Steve Yelvington, Wikimedia Commons

To shift from a “story of separation” to a “story of interbeing” is how Charles Eisenstein framed the transition ahead in The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. In my recently published book Designing Regenerative Cultures, I explore how we might be able to individually and collectively facilitate culturally creative conversations that will help us to co-create this future.

We are capable of shifting our culture’s guiding myths and central story from the narrative of separation to the narrative of interbeing. Together, and only together as one humanity in service to life, will we be able to create that more beautiful world. It is already all around us, but the story of separation makes us blind to seeing it.

During my time at Findhorn, I had the opportunity to collaborate with May East on a wide range of projects. May is Brazilian and has been an activist since the 1980s. She is a cofounder of the Global Ecovillage Network and Gaia Education, and directed the United Nations training centre CIFAL Scotland. More than most people I know, May embodies the role of a global change agent and bridge-builder between the often-separate worlds of civil society, business, and governance.

Her work stretches from teaching capacity building courses to activists all around the world,to working with local and national governments on a wide range of sustainability issues, and delivering sustainability training courses for UNITAR and UNESCO. May actively contributed to the collaborative process that formulated the new UN Sustainable Development Goals.

May and I share our passion for helping diverse constituencies and stakeholders explore whole-systems design solutions that draw on collective intelligence and integrate diverse perspectives and needs into a win-win-win approach. I firmly believe that through bridge-building and new types of collaboration across “the trenches” we will be able to co-create a more sustainable world. We need to maximize the edges. The good old permaculture design principle suggests that the more diversity we integrate, the more creative, diverse, and generative our solutions will be.

May East teaching a Project Based Learning programme in Senegal for Gaia Education

May once shared her personal practice of activism with me: “The first thing I do after my morning meditation is to consciously choose where I will put my attention that day, what conversations and projects I will activate through the power of my attention.”

We are all activists, activating one story or another through the power of our attention and the way we participate in our communities. We can choose to activate and embody the story of separation or the story of interbeing. We can choose what kind of world we want to bring forth together with the people we are in contact with.

We are all designers! Regenerative cultures are co-created by people who have become conscious of the way their participation activates certain possibilities—people who share a vision for a better world, collaborating to co-create a thriving future for all Life. Mindful practitioners and conscious activists ask themselves every day:

How can I activate the future potential of the present moment by living a more beautiful world today?

The first step is to be aware of what we are activating in the world by the power of our attention and the story we propagate through our thoughts, words, and actions. We all are, already, shaping the future of things to come, by the power of our attention and by both our actions and our failures to act in the face of converging crises and abundant opportunities to create a more beautiful world.

The article was first published in Communities magazine No.172, pp.43-45)

Photo by Eugen Naiman

The post Activism Revisited: Personal reflections on trying to make a difference appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Few issues highlight the imperative for a more just distribution of the world’s wealth than the widening gap between those who are considered financially rich and poor. In recent years, public concerns over escalating levels of inequality have reached new heights, partly fuelled by the yearly publication of Oxfam’s shocking inequality statistics that demonstrate the degree to which the global economy is structurally unjust and failing the majority of citizens. Given that the richest 1% of the world’s population reportedly own as much wealth as the rest of us combined, there is a general consensus that inequality has reached obscene levels and must urgently be addressed.

But a recent analysis by Jason Hickel suggests that there is a lot more to the problem of inequality than Oxfam’s research reveals, and he suggests that the world is far more unequal than policymakers and economists generally acknowledge. For a start, a huge quantity of wealth is currently hidden away in tax havens and has therefore not been taken into account in Oxfam’s global wealth calculations. Recent estimates suggest that some $7.6tn worth of assets are held in off shore accounts – 25% more than five years ago and equivalent to 8% of the world’s total financial assets. If this money was included in inequality statistics, they would undoubtedly reveal even greater inequality in global wealth ownership.

Hickel also dispels the widely held belief that income inequality is not as problematic as Oxfam’s figures on wealth inequality suggest. According to experts like the economist Branco Milanovic, although income inequality is getting worse within countries, it is actually improving when measured on a global scale. The standard metric used to make such claims is the Gini index, which shows that global income inequality has decreased slightly from 0.72 in 1988 to 0.71 in 2008 (on a scale where 0 indicates complete equality and 1 indicates extreme inequality).

However, drawing on the work of Professor Robert Wade, Hickel points out that the Gini coefficient is a problematic gauge of income distribution as it is a relative measure that doesn’t take into account the absolute difference between people’s incomes. It only highlights differences in the rate of inequality. For example, the Gini measure of inequality would remain constant between two countries (or individuals) if they both doubled their income over a period of time (e.g. country X doubles it’s income from 10 to 20 and country Y from 40 to 80) even though the absolute gap in their income grows considerably (from 30 to 60).

As Wade suggests, using the ‘Absolute Gini’ index instead would be a far better indicator of how inclusively economic growth is distributed, as it would show greater inequality when one country (or person) experienced bigger absolute additions to their incomes than another. Using the Absolute Gini coefficient, Hickel calculates that global inequality (in terms of the global distribution of income) has actually “exploded” in recent decades, rising from 0.57 in 1988 to 0.72 in 2005.

Inequality between countries has also increased exorbitantly. In 1960 people living in the world’s richest country were 33 times richer than people in the poorest country; by 2000 they were 134 times richer. According to Hickel, the absolute gap between the average incomes of people in the richest and poorest countries has grown by 135% over the same period.

In addition, Hickel presents calculations for the growing gap between per capita income in the United States comparted to various regions in the Global South. According to his analysis, the income gap between the US and three major regions of the developing world (Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia) has in each case grown by approximately 200% since 1960. The global inequality gap, he argues, has roughly tripled in size.

These latest revelations build on Hickel’s previous examination of how the statistics commonly used by UN agencies and the mainstream media substantially underestimate the reality of global poverty and hunger, as outlined in STWR’s report on the Sustainable Development Goals. Despite the pervasive rhetoric and received wisdom from governments and UN agencies that we are winning the fight against poverty and the world is therefore becoming less unequal, it’s increasingly apparent that very little is being done to promote social and economic justice on an international basis.

Like hunger and poverty, global inequality is clearly a far more serious and systemic problem than policymakers are willing to admit – and it’s one that requires robust mechanisms for sharing wealth and power more equitably between nations, not just within them. But as long as governments fail to enact the redistributive measures and structural reforms that are now so urgently needed, the responsibility to hold policymakers to account will continue to fall squarely on the shoulders of progressive analysists, engaged citizens and civil society organisations.

Photo credit: Shashwat Nagpal, Flickr creative commons

The post The inconvenient truth about global inequality appeared first on P2P Foundation.

From the Abstract:

“This paper considers the proposal that each country distributes its resource rents directly to citizens as a universal and unconditional cash transfer, or Resource Dividend, and estimates its potential impact on global poverty for the years 2000–06. Using a global dataset on resource rents and the distribution of income, I find that if every developing country implemented the policy then the number of people living below $1-a-day would be cut by between 27% and 66%, depending on the year and the assumptions made. Looking ahead, poverty could be better than halved as long as commodity prices do not drop below their 2004 level.”

An excerpt from the introduction, by Paul Segal:

“In this paper I ask what would happen if, contrary to J. Paul Getty’s prediction, mineral rights were in fact distributed more equitably. In particular, I consider the scheme under which each country taxes the rents due to their natural resources, and distributes the proceeds directly and unconditionally back to every adult citizen on an equal basis. I call this scheme the Resource Dividend (RD). Versions of it have appeared in different literatures going back to Thomas Paine in 1795, with recent proposals including the distribution of oil revenues in Iraq. But two developments make its more general application of particular current relevance. First, resource nationalism and resource ownership rose in importance amid the dramatic rise in resource prices up to mid-2008. Second, the first Millennium Development Goal, adopted by the United Nations in 2000, is to halve global poverty at the $1-a-day line from its 1990 level by 2015. I estimate the global impact of the policy on poverty and find that if enough poor countries were to adopt the RD then it would be sufficient to achieve the first Millennium Development Goal: extreme global poverty would be cut by half.

While I estimate its global impact, the RD is a national, not international policy, and in recent years versions have been proposed for Iraq (Palley 2003, Birdsall and Subramanian 2004), Nigeria (Sala-í-Martín and Subramanian 2003), and Bolivia (Durán et al. 2007). Sandbu (2006) discusses the scheme in more general terms. These authors cite the possible advantages of the policy in the context of substantial resource wealth, where direct distribution of revenues may help to alleviate the resource curse. In addition to this argument I discuss potential advantages for all countries, including those with modest resource wealth. First, as already mentioned, it would substantially reduce poverty. Second, by being levied only on rents, the scheme implies none of the economic distortions or efficiency loss that other redistributive schemes may risk.

Third, it provides an incentive to informal workers and individuals with little or no formal interaction with the state to register with the fiscal system. Finally, there is a moral and legal argument that by the nature of rents, no individual has a special claim to them, so the only morally defensible distribution is an equal distribution.

The distribution of resource rents is always and everywhere a political decision, not an economic outcome. Unlike the value of most output, there is no one to whom they “naturally” accrue. Put another way, in other sectors taxes and transfers act on a pre-intervention distribution, but there is no pre-intervention distribution of resource rents. In practice most countries have assigned ownership of resources to the government, making the government the recipient of resource rents. This political decision is followed by political decisions regarding expenditures of these rents, which have a direct distributional impact. It is less obvious but equally important that if resource rents substitute for other taxation then individuals benefit according to how their actual tax bill compares with the counterfactual situation of the absence of the resource. Thus the elimination of taxation of the private sector, as in some resource-rich countries, should not be mistaken for a distribution-neutral tax policy. The RD is therefore no more political a policy than any other distribution of resource rents.

The policy may appear radical, and its global implementation would indeed have a dramatic effect. But as a redistributive policy it is relatively modest in magnitude compared with existing policies in Europe. I show that cash benefits in the EU15 comprise 6.6 percent of GDP, while resource rents comprise under 6 percent of GDP in most countries, including those that account for most of the global poverty reduction under the Resource Dividend.”

More information in the finalized draft of the same paper here: http://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/SP22-ResourceRentsRedistributionandHalvingGlobalPovertThe-ResourceDividend-Paulsegal-2009.pdf]

Photo by mckaysavage

The post Essay of the Day: Halving Global Poverty Through Resource Dividends appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The post The Sustainable Development Goals: A Siren and Lullaby for Our Times appeared first on P2P Foundation.

At a time when governments are failing abysmally to mitigate climate change, reduce inequality or end poverty, the key to creating a more equal and sustainable world is establishing participative forms of political engagement at all levels of society – from the local to the global.

In an era of politics characterised by unconstrained corporate lobbying, a well-oiled ‘revolving door’ between industry and government, and an endless stream of campaign contributions from dirty oil and other lucrative industries, is the long-championed ideal of a truly democratic state now a lost cause? Should concerned citizens and activists turn their attention instead to establishing sustainable economic alternatives within their towns and communities? Or should we all be doing much more to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”, as Abraham Lincoln once avowed?

Few questions are more pertinent at a time when levels of trust and support for the political elite have reached an all-time low across the globe. This is not surprising given the extent to which policies that uphold the common good have been steadily marginalised over the past three decades in favour of those that promote a predominantly neoliberal agenda. As Oxfam’s head of global policy and campaignsrecently mentioned, “policies such as public provision of services, public ownership and subsidy of industry, progressive taxation of rich individuals and corporations, strong trade unions and labour rights, full employment, universal welfare states, strong limits to intellectual property – are still pretty much frozen out of current debates.” The consequences of what has become an almost global adherence to a market-driven ideology is plain to see: a failure of governments to stem the growth in inequality or significantly reduce global poverty, and an inability to agree upon the basic measures needed to curb global carbon emissions and mitigate climate change.

For the most part, campaigners and progressive organisations recognise that our governments seem incapable of addressing these and many other interconnected crises. Most are also united in acknowledging the root cause of this failure: the illegitimate power of multinational corporations. It is widely recognised that the greatest influence over public policy in today’s globalised world is not wielded by the electorate, but rests with a powerful elite of wealthy individuals and transnational businesses that have unwarranted access to the corridors of power. As this year’s State of Powerreport by the Transnational Institute sums up, “corporations have succeeded in replacing rule of law with Global Corporate law, using a multitude of norms, treaties and agreements – most recently the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership [TTIP] – to secure their rights to profit above human rights.” In short, we are witnessing a crisis of governance and democracy at all levels of society – from local municipalities and national government, all the way up to the United Nations.

This reality is neatly encapsulated in the concept of the ‘market-state’, which illustrates the imbalance of power between the private sector and citizens, and the impact this has over the formulation of public policy. The phrase was first coined by the law scholar and national security expert Philip Bobbitt in 2002, to reflect the evolution of a new globalised constitutional order in which governments work towards maximising economic opportunity rather than safeguarding the welfare of individuals. Nowadays, however, it is used more generally to describe the fused relationship between governments and big business and the impact this has on society, and is often used as a point of reference by proponents of the commons. As commons theorist James Quilligan explains, “the private sector and banks are rapidly swallowing up governments and bending national constitutions to their favor, decreasing the role of government and limiting our political rights as citizens. Voting and popular representation are becoming less meaningful because governments are pledged to support the interests of large corporations, not the people’s interests.”

In light of this democratic deficit and the political disenfranchisement that inevitably follows, engaged citizens are increasingly turning to unconventional forms of social and economic organisation that are inherently more egalitarian and provide stakeholders with greater empowerment and more influence over the decisions that affect them. A whole swathe of ‘new economy’ initiatives have recently emerged to foster community participation and increase access to goods and services in an ecologically conscious way, while broadly aligning to the increasingly popular concept of ‘de-growth’.

Examples of this assorted grouping of social, environmental and entrepreneurial activities include the Transition Towns and commons movements, the numerous sharing economy and peer-to-peer networks and platforms, cooperatives and community supported agriculture, open source software, co-housing initiatives, and much more besides. Implicit in the pursuit of these predominantly locally-rooted alternatives is the growing awareness that we urgently need a radical transformation in the way we organise society, particularly in relation to how we share the planet’s finite resources. As Gar Alperovitz (a prominent exponent of co-operative enterprise) argues, the goal of these diverse new economy initiatives is “democratized ownership of the economy for the 99 percent”.

From local alternatives to global reforms

The manifold benefits of new economy initiatives should not be underestimated, especially as they go beyond financial measures of economic prosperity to include personal wellbeing, social cohesion and environmental protection. For example, the burgeoning co-operative movement boasts over a billion members globally and is characterised by strong ethical principles that go far beyond hackneyed notions of corporate social responsibility, while often encouraging the participation of both employees and consumers in decision-making processes. Transition Towns and other resilience initiatives are also gaining in popularity, with their core emphasis on regenerating communities and local economies, providing social support networks, and reducing dependence on fossil fuels and carbon intensive processes. At the same time, tech-based forms of collaborative consumption are making headlines for ‘disrupting’ existing economic models and instituting new ways of accessing goods and services. Research by peer-to-peer theorists such as Michel Bauwens and Jeremy Rifkin suggest that the digital sharing of information and knowledge has the potential to revolutionise the way we produce, distribute and consume everyday goods and services as well as renewable energy.

However, there are good reasons to be sceptical about the aggregate impact of individual or community actions in relation to the scale of change that is needed, unless they are part of a broader program of advocacy for structural reform. For example, there is currently a great deal of interest in alternative methods of food production, especially in the city centres of industrialised countries. But the localisation of food production is widely regarded by farmers’ movements across the world as only one part of the solution to the complex problems associated with today’s unsustainable global food system. As La Via Campesina highlight in their advocacy work, establishing just models of food production means adhering to the principle of ‘food sovereignty’ and reforming a host of international policies that include the intellectual property rights framework and free trade agreements.

There are similar issues around individual efforts to reduce energy consumption while governments fail to invest in a global green new deal and fossil fuel companies continue to exploit reserves at a rate that is incommensurate with agreed emissions targets. In some cases, popular local alternatives could even be counterproductive to achieving the most sustainable and equitable outcomes for society as a whole. For example, proponents of the sharing economy widely support forms of car sharing, whose benefits are indisputable when compared to individual ownership. But the benefits of car sharing dwindle significantly when compared to the massive reductions in carbon emissions that can be achieved if more effective public transport systems are built and used by citizens, which requires policy-level change on a scale that is not actively supported by sharing economy advocates.

Of course, the above examples (and the many others that could be listed) do not present mutually exclusive choices – both local alternatives and more transformative reforms to policies and institutions must ultimately be part of any great transition. However, the danger is that if we fail to make systemic reforms at the policy level then new economy initiatives such as car sharing or urban gardening, forms of commoning and peer-to-peer production, or even Transition Towns could conceivably continue to function (and even grow in popularity) without posing any real challenge to the carbon intensive, consumption-driven economic policies that result in global warming or perpetuate inequality. It is also possible for community-driven initiatives to be co-opted by governments that support localisation while also advancing neoliberal policies, such as when the UK’s Conservative Party introduced the Big Society project alongside debilitating austerity measures.

If we are serious about addressing the root cause of the environmental crisis,preventing extreme poverty or reclaiming our democratic systems, we must acknowledge that locally-based economic alternatives will not deliver the dramatic changes in society (and across the world as a whole) that are now so desperately needed – at least not on their own. This is especially the case given the scale of the structural reforms needed to reverse ongoing crises like climate change, which poses a tremendous challenge at a time when politicians are failing to reach even the most fundamental agreements needed to limit global carbon emissions.

In order to have any lasting impact on climate change or implement a just and sustainable model of economic development, it is also essential that this reconfiguration of institutions and policies takes place at the global level. Without an international approach to reforming governance, the structural realities of a globalised economy are likely to render much of what can be achieved through localisation initiatives largely ineffectual. Many analysts who take an internationalist perspective also argue that in an interdependent world, individual governments would avoid taking unilateral action on global issues in order to prevent political isolation, capital flight or other financial penalties. It is also feasible that a planned contraction in resource consumption by one country would be offset by increases elsewhere, which would nullify the benefits of such an approach. Any significant transition away from the status quo is therefore a collective action problem that can only be resolved through international cooperation and the formation of global strategies and binding agreements.

Clearly, without a significant change in our current political and economic paradigm, it will remain impossible to address these challenges. As the Trapeze Collective outline in their constructive critique of the Transition Towns movement, “the analysis of how we got into this mess, and the best way to move on, does bring us back to politics. It involves taking on power and those who hold wealth and influence.” In other words, it will remain impossible to work towards any comprehensive vision of structural reform unless we recognise the historical and political causes of environmental and social crises, challenge entrenched vested interests, and join the global struggle to put an end to the absurd concentration of wealth and economic power that currently rests with the richest 1% of the world’s population.

A new society based on sharing and redistribution

In many ways, the principle of sharing is likely to be pivotal to the transition away from the market-state as it underpins any process of decentralising and devolving political and economic power to the lowest level of decision making, in accordance with the concept of subsidiarity. Only in more equal and participative ‘sharing societies’ will citizens be able to play an active role in democratising governance institutions and shaping the direction of political life. In stark contrast to the market-state, a sharing society in any true sense will need to localise economic activity wherever possible and establish any number of more inclusive and effective forms of political engagement, such as online ‘direct democracy’ platforms, people’s assemblies, participatory budgeting initiatives, and even communal councils.

From any rational perspective, the overarching goal of social and economic policy in the period ahead must decidedly shift towards securing basic human needs for all without transgressing environmental limits. Another major challenge in building fairer societies based on the principle of sharing is therefore the creation (and safeguarding) of robust social protection systems in countries across the world. Such systems are important examples of solidarity that enable citizens to collectively pool a nation’s financial resources so that they can be redistributed for the benefit of all. Even though the aging welfare state model is in need of reform and renewal, nationwide mechanisms of mutual provisioning remain the most effective way of meeting longstanding human rights obligations across entire countries.

As the scholar and activist Francine Mestrum argues, universal systems of social protection enable people to take responsibility for those they do not know by ensuring that everyone’s basics rights are secured – a process that strengthens our ‘collective solidarity’ and embodies a profound awareness of our common humanity. Nonetheless, social protections are continually being undermined by the harsh austerity measures that have been implemented in numerous countries since the 2008 financial crisis, and their proper functioning is unlikely to be restored without increasing public outcry and a substantive reorientation of government policies. Moreover, 4 out of 5 people in developing countries are still denied the social protection guarantees that citizens take for granted in rich countries, which is why it is essential that these sophisticated systems of sharing are also dramatically scaled up and strengthened at the global level.

Yet the notion of a sharing society embodies far more than participatory democracy and the provision of universal social protection and essential public services. In accordance with the principle of sharing, private businesses would also need to substantially change the way they operate by at least ensuring that decision-making power and income is fairly distributed among employees. The current trend towards peer-to-peer modes of distributed manufacturing as well as cooperative, not-for-profit and socially-oriented business models are important steps in this direction. Additionally, corporations would need to go far beyond ‘greenwashing’ their activities and adopt genuinely ecological practices that can facilitate the transition to sustainable production and consumption patterns, and thereby help bring humanity closer to achieving the goal of ‘one planet living’.

A sharing society would also include a vibrant commons sector that could function independently of markets or direct government involvement. This is broadly in line with what P2P theorist Michel Bauwens refers to as the partner state – a reformed governmental apparatus that builds on the welfare state model and actively supports the development of the commons. Democratic and accountable state systems are also a prerequisite to managing the global commons which, in the first instance, will require representative governments to negotiate new commons-based legal frameworks to ensure that planetary resources are managed in the interests of current and future generations. Of course, entirely new structures of accountability are urgently needed if governments are to reflect the needs of their citizens in international negotiations, or if they are ever to agree a workable global agenda for safeguarding the Earth’s biosphere.

There can be little doubt that reforming governance at all levels of societal organisation is the key to establishing effective sharing societies. However, even though many of the governance reforms highlighted above are recognised as essential and unavoidable by a growing number of environmentalists and social activists, they remain virtually unattainable in the current political climate. As long as entrenched vested interests maintain their stranglehold over democratic processes, ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ will present an unprecedented challenge to engaged citizens in all countries.

Resilient and socially inclusive communities can clearly play an immediate role in the great transition that still lies ahead, but it will remain impossible to establish economic systems that are structurally just and truly sustainable until political power is radically decentralised – especially at the national and global level – and wealth is distributed more equally throughout society. By recognising the global roots of our local struggles, those working towards local alternatives to economic globalisation therefore have a central role to play in democratising our governance systems from the top down as well as the bottom up.

Image credit: Shutterstock, all rights reserved

The post Beyond the market-state: decentralising power in a sharing society appeared first on P2P Foundation.