Since 2001 the Mexican government has been pushing municipal governments to privatize water. If this trend continues, 35 million people will be affected and community water management – with water systems built by the people and dating back more than a hundred years in some cases – will be destroyed. SAPTEMAC is challenging this through its Water School, giving local people the tools to defend their water supply.

Mexico’s Water School came about in 2016 when SAPTEMAC representatives saw the concept at work in Colombia. With the support of national umbrella group Water For All, Water For Life – and with no major funding – professionals including lawyers, engineers, accountants, geographers and teachers have been running training sessions in different locations to give people the professional and political means to defend themselves. Topics covered include water rates, account-keeping, billing, organisation and inventories, pipes and water pumps.

So far there are 25 systems involved in the project, and water users, students and academics who have participated in the project have volunteered to strengthen the school by contributing new theoretical and political tools for use in the second round of training sessions in 2018.

Water For All, Water For Life already runs a citizens’ initiative for a General Water Law, but SAPTEMAC is now complementing this with a campaign for local water laws with the same human rights approach in 16 states around the country. The most significant result achieved to date is that colleagues from other community water systems have expressed interest in participating in the Water School project in its second round of training.

“What inspires me about this initiative is its professionalization of a collective (community-based) water management mechanism and the explicit pedagogical dimension in the work they do. The national and international linkages of this initiative are also very inspiring.”

– Evaluator Lorena Zarate

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

Or visit Tecámac Saptemac’s Facebook

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

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For nearly 20 years, Sintracuavalle (the Acuavalle workers union) has not only defended its workers’ rights, it has also become a fierce defender of water as a fundamental human right. Since 2009, it has successfully helped set up four community water systems based on the principles of the Platform for Public Partnerships of the Americas, and pushed the Municipal Council to shelve proposals for a public-private partnership to manage water in the municipality.

The union has achieved political and social standing as a result of its fight against privatization, and is now part of the political decision-making process. The union promotes improvements and investments in the supply of water, which have suffered from cuts, and has encouraged different social actors to join together to organize and actively defend water as a fundamental human right.

The campaign has organized community workshops, discussions with the Municipal Council and lobbied individual council members. This has raised community awareness of the importance of keeping water under public management and inspired other public sector workers worldwide.

This growing network to defend access to good quality public services is being taken forward through a Plan of Action for 2018-2022 with Public Services International (a global trade union in which Sintracuavalle is a member of its executive council) and led by Sintracuavalle and CUPE, the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

“What inspired me most is that this is a success story of a public service union that managed to (re)gain a positive image of its role by embracing the vision of water as a common good and by focusing on building strong partnerships with communities and civil society organizations.”

– Lorena Zarate

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

Or visit sintracuavalle.org

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

The post Jamundi, Colombia: Trade union leads defense of water as a human right appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the most translated and celebrated documents in the world, marking its 70th anniversary this year. But relatively few people are aware of the significance of its 25th Article, which proclaims the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living—including food, housing, healthcare, social services and basic financial security.[1] As our campaign group Share The World’s Resources (STWR) has long proposed, it is high time that activists for global justice reclaim the vision that is spelled out in those few simple sentences. For in order to implement Article 25 into a set of binding, enforceable obligations through domestic and international laws, the implications are potentially revolutionary.

To appreciate the truth of this assertion, it is necessary to outline some brief history. Since the Universal Declaration was adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, the United Nations never promised to do anything more than “promote” and “encourage respect for” human rights, without explicit legal force. The Universal Declaration may form part of so-called binding customary international law, laying out a value-based framework that can be used to exert moral pressure on governments who violate any of its articles. But in the past 70 years, no government has seriously attempted to adapt its behaviour in line with the Declaration’s far-reaching requirements.

An International Bill of Human Rights was eventually agreed by the General Assembly in 1966,[2] which comprised the Universal Declaration and its two main “implementing” treaties—the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The latter Covenant elaborated in greater detail the economic and social rights previously laid out in the Universal Declaration (as largely reflected in Articles 22 to 26, especially Article 25), and it was intended to form the basis of a binding legal obligation under international law. Still, both Covenants lacked any serious enforcement machinery, and were ratified by States parties under the sole proviso that they would submit periodic reports on steps taken and “progress achieved”.[3]

Marginalising economic and social rights

While civil and political rights have enjoyed an increasing degree of implementation throughout the world (albeit partially and fitfully), the historical record on economic and social rights is far less sanguine. This is forcefully illustrated by the UN’s current Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston. In his first report submitted to the Human Rights Council, he argues that economic and social rights are marginalised in most contexts, without proper legal recognition and accountability mechanisms in place.[4] Indeed, he even questions the extent to which States treat them as human rights at all, and not just desirable long-term goals.

Despite the widespread constitutional recognition of economic and social rights, as well as an abundant scholarship on their fundamental importance, they nevertheless “remain largely invisible in the law of and institutions of the great majority of States”, according to Alston. Even many of the States that enjoy the world’s highest living standards have disregarded proposals to recognise these rights in legislative or constitutional form.[5]

Most of all, the United States has persistently rejected the idea that economic and social rights are full-fledged human rights,[6] in the sense of “rights” that might be amenable to any method of enforcement. Some of its past administrations have notoriously even challenged the “soft law” status of the ICESCR treaty, regardless that it was signed (yet not ratified) by Jimmy Carter in 1977.[7] Although the United States has ratified other treaties that clearly recognise economic and social rights,[8] it is the only developed country to insist that, in effect, its government has no obligation to safeguard the rights of citizens to jobs, housing, education and an adequate standard of living.

In their defence, governments may point out the historical progress made in reducing extreme poverty across the world, which has generally been achieved without adopting a strategy based on the full recognition of economic and social rights. But the extent to which these rights remain unmet for millions of people today is unconscionable from any kind of moral perspective. Consider that more than 60 percent of the world population struggles to live on less than $5 per day, an amount which the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has considered the minimum daily income which could reasonably be regarded as fulfilling the right to “a standard of living adequate for… health and well-being” (as stipulated in Article 25).[9]

The International Labour Organisation of the United Nations also estimates that only 27 percent of people worldwide have access to comprehensive social security systems, notwithstanding the fact that virtually every government recognises the fundamental right to social security, as also enshrined in Article 25.[10] The fact that many thousands of people continue to die each day from poverty-related causes,[11]while the number of chronically undernourished people increases once again,[12] is an affront to the very idea that everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living. Also in the most affluent nations, of course, millions of people have limited access to essential services and social protection, and vast numbers of families are homeless or seeking emergency food assistance.

Such facts demonstrate how far we have strayed from realising the modest aspiration expressed in Article 25. Gross inequalities of wealth and power are seemingly built into the structures and operations of the world economy, which gives the least priority and concern to the world’s majority poor. Its design is determined in international negotiations which are dominated by rich industrialised nations, who ensure that the major beneficiaries of global economic growth are the powerful corporate and elite interests that they basically function on behalf of.[13] Consequently, the number of billionaires continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, with combined annual increases in wealth that would be enough to end extreme poverty many times over.[14]

The duty of States to respect and support the achievement of socioeconomic rights outside of their borders may be anchored in international law, but the most influential multilateral organisations are not challenged to adhere to these agreed norms and standards. A rich literature examines the impact on less developed countries of this virtual system of global economic governance,[15] as principally upheld by the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Trade Organisation and the Group of 7 nations. For example, most countries of the global South have been pressured to service their debt burdens by making structural adjustments at the expense of the most disadvantaged segments of society. Through such policies as privatisation, deregulation of markets and cutbacks in social services, the harsh conditionalities of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s lending programmes have widely hindered the ability of State’s to fulfil their human rights obligations.[16]

At the same time, many of the thousands of bilateral international treaties and free trade agreements of recent decades are incompatible with basic human rights standards in some fundamental respects.[17] In particular, the current international investment system creates rights to multinational corporations to challenge the legal and policy decisions of governments through “investor-state dispute settlement”,[18]even when those decisions are taken to meet social needs and pursue sustainable development objectives, such as reducing inequality.

Formidable obstacles

All of this points to the formidable political obstacles to implementing Article 25 through an enforceable system of international law that can offset the damaging social effects of deregulated, market-led globalisation. The challenge is well recognised by civil society groups that advocate for a new direction in economic policymaking, beginning with a reversal of the austerity measures that are now expected to affect nearly 80 percent of the global population within a couple of years.[19]

Rendering Article 25 into a truly “indivisible”, “inalienable” and “universal” human right therefore means, for example, reforming unfair tax policies that undermine the capacity of countries to invest in universal social protection systems.[20] It means rolling back the wave of commercialisation that is increasingly entering the health sector and other essential public services, with extremely negative consequences for human wellbeing.[21] And it means regulatory oversight to hold the out-of-control finance sector to account,[22] and domestic legislative action in support of a living wage and labour rights, as well as fair and progressive tax systems.

It also means, in short, a redistribution of wealth, power and income on an unprecedented scale within every society, in contradistinction to the prevailing economic ideology of our time—an ideology that falsely views economic and social rights as inimical to “wealth creation”, “economic growth” and “international competitiveness”.

But the scale of that redistribution must extend beyond national borders alone, considering the reality that developing nations are unable to fulfil the socioeconomic rights of their citizens without greater access to wealth and resources. That depends on substantial coordination and assistance from the international community, which must come in the form of bilateral aid that is no longer disbursed on the basis of geo-strategic considerations, or with a preference for privatisation and “free market” models of development.[23] At present, low-income countries are able to devote, at most, only 15 percent of gross domestic product towards meeting the basic needs of their citizenry.[24] Yet donor governments are far from helping to bridge the gap in public finances through more effective aid, despite the agreed global target of achieving “zero” extreme poverty by 2030.[25]

This only serves to underline the enormous political implications of achieving Article 25. For it is clear that rich countries prefer to extract wealth from the global South, rather than share their wealth in any meaningful way through a redistribution of resources. Yet we know the resources are available, if government priorities are fundamentally reoriented towards safeguarding the minimal guarantees of Article 25 for all peoples everywhere.[26]

To be sure, just a fraction of the amount spent on a recent US arms deal with Saudi Arabia, estimated at over $110 billion, would be enough to lift everyone above the extreme poverty line as defined by the World Bank.[27] And if concerted action was taken by the international community to phase out tax havens and prevent tax dodging by large corporations, then developing countries could recover trillions of dollars each year for human rights protection and spending on public services.[28] Achieving Article 25, therefore, is not about merely upscaling aid as a form of charity; it is about the kind of structural transformations that are necessary for everyone to enjoy dignified lives in more equal societies with economic justice.

Towards a people’s strategy

The most radical article of the Universal Declaration, in this respect, is not only Article 25 but also Article 28, which refers to the necessary arrangements of the “social and international order” wherein all the rights and freedoms set forth in the Declaration “can be fully realised”. In other words, it is impossible to achieve a more social regulation of the world economy without dramatic adjustments in the relations between States and regions, which also needs to be reflected in more democratic structures of global governance.

For how can States implement a new global social contract, rooted in a respect for socioeconomic rights and the imperative role of international law, unless normative considerations of justice and human rights are given precedence over strategic alignments in foreign policy affairs?[29] And how can global public goods be made equitably accessible to all citizens of the world, unless the United Nations is significantly reformed and empowered to fulfil its original mandate?

As spelled out in the preamble of its Charter, the UN was always intended “to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples.” However, its role in that regard has been severely curtailed by the Permanent Five and other major powers, who mainly use the United Nations as a “vehicle for the aggregation of national interests”, while constantly preventing significant reform within the Organisation.[30]

Its role in global economic governance was purposefully weakened from the outset; all the important financial and trade negotiations take place outside the UN system. And as we have seen, the policy priorities of the Bretton Woods Institutions and World Trade Organisation have grown increasingly distinct from the basic human values of the UN’s economic and social programs.[31] At the same time, the UN’s ability to hold States accountable for human rights and international law standards is severely limited by a lack of financial independence, with a budget too small to enable it to be truly effective.[32]

These are just some of the reasons why the human rights of Article 25, however simply worded and unassuming, hold the potential to revolutionise the unfair structures and rules of our unequal world. Because if those rights are vociferously advocated by enough of the world’s people, there is no gainsaying the political transformations that will unfold. That is why STWR calls on global activists to jointly herald Article 25 through massive and continual demonstrations in all countries, as set out in our flagship publication.[33]

At the least, it behoves us to contemplate the urgent necessity of achieving Article 25 as the highest international priority, which is a responsibility that obviously cannot be left to individual governments. The UN Charter famously invokes “We the Peoples”, but it is now up to us to resurrect the UN’s foundational ideal to promote social progress and better standards of life for everyone in the world. It is high time we seized upon Article 25 and reclaimed its stipulations as “a law of the will of the people”,[34] until governments finally begin to take seriously the full realisation of their pledge set forth in the Universal Declaration.

Image credit: riacale, flickr creative commons

The post As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 70, it’s time to resurrect its vision of global sharing and justice appeared first on P2P Foundation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Military perspectives on the global commons:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by SurfaceWarriors

The post New hope for the noosphere and noopolitik — the global commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Alex Steffen: We owe the future.

People who will be alive in the future can make ethical claims on us. We have duties to them. They have rights.

Some people seem to have a hard time even understanding the concept of the rights of future generations. The idea that people who do not yet exist have the right to assert their needs in our lives is one that seems to be hard to fully grasp.

Think of this example: If someone sets a bomb to go off in a public square a year from now, is he committing a crime? Should he be stopped? Almost everyone would say yes. Should he be tried before a court of law and prevented from doing further harm? Most of us would agree that he should. What about ten years? What about 100? When does our obligation to avoid serious, predictable harm to others end?

Now, here’s the tricky part: climate emissions (and huge array of other unsustainable practices) are the bomb, and your grandkids and great-grandkids are the victims.

By transgressing planetary boundaries, we are seriously (and in human timescales, permanently) undermining the ability of the planet to provide the kind of climate stability, natural bounty and renewable resources that future generations will need to maintain their own societies. If we continue business as usual, we are in fact dooming millions of them to extreme suffering and early death. Life on a hotter, dangerous and destabilized planet is not something we would wish to have inflicted on ourselves.

We don’t really have the ethical right to inflict it on our descendants. There is no legitimate basis for thinking that we have the right to use the planet up, that the property rights of current generations trump the human rights of the next 100 generations to come.

Put it another way: ethically, with riches come responsibilities. Much of the wealth around us was handed down as a legacy by our ancestors, and we hold the planet itself in trust, as stewards.

As long as we don’t use more of the planet’s bounty than can be sustainably provided in perpetuity, we have the ethical right to enjoy the best lives we can create. But the minute we stray into unsustainable levels of consumption, we’re not in fact spending our own riches, but those of future people, by setting in motion disasters that will greatly diminish their possibilities. Unfortunately, nearly everyone living a middle class or wealthier lifestyle now enriches their lives at the cost of future generations. As Paul Hawken says, “We have an economy where we steal the future, sell it in the present, and call it G.D.P.”

Now, obviously, most of us did not intend to find ourselves in this situation, and so for a couple decades we had a legitimate argument that we needed a reasonable amount of time to change our ecological impact. It’s become clear that many of our leaders’ definition of a reasonable amount of time, though, is for things to change sometime after they’re dead.

This is what I mean when I say that we have a politics of “predatory delay.” Many wealthy people understand that their profits are extracted through destructively unsustainable practices, and they’ve known it for decades. By and large, they no

This allows them to been seen as responsible and caring. They want change, they claim; they just think we need prudent, appropriately paced change, mindful of economic trade-offs and judiciously studied — by which they mean cosmetic change for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, they fight like hell to delay change of any real magnitude, attacking not only the prospects of our kids and kin in the future, but increasingly of our society in the present. Their delay has real, serious human consequences, across generations. They’re taking, not creating; the harm they cause is measurable.

Tim O’Reilly, in 2012, turned this nice phrase: “Policy should protect the future from the past, not the past from the future.” Yet in every country on Earth, policies made at the top are still overwhelmingly designed not to meet our planetary crisis at the scale and speed it demands, but to protect the institutions, companies and systems causing that crisis from disruptive change. This is true at every scale, from large incumbent industries unfairly undermining newer, more sustainable competitors to wealthy NIMBY property owners blocking new housing in cities around the world so that they can benefit from the housing crisis by pushing real estate prices as high as possible before they sell.

The next time you hear a powerful person arguing against needed action in the name of prudence or process or tradition, ask yourself, “Am I hearing the voice of predatory delay?”

We owe it to the future to call it what it is.

A very different version of this piece was originally published on September 9th, 2009 at Worldchanging.com. Read the original here.

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The post Predatory Delay and the Rights of Future Generations appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Originally posted on Degrowth.de

Activists of the Nyéléni movement protest against food speculation on the occasion of the meeting of the finance ministers of the G20. (Photo: Anna Korzenszky)

About the authors and their positions

We see ourselves as part of the movement for food sovereignty and are writing from the perspective of the Österreichische Berg- und Kleinbäuer_innenvereinigung ÖBV – Via Campesina Austria¹(Irmi Salzer) and the agro-political group AgrarAttac (Julianna Fehlinger).

We are mainly active in Austrian networks and participate in the Nyéléni movement for food sovereignty. We are also involved in the European Nyéléni process and are thus connected to partners throughout Europe. Irmi Salzer is an organic farmer in Burgenland and Julianna Fehlinger is sometimes a community farmer and sometimes an alpine farmer.

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1. What is food sovereignty?

The right of all people to democratically decide how food is produced, distributed and consumed

Food sovereignty as a concept was first presented in 1996 at the World Food Summit of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) by La Via Campesina² , a global organisation of small farmers, rural workers, fishing communities, and landless and indigenous peoples. Since then, food sovereignty has evolved into the political leitmotif of a growing number of social actors from the widest possible range of societal groups fighting for the transformation of a global food and agricultural system dominated by industrial interests and focused solely on profit.

At the beginning of the 1990s, small farmers’ movements (at first mainly in Latin America and Europe, then in the rest of the world) realised that, in light of the globalisation of agricultural markets and the increasing political power of institutions such as the WTO in the agriculture sector, it was necessary to form a globally active alliance of farmers. By founding La Via Campesina they sought to oppose through a strong transnational movement the neoliberal tendencies that were restricting the lives and survival chances of millions of small farmers and worsening the situation of hungry people all over the globe. As an answer to the technical term ‘food security’ that was coined by the FAO and that fails to address a number of questions, the young movement developed the concept of ‘food sovereignty’. Food sovereignty addresses the power structures in which our food system is embedded; it addresses the conditions of food production and distribution; it asks about the consequences of our production methods for future generations; and it places the people who produce and consume food products at centre stage.

The principles of food sovereignty

Food sovereignty can be understood as a framework that must continuously be ‘filled up’ through concrete, local measures. Food sovereignty cannot be defined from the top down and for all time, but can only be shaped through a collective process of dialogue. Throughout the Nyéléni process (Nyéléni is the name used by the global food sovereignty movement to refer to itself; see below), the attempt has been made to define the main principles of food sovereignty based on the wide range of realities of both the farmers and the ‘eaters’. Such principles include valuing food producers, the primary importance of feeding the population (instead of producing for export), the establishment of local production systems and the strengthening of local control over food, the development of knowledge and skills, and, last but not least, working with nature instead of against it.

60 – 80% of all food in the Global South is produced by women. (Photo: Tina Goethe)

Food sovereignty encompasses the rights of individuals, communities and institutions (including states), as well as a responsible relationship with nature, animals and other human beings. In the prevailing agricultural and food system, a majority of producers are denied their right to democratically participate in all political areas contingent to the production, processing and distribution of food products. International trade agreements, agricultural subsidies, GMO legislation, hygiene regulations, directives regarding access to markets, production regulations, etc. are on the whole adopted without the people directly affected having any right to participate in the process. The right to democratically choose and monitor agricultural, food, fishing, social, trade or energy policies is a necessary first step in order to enforce other rights such as the right to food, education and access to resources.

Only when these rights are enforced is it possible for producers to fulfil their responsibility regarding natural resources such as the soil, and biodiversity and the climate, so that future generations are also able to produce high-quality foods.

Food sovereignty means we must act in solidarity. Transnational solidarity, networking and mutual support are necessary to fight against exploitation and domination mechanisms. Local resistance and local alternatives must be completed through a global perspective.
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2. Who is part of the food sovereignty movement and what do they do?

Food sovereignty has been developed since the 1990s as an alternative for the Global North and South. At the beginning, the debate around food sovereignty was mainly led by La Via Campesina. However, La Via Campesina recognised early on that a profound change and democratisation of agriculture and food systems can only be achieved if the movement sought to form alliances beyond those with producers, and to forge ties with other movements. Thus, the first International Forum for Food Sovereignty, the Nyéléni Forum, took place in Mali in 2007. Together with initiatives and organisations connected with environmental, human rights,consumer protection,women’s, and also urban movements, the principles of food sovereignty were developed, and common goals, opponents and demands were identified. Since then, both regional forums (for example the Europe Forum for Food Sovereignty in Krems, Austria in 2011) and national forums have been held. Based on the common principles of democratisation, solidarity, local control, and greater care for the environment, movements for food sovereignty are continuously seeking to both create and advance alternative practices.

Activists from Nyéléni Austria, the Austrian movement for food sovereignty. (Photo: Christopher Glanzl)

With regard to production models, adaptable (resilient) agro-ecological production methods are tested that, for example, use open-pollinated, non-GMO seeds, reduce agricultural dependence on oil and are based on natural cycles.

In the area of food supply, producer-consumer networks are constructed, e.g. by replacing traditional markets with relationships based on solidarity (Community Supported Agriculture – CSA), or by ensuring that producers earn a living wage through collective buying. Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) are trust-based certification systems that replace state control and supervision, and alternative education networks enable knowledge sharing on an equal footing, creating a collective space for all those involved in the agricultural and food system.

Food sovereignty in theory and practice – shared meal composed of locally produced food at the Nyéléni Austria Forum 2014. (Photo: Christopher Glanzl)

In order to stop the competition for land and soil and allow access to land for everybody who wants to farm it, models are being developed that remove land from the capitalist cycle of exploitation and promote the use of land as a commons.

The food sovereignty movement demands global social rights and dignified work conditions for all people—irrespective of their social origins or gender— throughout the agriculture and food system.

‘Food sovereignty’ (in Portugese) is written on the ground using soil colors at the 5th International Conference of La Via Campesina in Maputo, Mosambique. (Photo: La Via Campesina)

Through emancipatory processes, citizens should be empowered to participate actively and equally in shaping the political framework of the agriculture and food system. In this respect, the actors in the Global South and North face both similar and dissimilar political and social problems. The diversity of the groups coming together under the ‘big tent’ (Patel 2009) of food sovereignty is a strength, but also a challenge for the global food sovereignty movement.

Democratisation and the right to have rights

In order to enforce the right to democratic participation in the agriculture and food system, it is necessary to create conditions that do not arise of their own accord in our societies marked by exclusion and domination. Low-income people, migrants and women are often particularly shut out from participation. The food sovereignty movement is therefore fighting for conditions that enable all people to demand and enforce their social, economic and cultural rights and their right to participate in decision-making processes.

3. How do you see the relationship between food sovereignty and degrowth?

Working together against false alternatives and for social-ecological transformation

In the German-speaking world, degrowth and food sovereignty are closely related, being often supported by the same activists and similar initiatives (such as Community Supported Agriculture, urban gardening, ecological agriculture, food co-ops, the occupation of fields) or are based on the same approaches for alternative paths (e.g. subsistence, unconditional basic income, commons, environmental and climate justice). All these approaches and initiatives are areas of experimentation for both food sovereignty and degrowth. In both movements, the combination —mainly non-institutional— of science, social movements and practical (collective) experience plays an important role.

Both food sovereignty and degrowth envision a new type of prosperity and well-being, one that includes social-ecological forms of production on the one hand, and a comprehensive democratisation of society (and the economy) on the other. In both cases the aim is to create new values that enable a good life for all based on solidarity and ecological living. Both movements should only be thought of in global terms and not just from a national perspective. One recent example of a coming together of both perspectives and movements is the 2016 campaign started by Attac Germany and Aktion Agrar with the title Kühe und Bauern nicht verpulvern! (roughly ‘Don’t throw farmers and cows down the drain!’), in which discourses about post-growth are combined with those surrounding food sovereignty.

The concept of food sovereignty has a history of more than 20 years and is constantly being reformulated through concrete struggles in both the Global South and the Global North. The degrowth discourse (as a widely debated concept) is younger and more clearly shaped by academic currents from the Global North. It has been taken up by many activist groups and grassroots initiatives and has developed a huge mobilisation potential in recent times.

In the following section we would like to establish certain criteria for analysing the possibility of bringing together degrowth and food sovereignty³ .

Analysing power and domination structures

We consider that the fruitful currents of the degrowth movement are those that clearly label the profiteers of the capitalist model of accumulation and study the growth imperative of capitalist market economics. The concept of food sovereignty only has a limited capacity to expose the forces behind this growth imperative and to understand the social consequences that would result from overcoming it. Food sovereignty’s main focus of fundamental criticism is the profit mentality that fails to take human needs into account or that creates needs in order to increase demand and consumption. The market is thus revealed as being a poor mechanism of allocation and distribution (the most current example being the crisis in the milk market). In order to advance the food sovereignty movement, the degrowth debate should be capable of showing why the economy has to grow under capitalism, which type of growth must be reduced and which domination structures are directly embedded in the growth imperative. It is therefore important to understand power not only in terms of possession but also as a social force, as a relationship of power.

A joint study of social and ecological crises

In the degrowth movement there is both a social and an ecological current of growth criticism. Only when it is possible to bring together the questions and points of criticism of both currents and to translate these into common perspectives and demands, i.e. when degrowth seeks to achieve a social and ecological —a social-ecological— transformation, will degrowth be able to enrich the food sovereignty movement. The food sovereignty movement itself is constantly seeking to maintain a balance between these two points.

The world is not a commodity – positioning ourselves against capitalist enclosure

Current capitalist dynamics seek to turn increasing areas of society into marketable commodities. In addition to labour, which became a commodity at the beginning of capitalism, and certain aspects of processed nature (such as food products), other aspects of nature (such as greenhouse gases) and of society (especially care work) are increasingly being turned into commodities. Positioning ourselves clearly against these processes and seeking to achieve the organisation of such areas as commons is an important step for a joint path of degrowth and food sovereignty.

Together against false alternatives

The main arguments of both degrowth and food sovereignty are already firmly anchored in the general world views of many critical citizens —and both movements can take advantage of this situation. Most of these individuals would agree with both the sentence: ‘We live on a finite planet on which there cannot be infinite growth’ and with criticism of industrial agriculture and factory farming systems. The essence of both degrowth and food sovereignty, however, is that they seek to politicise people and to show clearly that supermarkets selling organic products contribute as little to saving the world as so-called ‘green growth’. To this purpose, it is necessary to escalate the economic and sociopolitical perspectives of progressive sectors of society towards questions of wealth distribution and not let them stagnate in moralising anti-consumerism. This is the only way to leave behind false alternatives (such as the ‘green economy’, critical consumption and organic certifications) and approaches too deeply rooted in pragmatic politics, and to work on utopias, such as degrowth and food sovereignty.

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4. Which proposals do they have for each other?

Focusing the criticism of growth on production and addressing dominance relations in the use of resources

Weder Wachsen noch Weichen! (roughly ‘We won’t grow and won’t yield either!’) is one of the main slogans of the European farmers’ movement. It is a criticism of the change in agricultural structures that exerts massive pressure on small farms and has been causing farm abandonment for decades. This structural change is intrinsically tied up with the liberalisation of agricultural markets and the industrialisation of agriculture. The slogan refers to the farms themselves, which —in order to continue enabling a farm-based agricultural system— should neither grow (in terms of area farmed) nor cease to exist. In this sense, growth does not refer directly to the concept of gross domestic product (GDP) growth, criticised by the degrowth movement when placed at the heart of economics and politics. However, both types of growth are closely related. For its part, the type of growth alluded to in the slogan,opposed by the farmers’ movement, refers to increasing efficiency per man hour —not per surface area— on the farms. According to the agro-industry, the whole of agricultural production must and will grow and become more efficient thanks to the structural change in the agricultural industry, supposedly in order to ‘feed the world’s hungry’. However, the World Agriculture Report has clearly shown that in terms of surface area and units of energy invested, smaller, agro-ecological farming systems are much more efficient than industrial-economic agriculture based on monocultures and factory farming. In addition, small farms are more capable of adapting to the needs of people and thus ensuring a sufficient food supply for all.

Currently, due to the elimination of the milk quota in April 2015 and the crisis in prices for agricultural products (especially milk, but also pork), the above-mentioned slogan is once again being increasingly heard. We see this as an opportunity to carry out a debate that is critical of growth and that addresses the production side of the problem and not, as is usually the case, only consumption. Food sovereignty has a wealth of experience in the area of direct involvement with agricultural and food politics, and this can be of value for the degrowth movement.

Within the food sovereignty movement, there is often insufficient systematic thought given to the concept of growth. The movement mainly addresses the negative consequences of these policies for agriculture and food in general, but questions such as why economic growth is absolutely necessary in capitalism and its importance as a tool for keeping society content (a growing pie makes it easier to solve problems of distribution…) are barely touched upon. Yet such a debate would significantly increase the movement’s capacity for action.

Subsistence, social romanticism and resource quotas

Subsistence or self-sufficiency is recognised by segments of the food sovereignty movement as a positive concept when it refers to the regionalisation of food production. However, it is not seen as an end in itself. Especially in the Global South, subsistence and semi-subsistence agriculture are often insufficient to provide food producers with a good life. Thus, the main focus of the movement for food sovereignty is on the creation and strengthening of local and regional production and distribution systems and on recuperating community control over such systems —and individualistically abandoning society is seen as a form of depoliticisation. The movement is based on collective action and solidarity, and no demands are made for (individual) self-restraint and frugality. In addition, the movement does not content itself with the creation of anti-civilisational parallel societies-slash-alternative projects. At the Europe Forum in Krems in 2011, the Nyéléni movement set forth the following strategy of action: Resist – Transform – Build alternatives. Significantly, these three strategies are applied simultaneously and with the same degree of priority. In our opinion, degrowth’s sufficiency-oriented current and focus (at least in certain segments) on individual changes in behaviour could especially benefit from such a politicisation.

Traditional peasant production of cheese. (Photo: Gunther Naynar)

A return to former ways of living, often preached about in moralistic undertones by segments of the degrowth movement, is not a vision shared by the movement for food sovereignty. Ambitions of this nature filter out historical dominance relations and reduce the question of ecologically and socially just economics to measurable indicators (such as the ecological footprint) or otherwise tend to be unrealistically romantic. Although the small-farm agriculture of the past centuries in most of Europe generally followed the principles of a circular economy, it was also highly hierarchical and patriarchal in its organisation. In addition, advances in communications technology have opened up historical opportunities for transnational solidarity movements. A fruitful connection between the innovations of modernity, on the one hand, and traditional cultural technologies as well as social forms of organisation (e.g. commons), on the other, must be the goal of any emancipatory movement.

The demand for a system of quotas for resource use, often heard in the context of post-growth movements, is considered especially problematic in the food sovereignty movement. Anybody studying the finite nature and protection of resources such as water and land must always take into account the associated power relations, mechanisms of exclusion, and questions of distribution. For example, what does the obligation to reduce CO2 emissions mean for the one billion people on this planet who don’t have access to electricity? Individual —and in the worst case marketable— resource quotas are authoritarian and technocratic pseudo-solutions that fail to address relations of power and do not help us achieve a social-ecological transformation. They are based on a monetary view of nature and life, and only further their commodification.

5. Outlook: Space for visions, suggestions or wishes

‘A good life for all!’ –through solidarity and mutual learning among social and ecological movements

The starting point for common emancipatory movements must be solidarity between the individual struggles involved and the realisation that future successes will be founded on a complementary relationship between the movements. We must therefore be open to learning from each other and sharing experiences. In addition, this requires a continuing debate on the dominant nature of capitalist growth (Brand 2015).Production and consumption must be analysed in regard to their ‘nature as capitalist, patriarchal, racified or post-colonial social relations’ (Brand 2015: 34) in order to create the foundations for a social-ecological transformation based on solidarity.

The goal of fighting for a good life for all seems to us to be the most important common message of the emancipatory movements. The definition of a good life is developed on a daily basis in the complementary social movements and their struggles.

Activists of the Nyéléni Austria movement call for resistance. (Photo: Christopher Glanzl)

Once again, the so-called ‘liberation from excess’ cannot be the goal of emancipatory movements. To date, this has only been possible through the postcolonial exploitation of the countries in the Global South and especially of the lower social classes of the Global North and South. The most important social struggle in our capitalist society is the one between poor and rich; and the homogenising question of how all our societies can free themselves from excess is in our eyes a cynical one. Now that so many people are waiting at the gates of Europe to participate in some of the excess, it is made especially and brutally clear that hardly anybody in Europe is prepared to give anything up, or is able to do so: On the one hand, most people are benefiting less and less from excess due to the reductions in real wages; on the other hand we see a clear case of grandfather policies. So as not to admit this openly, those fleeing from other countries are simply treated as criminals. The fact that this strategy is even possible is in our opinion due to the enormous social inequality advanced by global neoliberal politics. For their part, those who we believe should really be collectively liberating themselves from their excess simply fade into the background.

In addition to a relationship based on solidarity between different social and ecological movements, we would also like to speak out in favour of the simultaneous application of diverse political strategies. As mentioned above, the movement for food sovereignty seeks to enable a transformation through three different but complementary and reciprocal strategies: Resist – Transform – Build alternatives.

Although, in light of neoliberal-capitalist land grabbing, the destruction of the foundations of life, and the violent exclusion of more and more people, it is urgently necessary to develop common strategies and build up common alternatives, it is probably unrealistic and from our point of view not even desirable to join energies into a single, unified movement. Social movements need to take each other into account and complement each other in a context of solidarity. But each movement must fight its own battles.

Links

> Österreichisches Forum für Ernährungssouveränität
> Meine Landwirtschaft – Kampagnenseite
> Solidarische Landwirtschaft
> Uniterre – Schweizer Bauerngewerkschaft
> Nyéléni Europe – Bewegung für Ernährungssouveränität
> FIAN International – Menschenrechtsorganisation mit dem Fokus Recht auf Nahrung
> La Via Campesina International
> afrique-europe-interact – transnationale Initiative zu Migration, Flucht und Landwirtschaft
> Hands on the Land for Food Sovereignty – Kampagne gegen Landgrabbing

Lead photo: Tina Goethe

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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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In this presentation George Nicholas reviews debates over the “ownership” of Indigenous heritage and provides examples of new research practices that are both more ethical and more effective. These collaborative research models, in which the community leads the research, highlight important new directions in protecting Indigenous heritage.

Originally published on Remix the Commons

The post Culture, Community, and Collaboration – New Directions for Protecting Indigenous Heritage appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Shayda Naficy: Dear friends and allies:

I am writing today to ask you to urgently add your organization’s name to a sign-on letter we are circulating in support of the Our Water Our Right coalition in Lagos. As you may know, the Our Water Our Right coalition in Lagos, Nigeria is standing against government plans for water privatization and calling for adequate public investment to ensure the realization of the human right to water in the city of 21 million.

We are asking you to stand with us today to oppose a bill that endangers the human right to water and sanitation in Lagos by criminalizing informal water access and promoting privatization.

Below is more information on the threat, and the sign-on letter to the Governor of Lagos.

Please add your organization name to the sign-on letter by emailing [email protected] with your organization name and country (if country specific).

Also, as an individual, please sign this petition!

New bill threatens human right to water in Lagos

The Assembly has not released a final version of the legislation, called, “A Bill for a Law to Consolidate all Laws relating to the Environment for the Management, Protection and Sustainable Development of the Environment in Lagos State and for Connected Purposes.’”

A draft version of the bill included provisions that would threaten people’s access to water by:

• Criminalizing unauthorized distribution of water or taking water from natural sources, by imposing 6 weeks’ imprisonment and/or a fine of over five times the monthly minimum wage in Lagos.
• Require licensing of boreholes, which about 58 percent of Lagosians depend on for water.

Further, the bill would promote privatization by:

• Requiring the state to prioritize payment for “contracted services and concessions for long term infrastructure investments” above all other budget items.

This bill was passed by the Lagos House of Assembly with minimal public consultation and over public protest. At the single public hearing on February 9, civil society representatives spoke against and protested the bill. Most Lagosians did not even have time to consider this bill before it was passed in this hurried manner — consideration and passage of the bill took place over a period of only two weeks, during a time at which the Assembly would have normally been in recess.

Threat of privatization

At the same time, the Lagos State Water Corporation is trying to push through a number of privatization contracts and other measures that threaten the human right to water in Lagos.

These include:

• A 25-year Build-Finance-Operate-Transfer concession for the Adiyan II water treatment plant and distribution network.
• A public-private partnership (PPP) related to a 100 mgd water treatment plant, Odomola, for which no details have been released.
• Two consulting contracts that would facilitate future privatization by mapping assets and enumerating customers to increase revenues.
• The planned installation of up to 16 thousand pre-paid water meters, which threaten the human right to water of people unable to afford it.

These measures, if carried out, could place over half of Lagos’ water production under private control, and would threaten low income peoples’ access to water. Experience around the world has shown that water privatization leads to increased costs, infrastructure neglect, labor abuses, and erosion of democratic control. In Lagos as elsewhere, privatization is not the answer.

Global concern

On February 27, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, Léo Heller, raised serious concern about the recent environment bill, saying, “When the State fails to provide adequate access to drinking water, no one should be criminalized or fined for fetching water from lakes, rivers, or any other natural sources.” According to his statement, “Mr. Heller is urging the Government to reconsider the Bill and to conduct a proper and meaningful public consultation with all relevant stakeholders providing an adequate time for comments and opinions.”

Just as Mr. Heller is speaking up for the right to water in Lagos, We ask you to stand with the Our Water, Our Right coalition by asking Lagos Governor Akinwunmi Ambode to:

• Do everything in his power to halt the implementation of the damaging environment bill recently passed by the Assembly.
• Withdraw current efforts to secure corporate concessions and contracts in the water sector.
• Commit to public funding of water and ensure a robust and accountable democratic process for implementing any legislation relating to water and sanitation.

Thank you for standing in solidarity with Lagos. Together we can ensure a future where all people can access the water they need to live healthy, dignified lives.

Onward,

Akinbode Oluwafemi

Deputy Executive Director

Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria

Shayda Edwards Naficy

Senior Program Director

Corporate Accountability International

Sign-On Letter Text

Dear Governor Akinwunmi Ambode:

We are organizations around the world committed to ensuring the human right to water is upheld and protected. We recently read with concern a statement from the Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, Léo Heller, regarding an environmental bill recently passed in Lagos.

We were alarmed to discover this bill criminalizes unauthorized water abstraction and distribution, which a majority of Lagosians depend on to meet their daily drinking, bathing and cooking needs.

We were equally alarmed to see that the bill prioritizes the payment of private contract and concession expenses before any other government expense, no matter how urgent. Having seen the unintended costs and harmful consequences of private water contracts and concessions elsewhere in the world, we are deeply concerned about the implications of this provision on the human rights and well-being of the people of Lagos.

As such, we echo UN Special Rapporteur Heller’s plea to Lagos lawmakers to “reconsider the Bill and to conduct a proper and meaningful public consultation with all relevant stakeholders providing an adequate time for comments and opinions.”

In addition, we are deeply concerned to see the Lagos State Water Corporation pursuing multiple concessions and other corporate contracts, including a 25-year concession for the Adiyan II project and a public private partnership (PPP) for the Odomola project. Based on many of our experiences in cities around the world, we know that PPPs and other privatization contracts often bring unexpected costs for cities, raise rates for consumers, and produce labor violations and infrastructure neglect.

Given these concerns, we wish to express our profound hope that you will:

• Do everything in your power to halt the implementation of the damaging environment bill recently passed by the Assembly.
• Withdraw current efforts to secure corporate concessions and contracts in the water sector.
• Commit to public funding of water and ensure robust and accountable democratic process for implementing any legislation relating to water and sanitation.

In conclusion, we are eager to see your administration commit to ensuring the human right to water through a democratic, public system. Your leadership on water will not only ensure all Lagosians can access clean, safe water — it will also set an example for all of us around the world.

Sincerely,

cc: Dr. Samuel Babatunde Adejare, Honourable Commissioner, Lagos State Ministry of the Environment

Rt. Hon. Mudashiru Ajayi Obasa, Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly

Hon. Dayo Saka Fafunmi, Chairman , House Committee on Environment, Lagos State House of Assembly

Photo by boellstiftung

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“The “right to the city” asserted by commoners is essentially a human right – a moral and political claim of access to resources that are essential to life, and to a right to participate in their use and management. So it is worth situating this entire struggle in the context of human rights law and social movements. The goals of commoning and human rights law have, in fact, a very long, entangled history. They go back at least 800 years, when King John adopted the Magna Carta and its lesser-known companion document, the Charter of the Forest, as a way to settle a bitter civil war. The Charter of the Forest (later incorporated into the Magna Carta) recognizes the claims of commoners to the common wealth that belongs to them as human beings, and who depend upon certain resources for their everyday subsistence.

For example, the Magna Carta formally recognized in writing the right of commoners to access and use forests that the King had previously claimed as his alone. It helps to remember that commoners in the thirteenth century relied on forests for nearly everything – wood to cook their food and build their houses, wild game to eat, plants to feed their cattle, acorns to fatten their pigs. The problem is that their long-standing customary use of the forest and other common resources was not legally recognized – and so the King and his lords could (and did) arbitrarily ignore the moral and human rights of commoners. The was a frank acknowledgment that commoners indeed have human rights – the right to use the forest, the right to self-organize their own governance rules, and civil liberties and rights to protect them from the sovereign’s arbitrary abuses of power.

There are other strands in this legal history of human rights and commons that are too involved to discuss here; my co-author Burns H. Weston, an international human rights and law scholar, and I explore them more fully in our book Green Governance. Suffice it to say that it is entirely consistent with human rights law for it to squarely embrace the right of universal access to clean air, water, food and other resources and ecosystems that are essential to life.

The problem is that human rights champions have historically sought to fulfill these rights within the prevailing system of law and commerce, i.e., the neoliberal state and markets. But given its commitments to individual property rights, “free markets” and economic growth, it should not be surprising that the actual vindication of human rights is a problematic affair. The idea of human rights has been aspirational, frequently stymied by hostile structures of the state, law and commerce. Surely it is an apt moment to consider how various types of common-based governance (as described above) could actualize human rights in more robust, stable ways.

To try to advance human rights law in such directions, Weston and I in 2013 proposed a Universal Covenant Affirming a Human Right to Commons – and Rights-based Governance of Earth’s Natural Wealth and Resources. It is our attempt to win recognition for the human right to “green governance” – to manage resources as commons, and thus to actualize human rights more reliably than existing systems of national and international law now do. A related effort should be the “reinvention of law for the commons,” a topic that I addressed in a 2015 research memorandum.

The paper calls for a new field of inquiry and legal innovation — Commons-Based Law – to consolidate the disparate areas of law that are trying to protect collective resources and practices from enclosures while providing affirmative legal support for people to enter into commoning.”

Photo by The British Library

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Arguably, one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity today is the need to reverse ever-widening inequalities, especially as this injustice is now a central theme across a wide range of social, economic and environmental issues – from securing basic human rights to addressing the climate crisis. Equally as challenging is the need to mobilise sufficient public support to oppose the neoliberal polices that cause inequality and demand that governments share wealth and other resources more equally across society and the world as a whole.

It’s therefore promising to see an ‘inequality alliance’ of influential civil society organisations emerge this year just as the super-rich Davos cabal assembled once again for their exclusive mountain retreat. Notably, the organisations that form the new alliance are a heterogeneous group that normally pursue different agendas, which suggests that this is a potentially significant collaboration that could pave the way for similar cross-sectoral coalitions in the future, and engage a much larger and more diverse group of supporters. As well as the usual development NGOs like Oxfam and Action aid, the group includes Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the women’s rights group AWID, as well as a number of sizable network organisations such as the International Trade Union Confederation, CIVICUS and CIDSE.

In a  joint statement released in January, the alliance outlines the various ways inequality expresses itself and highlights how this crisis adversely impacts a majority of the world’s population:

“Workers across the world are seeing their wages and conditions eroded as inequality increases. The rights of women are systematically worse in situations of greater economic inequality. The vast majority of the world’s richest people are men; those in the most precarious and poorly paid work are women. Young people are facing a crisis of unemployment. Other groups such as migrants, ethnic minorities, LGBTQI people, people with disability and indigenous people continue to be pushed to the margins, suffering systematic discrimination.

The struggle to realise the human rights of the majority are continually undercut in the face of such disparities of wealth and power. Extreme inequality is also frequently linked to rising restrictions on civic space and democratic rights as political and economic elites collude to protect their interests. The right to peaceful protest and the ability of citizens to challenge the prevailing economic discourse is being curtailed almost everywhere, for elites know that extreme inequality and participatory democracy cannot co-exist for long.”

Drawing attention to the direct relationship between inequality and the ecological “future of our planet”, the statement also refers to recent research which demonstrates that someone from the richest 1% of the global population consumes 175 times as much carbon as someone as the poorest 10%. As many campaign organisations recognise, this stark illustration of the extent to which governments are failing to share the planet’s finite resources fairly (including the remaining global carbon budget) has major implications for the radical reforms needed to establish an environmentally sustainable global economy in the 21^st century.

A common agenda to #FightInequality

The joint statement also makes the crucial point that the crisis of inequality is not an incidental aberration, but a systemic problem that is entirely the consequence of political choices and an overreliance on market forces. The alliance rightly acknowledges that this is “the result of our leaders listening to the 1% instead of the majority”, which explains why today’s socio-economic policy decisions mainly serve the interests of a privileged minority at the expense of the global common good. Reflecting the need to challenge vested interests more effectively, a substantial section of the coalition’s statement reads as an affirmation of their commitment to combine efforts, and they list a series of measures that they intend to pursue together:

“We will press governments to meet their obligations to ensure people can enjoy their rights to health, education and other essential public services through tackling tax dodging and ensuring progressive tax and spend policies. We will support workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, and narrow the gap between rich and poor. We will fight for the redistribution of women’s unequal share of unpaid care work, and the tackling of violence against women brought on by state repression and rising fundamentalism. We will advocate for universal social protection floors. We will fight for land reform.

We will work together to challenge the disproportionate power and practices of the corporate sector that is undermining so many struggles, contributing to human rights violations and increasing inequality across the globe. We will work together with others to secure climate justice. We will take on the power of corporations, including fossil fuel companies who are undermining efforts which respond to science and protect people and planet. We will together champion international cooperation so every country plays its part and we avoid a race to the bottom.”

This statement of intent may not be a complete list of actions needed to tackle inequality, but it is clearly an important attempt among disparate campaign organisations to define common ground and pave the way for advocacy initiatives that could bring together concerned citizens in larger numbers and innovative ways. Moreover, there is an explicit acknowledgement that establishing a more sustainable and equitable economic system requires fundamental change on a “scale never seen before”, and a collaborative approach from people across the world including “governments, trade unions, civil society and companies who share a commitment to the common good.”

Here the alliance touches on a central issue for activists that echoes a core theme explored in publications by Share The World’s Resources (STWR): that radical change on a global scale –however essential and increasingly urgent – will be impossible to achieve unless many millions more ordinary people call on governments to reorder their distorted priorities. The policy reforms needed to fight inequality are well known to progressives, but as STWR’s Mohammed Mesbahi reasons in an upcoming book, any campaign for system change will never succeed “unless the people of the world gather in their millions on the streets in peaceful protest, and together embrace that vision and work for its fulfilment.”

Reframing the inequality debate

As yet, however, there is no indication of how the new inequality alliance will gather the support and momentum needed to achieve their stated objective of tackling the systemic causes of inequality. There has been little mention of the #FightInequality hashtag on Twitter since the coalition first released their statement, and it’s unclear whether we will witness the emergence of new campaign initiatives, innovative direct actions, radical public policy proposals, or a new peoples’ movement to end inequality in the coming months.

Whichever combination of strategies the alliance members pursue, let’s hope that they are also able to shift away from their outmoded tactic of ‘fighting against inequality’ and embrace a more positive frame that promotes and advocates for sharing, as this constitutes a solutions-based approach that goes beyond simply analysing, critiquing and opposing the problems of the world. STWR has set out a simple case for taking this approach in their report Sharing as our common cause, which also highlights how the call for sharing is being expressed across diverse movements for social justice, environmental stewardship, global peace and participative democracy:

“As more and more people begin to raise their voices for governments to put human needs and ecological preservation before corporate greed and profit, the call for sharing is consistently at the heart of civil society demands for a better world … a call for sharing holds the potential to engage a much broader swathe of the public in campaign initiatives and popular movements that aim towards systemic transformation.

Many people feel disconnected from political issues owing to their technical complexity, or else they feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenges that face us and ill equipped to take action. But everyone understands the human value of sharing, and by upholding this universal principle in a political context we can point the way towards an entirely new approach to economics – one that is integrally based on a fair and sustainable distribution of resources.”

In other words, there is every possibility that the alliance could attract far higher levels of public support if their campaign (and any agenda for reform they formulate) incorporates the emerging call for sharing – especially since sharing wealth, power and resources more equally is undoubtedly the most effective route to reversing burgeoning inequalities and creating a more sustainable future. At the very least, this more positive and inclusive framing has the potential to instigate a much needed public debate on why policy decisions taken at the local, national and global level should be explicitly guided by the principle of sharing.

– See more at: http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/blogs/making-case-sharing-global-alliance-fightinequality#sthash.ICC0F9kf.dpuf

Photo by SEDACMaps

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