Written by Dana Brown, Director, The Next System Project. Article reposted from The Next System Project

They are our collective heritage as a species—both those resources which we inherit from previous generations and those which we create—managed in such a way as to preserve shared values and community identity. The commons are the collective resources themselves, and the practice of collective economic production and social cooperation used to steward those resources—as well as the values of equity and fairness that underpin them—is often referred to as commoning. Many resources can be managed as commons (though often there are attempts to privatize or “enclose” many of those same resources). These can include knowledge, urban space, land, blood banks, seed banks, the internet, open source software and much more.

Potential Impact

The commons are pervasive and as such, often go unnoticed. However, their thriving existence alongside forms of private and public ownership provides a framework for understanding and creating social value beyond the confines of conventional economics.

The rich traditions and successes of commoning provide models for how to push back against privatization and enclosure, ensuring common resources are protected for future generations. Meanwhile, political economist Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning work has disproved the enduring “tragedy of the commons” hypothesis that collectively managed natural resources would necessarily be overexploited and destroyed over the long term.

Taxing the private use of common resources, combined with
redistribution or other efforts to formalize “commons trusts” to ensure their sustainable stewardship, could help stem the tide of privatization and extraction. The tax proceeds could be used as a form of reparation to communities that have traditionally borne the brunt of extraction of their common resources, and to restore those resources when depleted.

Transformative Characteristics

Commoning is a generative and “value-making” process that can decommodify land and other resources, and demonstrate that communities can manage them effectively without private control or state governance. It asserts a different “universe of value” and worldview from capitalism and unfettered consumerism, and helps communities break free from the scarcity mindset of capital. “The commons does not compete on p rice or quality, but on cooperation,” says commons activist and author David Bollier. It “‘out-cooperates’ the market … by itself eliciting personal commitment and creativity and encouraging collective responsibility and sustainable practices.”

The commons, and related peer-to-peer production models, offer concrete, replicable, and dynamic frameworks for sustainably managing existing resources and creating new ones. They also offer a model for deciding what not to produce in order to most effectively protect our global common resources.

Examples

WIKIPEDIA

Wikipedia is a form of online knowledge commons, “a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on a model of openly editable content.” It contains more than 5 million encyclopedia entries (a shared resource), created and edited by its authors and editors (a community) with a set of community-determined content and editing guidelines (rules). Wikipedia displaced once-expensive bound encyclopedias to become one of the world’s largest reference websites, attracting hundreds of millions of unique users per month and engaging over 140,000 active users—a group that anyone with an internet connection can join—in creating and editing content in almost 300 languages.

EL PARQUE DE LA PAPA

Peru’s “potato park” is a community-led conservation project that preserves traditional customs and indigenous rights to the “living library” of genetic information contained in the over 900 varieties of potato found in the Inca Valley region. The native Quechua peoples bred and cultivated these potato varieties for centuries, but biotech and agricultural corporations moved to appropriate the genetic information in the seeds and take commercial control without the consent of the Quechua people. They then forced the Quechua to pay for the seeds their ancestors had worked so hard to breed and protect. Indigenous representatives organized and successfully negotiated the repatriation of the potato varieties and the rights to conserve them in a 32,000-acre potato park. More than 8,000 community members now collectively manage the park  to “promote the cultivation, use and maintenance of diversity of traditional agricultural resources” and to ensure their traditional agricultural resources do not become subject to private intellectual property rights.

Challenges

Most people are not aware of the pervasiveness and enduring nature of the commons and don’t understand commoning as a viable alternative to consumption-driven and competitive economics. The increasing enclosure and privatization of the commons is erasing our collective memory of many enduring commoning practices. For example, control of the majority of the global seed market (a resource once managed as a commons in many communities) is now concentrated in a handful of multinational corporations. Furthermore, scarcity of some common resources may intensify competition for control in the coming years, while others lack adequate infrastructure support and are therefore vulnerable to privatization.  

More Resources

• The Commons Transition Primer:  https://primer.commonstransition.org

• News, analysis and resources on the commons: www.bollier.org

The post The commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Through the Goa mining PIL (public interest litigation) in the Supreme Court of India (WP 435/2012), we have developed a tight proposition for minerals, extensible to natural resources and the commons.

We take the perspective of owners of sub-soil assets. Quite simply, we are asking for the following principles to be implemented (in Goa, India and globally):
1. We, the people of [Goa], own the minerals in common. The government is merely a trustee of natural resources for the people and especially future generations (Public Trust Doctrine).

2. As we have inherited the minerals, we are simply custodians and must pass them on to future generations (Inter-generational Equity Principle).

Consider the example of inherited family gold. If the family decide to keep the gold as it is, they ensure the gold remains to be passed onto future generations. However they must safeguard it against theft, which is both a headache and a cost, while the gold produces no income. Alternatively, if they decide to sell the gold and invest the proceeds in say land for example, they and their future generations can benefit from the income of the land as long as it is well maintained. The crucial point is that if the gold were to be lost or the investments mismanaged, the loss of capital would be permanent for all future generations.

3. Therefore, if we mine and we sell our mineral resources, we must ensure zero loss, ie. capture of the full economic rent (sale price minus cost of extraction, cost including reasonable profit for miner). Any loss is a loss to all of us and our future generations.

4. All the money received from our minerals must be saved in a Permanent Fund, as already implemented all over the globe (Botswana, Norway, etc). Like the minerals, the Permanent Fund will also be part of the commons. The Supreme Court of India has ordered the creation of a Permanent Fund for Goan iron ore and already $13 million is deposited. This is a global judicial precedent.

5. Any real income (after inflation) from the Permanent Fund must only be distributed equally to all as a right of ownership, a commons dividend or a Citizen’s Dividend.

These principles are sufficient in themselves to receive support from most people. Read on!

Grounds for the principles

These principles are first and foremost constitutional in India (& likely most countries). They flow from the Public Trust Doctrine & the Inter-generational Equity Principle. These are also the inheritance customs for a large part of the population. It has strong parallels with Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical. It is aligned with environmental and mineral resource economics. From an economic theory perspective, all we are asking for is respect for property rights. This is unarguable in all flavours of mainstream economics (although indigenous people & others will argue that nature cannot be owned). It is palpably fair, ethical, right, just and moral.

We advocate that this be the default framework for minerals (and the commons generally). Any variations from these principles (“social or welfare purposes”) would require strong justification.

The first problem: Massive losses

Title to sub-soil minerals are usually with governments. In India, minerals are largely owned by the sub-national governments. Mining is effectively the sale of the family gold. The goal must be to receive the full value, the economic rent. There are relatively few studies that attempt to calculate whether mineral owners have suffered losses.In our first paper, Implementing Intergenerational Equity in Goa, we used World Bank data series for iron ore mining to estimate the economic rent per ton. We then multiplied this by the tons exported (from the local industry body) to estimate the total economic rent of the iron ore exported. Then compared this with the actual amounts received by the state government through royalty. Over a 5 year period (2004–2009), the state of Goa lost more than 99% of the value of its minerals.

In our second paper, Catastrophic Failure of Public Trust in Mining: Case Study of Goa, we repeat the analysis. However, we estimate the economic rent from the annual reports of Sesa Goa, our largest miner, accounting for 1/3rd of the mining. While the after tax cost of capital should have been 10–12%, we set it at 20%. Of the balance value, the state of Goa lost over 95% of the economic rent. This was over a 8 year period (2004–2012). This paper also shows similar results in iron ore, coal, oil and gas across India.

Worldwide, IMF data (para 64) shows significant losses of the economic rent are common — minimum of 15% for oil and 35% for minerals. Energy is 1/7th the world economy. Some $7 tn of oil & minerals are extracted each year. World Bank mineral depletion estimates are $27 tn between 1970 and 2013.

Creates extensive problems

Effectively, we are selling our mineral inheritance, our family gold, very cheap. This creates corruption, crony capitalism & poor governance. The obviously unfair terms of the mining lease creates incentives for the miner to extract rapidly and exit. This in turn creates the human rights violations and environmental damage. Eventually this leads to conflict and civil war.

As we are selling the minerals cheap, it also eventually drives over consumption, leading to global warming & unsustainability.

Most minerals are owned by the state as a trustee on behalf of the people and especially future generations. This loss is therefore borne equally by everyone, effectively a per-head tax. And a few miners and their cronies are getting ultra rich. This is looting economics, not trickle down. It is driving inequality. It is a clear violation of Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and probably others we are not aware of. It violates justice, equality, common good, and is simply unethical and unfair.

In most countries, zero loss is not an explicit objective of the mining ministry. This must change.

The second problem: Government accounting and statistics

Mining is clearly the sale of the family gold. A related issue is that government accounting and statistics treat money from mining as revenue, not the sale of inherited assets. Other than being obviously wrong, it is contrary to private sector accounting. Green accounting essentially acknowledges this issue.

Terming mineral receipts “windfall revenue” disguises its nature as a sale of an inherited asset. More revenues are good, & we don’t examine windfalls closely. Inherited wealth is frittered away in consumption.

Due to the commodity cycle, “windfall revenue” treatment creates huge volatility in government budgets. “Revenue” booms. Expenditure rises to keep pace. Prices crash. “Revenues” crash. Sell more inherited wealth at the price bottom? Prices drop further. Cut the public sector? Impose a new tax? Hard choices to make.

Alaska, which only deposits 25% of its oil money, has suffered from the price volatility impact, as you can see from their ongoing budget discussions. So too Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Russia. Some countries like Norway & Botswana have a fiscal policy that effectively considers minerals to be capital — they target the non-mineral revenue deficit, and deposit 100% of mineral receipts into their Permanent Fund, effectively treating mineral receipts as capital receipts.

This incorrect accounting also creates pressure to extract — more revenues are good. Money from minerals is easy money, which in turn drives poor governance and eventually autocracies.

The distortion is significant. In Goa, we found over the same 8 year period (2004–2012), the official deficit was 2.46% of GDP. If we treat mineral receipts as capital receipts, then the “non-mineral” deficit rises to 3.73%. However, if we treat the losses as expenses, then the deficit increases to an incredible 41.47%. This is clearly unsustainable.

Note that mineral receipts accounted for only 8% of Goa government revenues. This is much higher in many resource rich nations, approaching 90% in some cases. These nations are simply consuming their inheritance.

We are asking for is for government accounting, statistics and fiscal policy to treat money from mining as capital receipts from inherited assets, not “windfall” revenue as is the current practice. This simple change will be quite profound. “We manage what we measure.” The immediate impact of this change would be to strip government revenues of all mining money. And minerals become an asset with a different set of questions: Should we extract? When should we extract? How much should we extract? What minimum price do we want for our asset? What is its value? Are we incurring a loss? How are we investing the money we receive for our children?

We have written a detailed paper to the IMF, UN, IPSASB, WB, INTOSAI, etc to correct this anomaly. Following some questions and comments, we have sent a response to FAQs. As the relevant government accounting standard is under review, we have started an online petition, A simple accounting change that will save countless lives.

Scale of the injustice

The loss of economic rent and the consumption spending by the government are effectively an enormous loss to the commons, borne by our children & future generations. The absolute losses in Goa were enormous. US$ 9 billion in eight years. Twice state government revenues from all sources. 28% of cumulative GDP. Each family lost more than the average private assets of households in Goa. It is simply immoral.

As a counterfactual, had our principles been applied for that same 8 year period in Goa, today every citizen in Goa would receive a commons dividend of Rs. 1,000 a month. This would have made a significant dent on poverty (the national poverty line is at Rs. 932 per month).

If significant losses are likely, perhaps it would be better to develop fairer institutions before extracting.

Fair mining

Our principles are clearly fair and universal. The citizen’s dividend is a critical aspect of our design, as it is intended to link the citizen to their minerals. This will create monitoring so that these losses do not recur.

It will also have tremendous other impacts. After the vote, it will be the first true manifestation of equality. As a right of ownership, the citizen’s dividend also is different from a government subsidy. As it grows over time, and keeps pace with inflation as well, the citizen’s dividend is also a Universal Basic Income (UBI), and comes with all its benefits.

Zero loss mining makes the mining lease fair. This reduces the incentives for the haste, and the damage that comes after.

Since the state doesn’t benefit from the mining “revenue”, either at the point of extraction or the distribution of real income, there is little incentive to extract mindlessly.

The whole system is fair, likely reducing many mineral conflicts (though Scotland is more likely to separate from the UK, etc).

Safeguarding great wealth

If we extract minerals, then there is a large amount of wealth “created”. This will attract thieves of all kinds. This in turn drives corruption, poor governance and over-consumption. And environmental damage, human rights violations ending up with conflict. And the huge money coming out makes it difficult to stop as crony capitalists buy the political system with patronage.

What we are essentially doing is allowing mining while sequestering the great wealth away from everyone — miner, government/politician & the people, and only allowing the real income to trickle out.

And everyone is a stakeholder. Transparency, state of the art controls, and whistle-blower rewards and protections are necessary to make it difficult to steal from the pot.

What about Ecological Economics?

We found the Intergenerational Equity principle (“what will future generations do”) to be the core principle — first safeguard the inheritance — if that is done, consume the crop. From this we derive sustainability (sustain what for whom? planetary capability for future generations). From this we derive, through weak sustainability, the precautionary principle for critical assets, and the polluter pays principle for damage to non-critical assets.

Mining is essentially the conversion of natural resources into other non-wasting assets. The first step is listing the assets in the inheritance. These are at least three (a) the damage to the environment/society/agriculture, (b) the work / income associated with the minerals (which depletes along with the minerals), and (c) the mineral value or economic rent. In Goa, we found (a) extensive damage to environment/society, (b) the minerals could be exhausted in nine years (Shah Commission), and © we were receiving less than 5% of the mineral value, and even that was being consumed, a total loss to most of Goa, and our children. For each asset, we need to create a mechanism to ensure that the total value of our commons remains “non-wasting”.

For Goa mining, we propose a tiered structure. The precautionary principle (“don’t risk a catastrophe”) we propose to implement through a cap mechanism, set at the lowest volume where any irreversible damage was observed (12 mt saw the benthic life of our rivers almost extinct) or any legal limit is breached anywhere. The limit would drop sharply on a breach like a stock market trigger. If everything was OK over a long period [5 years], then the limit would increase in increments of [5 mtpa]. Separately, the polluter pays principle would apply to all identifiable damage. And the District Mineral Foundation would be expected to compensate the rest of the damage that cannot be identified to anyone. For the mineral exhaustion, we propose an independent cap set at 1/200th of the reserves, ensuring extraction over 7 generations.

The government needs money!

One common concern is money should go to the government budget. There are two sorts of reasons: (a) The good things government can do (education, health, infrastructure, renewables, etc.) (b) The future will be richer, so we need not save as much.

Our design is intended to make Citizen’s stakeholders, creating an endowment effect. Only then would they monitor mining. Diversion to the budget provides easy money to the politicians, which would worsen governance. If we divert even 1% to the budget, soon enough there will be a budget crisis and this will eventually become 99% or 100%. The link with the citizen gets broken. Raiding the Permanent Fund and then the remaining minerals will be next. The only standard that can be defended is an absolute standard.

From a governance standpoint, if the investments are so productive, then surely capital markets would finance it or taxes could be raised. If this is not possible, it is more likely an issue of the credibility of the governance to deliver the anticipated benefits.

The other idea that the future will be richer depends on continuing growth. Numerous clouds surround us. It would be a bold prediction that the future will always be richer than us, for even the next 1,000 years.

These two blog posts explain further: Why 100% to Permanent Fund and Why income distribution only as Citizen’s Dividend.

What do we do in practice?

We have submitted a detailed note on how our approach needs to be incorporated within India’s National Mineral Policy. Our Goenchi Mati Manifesto suggests a practical framework for implementation in Goa. The 3rd EPW paper discusses how we are approaching this issue at the Supreme Court. More work is needed and inputs would be appreciated.

Can it be implemented?

1. Economics: Keep in mind that our principles would be supported by most flavors of economics. All we are asking for is respect the property rights of commoners.

2. Politics: Politically, minerals have always been a difficult issue as very few people benefit or are harmed directly. The vast majority want “development” and are realistic enough to see that our cars and phones need minerals. However, with this argument and the large losses, we can address the development seekers without stopping mining. Finally, the urban population can get concerned about mining as an corruption/governance issue and a human rights / fairness issue.

As a separate matter, a challenger party can disrupt patronage politics with a stunning vision of a new social compact, one that explicitly treats everyone as equal, while striking a blow at crony capitalism. The first mover advantage is large, and is still available. Sort of “everyone gets a dividend while the corrupt cronies weep & our children cheer”.

Keep in mind that over 50 Permanent Funds from natural resources exist globally, so there is a feasible political path.

3. Moral/Religion: Our principles achieve both intra-generational equality (the Citizen’s Dividend) and inter-generational equity (the Permanent Fund). This is effectively the golden rule (treat everyone as you would want to be treated) which is the moral bedrock of all large religions. The Archbishop of Goa showed his strong support for our ideas, linked to the environmental encyclical of Pope Francis. Is an inter-faith resolution feasible similar to the one before the Paris Convention?

The Future We Need

At a deeper level, the world has an ecological problem and an economic problem. Neither can be solved in the current political system. Change here is difficult due to the money flowing in (Citizen’s United), and eventually, the biggest source is crony capitalism. And the biggest sector for crony capitalism, and actually the biggest sector of the economy is energy & minerals. Looking even deeper, over the last 500 years, we’ve had individualism dominating community, and a shift to consuming the planet instead of acting as custodians for our children.

Our 5 principles essentially reverses this dynamic. We reframe towards community thinking through the commons. We reframe our relationship as stewards of the planet, not consumers. Zero loss mining + the Citizens Dividend controls crony capitalism. We control inequality and extreme poverty on the economic side. And the environment benefits first from the re-framing as custodians, and then from getting the appropriate price with proper environmental safeguards. Higher prices would over time compress consumption as well.

Starting with minerals is probably the easiest point. People can agree on mineral values (unlike a forest). It is usually obvious that the mineral is being depleted, purely capital (sand and water are exceptions). We can successfully make the argument in minerals even to global warming deniers or those wanting more development. If they agree, they implicitly accept the community and custodianship reframing. The reframing opens up a path to eventual acceptability of the need for true sustainability.

Our framework naturally leads to many other ideas as well. Carbon tax + dividend. Pollution tax + dividend. Land tax + dividend. All these are premised on the idea of commons, and the tax is a recovery of the value destroyed (by carbon / pollution) or created (land, value created by society). The dividend is key — since a large majority will be net beneficiaries under any such scheme, they will support tax increases, eventually squeezing consumption. The land tax also has the impact of lowering land values and making it expensive to keep land permanently fallow. India’s land taxes are a fraction of the western norm of 1–2% of the capital value of property and a hidden source of inequality, like mining.

Clearly, our principles must be part of the core of any sustainable economy. It quite simply is The Future We Need.

What are we doing?

1. The Goenchi Mati Movement (GMM) in Goa is advocating for the full implementation of our 5 principles. Our manifesto (goenchimati.org/manifesto) lays out how these principles can be implemented in Goa. In general, we found that people of all strata understand our principles very easily and naturally. Those who read the manifesto also found it clear and logical. Amongst our supporters in Goa, we have a miner, a tribal mining affected leader and a mining dependent trade union leader. You can view a list of prominent GMM supporters. In our recent state elections, 4 political parties endorsed our manifesto, including Aam Aadmi Party (a good governance / anti corruption party that swept the Delhi elections). Consider supporting us. However, we found it difficult to get the idea to spread virally and were unable to significantly impact the elections. More work is needed here.

We did have some success. The Government of India has discussed our idea in the recent Economic Survey (pg 297), and CGD reported on it. The Shadow Chancellor of the UK is also interested in our ideas.

2. Goa Foundation (goafoundation.org), an environmental non-profit that is involved, among other things, in litigation against mining in Goa, and supports the Goenchi Mati Movement. The Supreme Court order on the Permanent Fund is a result of Goa Foundation’s work. This research work is under Goa Foundation. GF has also been advocating how these principles should be implemented with the Goa and the Central governments.

3. In partnership with an alliance (mm&P) and a non-profit (Common Cause), we have launched a campaign to change India’s National Mineral Policy. Goa Foundation sent in a detailed representation that sets out how these principles should be implemented, and provides the rationale for a strong control system and radical transparency. The first draft does contain some language on Intergenerational Equity. However, the road is long and much can change.

4. We are conscious that these principles are universal, and we would like to implement them globally. Our global initiative is The Future We Need (TFWN). We are looking for global partners.

5. The second initiative of The Future We Need (after GMM) is to advocate a change in government accounting, statistics & disclosure from revenue to capital. The relevant international accounting standard, IPSAS — 13 Leases, is under review, but unfortunately doesn’t include mineral leases. We have started an online petition, A simple accounting change that will save countless lives. Consider supporting us.

Learn more

1. A youtube video at a conference on basic income. This doesn’t cover the environmental aspects.

1. The three published papers in EPW related to this work are Implementing Intergenerational Equity in Goa, Catastrophic Failure of Public Trust in Mining: Case Study of Goa and Intergenerational Equity Case Study

2. We recommend reading these two blog posts that answer the most frequent questions, Why 100% to Permanent Fund and Why income distribution only as Citizen’s Dividend.

4. Here’s our detailed note on mineral accounting by governments, and the response to FAQs.

4. How a loss from the commons is equivalent to a negative basic income or a per-head tax.

6. A recent article on the deeper causes of the Alaska budget crisis and how implementing our principles would avoid it.

Goa specific in more detail

1. A 9 part series of articles on what happened in Goa with a lot of detail, so that the information is in the public domain. Ore Chor! 144 is on how bad the lease renewals were. Links to the earlier ones are in the article.

2. A Youtube playlist going into some detail (80 minutes)

3. Somewhat of a history of what happened: http://goenchimati.org/intergenerational-equity-documents/. It has a particular lens, but covers quite a wide swathe of the work with links to go into much more detail.

4. Most of our collateral can be accessed on our website — academic papers, explainer videos, articles, etc.

Rahul Basu is the Research Director of Goa Foundation, an environmental NGO in India. The Future We Need is a global movement asking for natural resources to be viewed as a shared inheritance we hold as custodians for future generations. This work is based on the practical work of the Goa Foundation.

Whose Mine Is It Anyway is a campaign to make government finances and national income statistics treat mining as the sale of minerals. Read Mitigating the Resource Curse by improving Government Accounting and Government Accounting and the Resource Curse — Response to FAQs.

The Goenchi Mati Movement is advocating these principles for all mining in Goa, India. A joint campaign is asking for these principles to be part of India’s National Mineral Policy.

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The initiative started when a small group of members of Attac Berlin discovered that the Berlin Government had sold 24.9% of the shares to RWE and Veolia (each). The group organised a big event in a circus in Berlin to inform people, at the end of which an invitation was extended to those interested in founding an assembly of Berliner Wassertisch (Berlin Water Table). While many attendees were members of trade unions, political parties and other groups, as part of the assembly each person represented only themselves (a principle that remains to this day).

The five-year struggle (2006-2011) for the referendum was necessary because without it, the contract would have remained secret, denying campaigners the grounds to go to court. While no political party or media supported the fight, Berlin citizens were so outraged about the secrecy of the contract they voted in favour of the referendum.

To get the referendum granted in the first place, 25,000 signatures were needed, but the group got more than 36,000. Then the Berlin Government forbade the group to publish the secret contract on grounds that it would be against the German constitution, forcing them to go to the Berlin Constitutional Court, which ruled in their favour. And when the referendum was held, 98% of the more than 660,000 turnout voted for publishing the contract.

The pressure was so great that the Berlin Government bought back RWE’s shares in 2012 and those of Veolia in 2013. Thanks to the referendum, Berlin Water was remunicipalized in 2014.

Photo credit: Uwe Hiksch/Flickr

“The story here shows that a small committed citizens group can bring about a major change (remunicipalising water services in Berlin through  direct democracy). The fact that the referendum to disclose the private contract was not supported by political parties, unions, big NGOs, media and was a result of voluntary and unpaid efforts looks almost miraculous”

– Evaluator Satoko Kishimoto

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

Or visit berliner-wassertisch.net

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

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In this podcast, Michel Bauwens joins some dots together and explains why the open source movement, the growing prevalence of peer-to-peer sharing economy platforms and new technologies like blockchain create the potential to create a fundamentally different economic model that circulates vale between businesses, people and the environment, rather than extracts it. Bauwens believes that we should move to an economy that is built on infinite resources like knowledge, rather than finite materials, and we have the structure and technologies to achieve it.

Ken Webster is a leading author, teacher and thinker when it comes to the circular economy.

Photo by Theen …

The post Podcast: Michel Bauwens, How Peer-to-Peer Can Change the World appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“Permaculture,” Blair says, “is based in systems thinking. But it’s hard to understand systems in general unless you understand one system well that you can abstract from. Unfortunately, in communities that are disenfranchised or under-resourced, there aren’t a whole lot of opportunities to get experience with well-functioning systems. Everybody can get some tomato plants and some worms and some soil, though, and have an extraordinarily complex system to work with and then scale up from.”

Students at Kelso, as well as members of the surrounding community who learn, design, and build at Incite Focus, often begin their permaculture education, then, in the garden, where they first learn how to operate effectively within the natural environment.

“On the one hand, the gardening projects our students work on are deep and rich enough to allow them to really understand what permaculture means and why it’s useful,” Blair says. “On the other hand, we’re in an environment in Detroit where people in very large numbers have been displaced from the position in the economy they had previously occupied and planned on continuing to occupy, and that’s because of a structural shift, not a temporary change. So how can we use permaculture to imagine what the future of Detroit for Detroiters could look like?”

That’s where the fab lab comes in. Blair believes that advances in digital production technology have reached the point at which, with an ecological approach to design and building in mind, people are now truly capable of producing most of the things they need. “Shelter, water, food, energy — these are all things that we can actually harvest and produce. They’re all around us; we’re just not properly utilizing them.”

Economically displaced Detroiters, Blair believes, should not wait for new industries to come along and absorb them into the workforce. Even if that were to happen, which he thinks unlikely, it would only return them to the fundamentally unhealthy, imbalanced system from which they were ejected in the first place.

“In permaculture,” he says, “you’re not a slave to the process. You’re a participant in the process. Behind a lot of this work is the idea of allowing people to have the opportunity to actually spend a reasonable portion of their time, a third of it, producing the things they need to live (furniture, for example, tools, even houses) themselves. Then you can spend a third of your time using the same tools to produce things that are useful for other people: community-based enterprises. Then you have another third left to to do the things that make you want to get up in the morning, usually the things your high school guidance counselor talked you out of.”

“If you’re not engaged in the rituals that touch your passions,” he says, “you’re not in a position to bring the best of yourself to anything that you do. In a large sense, then, this all comes down to creating an environment and cultural context in which people in Detroit are able to truly maximize our capacity as people.”

Read the complete article here.

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About the Study

Resource and energy demand has increased over the last few decades, with more extraction and land use happening in more countries than ever before. The rising resource demand from the industrialized countries and emerging economies depends on the resources located in the Global South. Many governments in the Global South have opted to advocate for natural resource exploitation as a pathway to greater socio-economic development.

However, this route needs to be challenged by looking at the actual benefits and costs imposed on people and the environment by current practices in the natural resource arena. The perspective of many affected communities is clear: They do not currently stand to gain, and indeed often suffer, from present approaches. Accordingly, they are calling for greater participation in decision-making and protection of their rights in natural resource development and governance.

Opening up lands for resource development projects in the Global South generally goes hand in hand with enshrining participation rights for the public to ensure their input in decision-making. In many places, however, civil society actors who are pushing for a greater say in project implementation or resource governance face increased pressures. When non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations, and their individual members make claims about the use of natural resources, they face particular threats to – and restrictions on – their space, generally characterized by a high level of physical intimidation, and even lethal violence.

These pressures may also include the initiation of unfounded criminal investigations, surveillance, defamation, burdensome registration requirements for NGOs, stricter regulation of foreign funding for NGOs, and the restriction on demonstrations. Such pressures on civil society in the natural resource arena are not an isolated development, but part of a larger, seemingly global trend to cut back civic space, as documented by organizations such as CIVICUS in their annual State of Civil Society Report, or by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association.

The concept of “space” moves attention away from single types of pressure, for instance a narrow focus on the freezing of funding. It thus serves to more fully capture the wide range of pressures and restrictions experienced by civil society organizations. In addition, it enables studying the interaction between – and possibly sequences of – different forms of restrictions. Space, then, denotes the possibility and capacity of civil society to function in non-governmental or community-based organizations and to perform its key tasks. Without a real place at the table, civil society space can deteriorate into “fake space.” A study of civil society space should, therefore, not only focus on the pressures faced, but also include an analysis of civil society’s ability to use that space to actually obtain a real voice and induce change.

Country comparison of claims to natural resources

The study at hand was designed to uncover common patterns and dynamics of restrictions on – and coping strategies adopted by – civil society actors in the specific context of natural resource exploitation. It draws on case studies in India, the Philippines, Mexico, and South Africa. These four countries have huge reserves of natural resources, whether in the form of deposits for extraction or vast tracks of land suitable for energy production or industrial agriculture. They are all also home to conflicts about their natural resources, in particular with regard to their exploitation, development, and governance. In addition, the four countries can be considered “partial democracies,” in contrast to strong authoritarian or strong democratic states.[1]

One salient feature of partial democracies is the difference between the de jure space of NGOs, which is the space they should have according to applicable legislation, and the de facto space of NGOs, or the actual existing space in which they operate (Van der Borgh & Terwindt 2014, 15-16). This study relies on qualitative interviews conducted with grassroots organizations and NGOs working in the field of natural resources. In addition, individuals were interviewed who are working on the international level for international NGOs or governmental institutions and whose mandate explicitly includes the support of civil society or the protection of human rights defenders.

Patterns in restrictions

The examples of natural resource governance in Mexico, South Africa, the Philippines, and India show how laws and administrative decisions allow for and foster natural resource extraction without ensuring adequate participation rights. Guarantees for participation, albeit enshrined in national legislation, do not automatically protect those affected. On the contrary, communities, civil society activists, and NGOs often have to actively advocate for being included in decision-making by government or the private sector. If communities and NGOs push to be heard and have their criticisms taken into account, violations of their civil and political rights frequently ensue through, for example, defamation in the media, threats per SMS, arrest warrants, or even killings. The sequence and kinds of pressures on civil society tend to follow the logic of natural resource exploitation and are often traceable to specific stages in a project.

Early on, information is rarely made available to communities, hampering any efforts to make an informed decision or mobilize. As soon as critics start speaking up about a project’s negative impacts and their opposition to it, they face pressure. This pressure can be in the form of targeted intimidation, stigmatization, or the criminalization of individuals or organizations. The stage of a project in which extraction licenses get approved is often marked by high levels of contention. Public protests can lead to mass criminalization, administrative restrictions on the freedom of assembly, or physical encounters, and vice versa. Finally, not only, but in particular, leaders who continue to resist the implementation of extractive projects despite earlier threats and defamation can risk being killed.

Even though killings are certainly the most drastic threat faced by communities and NGOs, already before such killings occur, many communities may have been intimidated to an extent that leads them to the decision to remain silent. Killings really are only the tip of the iceberg, and support for community members and NGOs should thus come long before they face physical harassment. It has also become clear that a number of actors play a role in putting pressure on those speaking out, ranging from government bureaucrats and police forces to private security guards, company managers, and neighbors in communities.

Designing strategies to defend and reclaim space

In response to such threats, civil society, in coordination with governments and international institutions, has developed a wide range of measures and coping strategies to shield and protect community-based organizations, NGOs, and their individual members against such pressures, and to reclaim space for organizing and speaking out. Lessons learned have been collected in a number of manuals and toolkits, which can serve as guidance to other organizations and communities. Some measures focus on protecting physical integrity and security, such as access to emergency grants, security training, provision of secure spaces or relocation, accompaniment, medical assistance and stress management facilities, awards and fellowships, or solidarity campaigns and visits.

Other strategies have been developed specifically to counter administrative restrictions on registration, operation, and funding of NGOs, or for responding to fabricated charges. While some of the strategies thus counter particular types of pressures, guidance has also been developed to explain the availability of support that can be offered by European Union missions, United Nations institutions, or national human rights institutions. Specific attention has also been paid to the particular risks for women who take leadership roles and speak out publicly.

Thus, although a variety of measures and support mechanisms exist, it can be difficult to assess what is most strategic in a particular situation. As one of the most prevalent forms of defensive responses, affected community members and NGOs often opt for emergency response measures. Yet, these ad hoc measures present a number of problems. Security precautions may end up being so time-consuming that those at risk might prefer to focus on their political work instead of meticulous adherence to security protocols. Meanwhile, choosing to fly under the radar may result in unintentionally downplaying or obscuring the extent and nature of the threats and harassment they face. With limited time and resources, organizations have to make choices and may end up getting caught in reactive response loops, leaving fewer capacities to dedicate to longer-term strategies.

In addition to short-term response measures, movements try to develop proactive, longer-term strategies. Through visibility campaigns, they strive to expose restrictions on the space of civil society and the authors of such pressures. Affected communities, civil society activists, and NGOs also engage in human rights advocacy with government actors to guarantee a secure space for the exercising of their political and civil rights. These long-term strategies face a number of challenges. For example, the decision to go public and demand accountability might mean exposing victims of harassment to further threats.

Reliance on human rights entails further dilemmas. Although human rights advocacy is the most prevalent framework to counter pressures on civic space, it has limits when economic interests are at stake or when governments refuse to pledge adherence to human rights. Against this background, it is indispensable to develop further proactive strategies countering the very dynamics that are so characteristic of natural resource projects and that allow for, and result in, killings and other forms of restrictions.

Changing structures – enabling participation

Given that the type and sequence of pressures are closely related to the stages and actors in the natural resource arena, proactive strategies can push for changing those structures that shape natural resource development. This report addresses three such structuring elements: consultations, business, and law.

Consultations: An essential step in resource development legislation, policies, and projects is the inclusion of civil society, and affected communities in particular, in decision-making. Protests and conflicts are often intensified by thwarted attempts at meaningful participation. One tool that has become widespread in law and practice is the “consultation” process, which is at the heart of civil society participation in decision-making about natural resource projects. Increasingly though, consultations have been criticized as hollow exercises to legitimize extractive projects, without taking local concerns into account.

When affected communities and NGOs set out to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly against this continued exclusion, destructive dynamics may be set in motion in which community divisions, defamation of leaders and NGOs, and public protests can eventually lead to physical confrontations that sometimes result in violent actions against civil society, including targeted killings. Certain fundamental changes are needed to avoid consultations becoming mere window dressing to push through extractive projects.

For example, civil society participation should not only be guaranteed once a project is planned, but also in the adoption of trade rules in multilateral and bilateral fora, legislative proposals on extractive industry regulations, and national and regional development plans. Consultations must rely on adequate access to information. The imbalance of power between businesses and communities needs to be tackled, and financial institutions should create the right incentives. Benefits should be shared adequately, and it should be recognized that not all projects are viable.

Business: Response strategies that deal with the involvement of business actors are poorly developed. What is expected of corporations in the natural resource arena needs to be made more explicit, and new ways must be found to push business actors to live up to their responsibilities. Business is still all too often viewed as an “outsider” to local dynamics, thus exempting them from actively preventing and countering the pressures faced by civil society members and NGOs critical of particular projects or development policies. Business should be pushed to implement the, at times promising, rhetoric it has adopted, and be reminded of its responsibility through complaints in (quasi) judicial fora. Financial institutions and the money they provide are often the backbone of natural resource projects, and the leverage they have over business behavior should be utilized more effectively to enforce relevant standards on community protection. Companies need regulation and oversight, and home as well as host states should assume a more prominent and effective role in implementing such structures.

Law: Legislation plays a key role in shaping natural resource governance, but it often favors corporate investments over the protection of local communities. Laws are also instrumental in restricting civic space through administrative regulations or practices of criminalization. At the same time, though, social movements can use legal instruments strategically as leverage vis-á-vis more powerful actors. Communities and NGOs therefore need tools to counter legal pressures and develop strategies to use legal procedures to reclaim their space and influence.

• You can download or order the full study here

Photo by diongillard

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[…] if we aim to change the energetic metabolism of modern industrial societies, for example, we should be aware of the scope of the project. It will not just be a technological task: it will in the end imply profound socio- economic, historical change […] you cannot profoundly alter a system’s output (i.e. its waste and emissions) without changing also its inputs and the ways it works internally […] to be able to deal with industrial metabolism, social and natural sciences must co-operate intimately.

Fischer-Kowalski (2003: 44–45)

Industrial ecology (Graedel & Allenby, 1995), industrial symbiosis, the ‘Cradle to Cradle’ approach (McDonough & Braungart, 2002), and ‘The Natural Step’ (Robert, 2008) are all exploring effective pathways to apply ecological insights to our systems of production and consumption.

These approaches all aim to transform our industrial production processes from linear (open-loop) systems — based on investing capital to acquire resources that move through the production system to end up eventually as waste — into industrial processes based on circular (closed-loop) systems in which waste is ideally eliminated completely and all energy and material waste streams become inputs for other processes.

McDonough and Braungart contributed a useful distinction between industrial and biological metabolism. All material flows should remain within one of these cycles. That is the basis for creating circular economies (see Chapter 7). Figure 18 illustrates the approach.

To achieve this shift towards integrated, cyclical whole-systems design we need to transform products, and how we design and produce them, in ways that allow disused products at the end of their useful life to be disassembled into fully recyclable or up-cyclable industrial feedstock or organic feedstock.

This fundamental transformation of our industrial system is under way. It requires a whole new level of multi-stakeholder engagement in the shared understanding that our regenerative future lies with the collaborative advantage of all rather than the competitive advantage of some.

Figure 18: Resource Cycles

McDonough and Braungart ask the question: “How can humans — the people of this generation — upcycle for future generations? […] How can people love all of the children, of all species, for all time?” (2013: 49). These are culturally creative questions that invite transformative innovation towards a regenerative culture. The graphic below illustrates the ‘Cradle to Cradle Continuous Improvement Strategy’ they propose in order to implement a transformation of our industrial systems. Rather than stopping at ‘sustainable’ (0% bad) the Cradle to Cradle approach is also regenerative, aiming for 100% good.

Figure 19: The Upcycle Chart — Reproduced with permission from MBDC LLC.

Simply to recycle is not enough, if it only leads to materials finding another use in less valuable and less complex products before ultimately ending in a landfill or as waste. Up- cycling is about maintaining biological and industrial nutrients (resources) cycling through the biological and industrial metabolisms of our industrial processes so that they can be converted into higher quality or equal quality products at the end of a product’s useful life. Being able to do this successfully is a major step towards creating regenerative cultures.

Using the Cradle to Cradle framework, we can upcycle to talk about designing not just for health but for abundance, proliferation, delight. We can upcycle to talk about not how human industry can be just ‘less bad,’ but how it can be more good, an extraordinary positive in the world.

William McDonough & Michael Braungart (2013: 11)

The Cradle to Cradle upcycling approach is applying biologically inspired design in order to have a regenerative impact. It mimics how production and consumption are organized in ecosystems. The approach builds on the wider field of industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis. Graedle and Allenby (1995: 297) defined a number of goals and principles to help us phase-in the industrial ecology and symbiosis approach in an effort to redesign our industries. These goals prompt us to ask the following fundamental questions:

• How can we ensure that every molecule that enters a manufacturing process leaves that process as part of a saleable product?
• How can we ensure that all the energy used actually produces the desired material transformation and waste energy streams are recovered and used elsewhere?
• How can we create an industrial system that minimizes the use of energy and materials in products, processes and services?
• How can we move towards using abundant (renewable), non-toxic materials when designing products?
• How can we create industries that rely on recycling streams (theirs or those of others) as the predominant (ideally exclusive) source of material and avoid raw material extraction whenever possible?
• How can we ensure that every product and process preserves the embedded utility of the materials used (e.g. by design for disassembly and modular design)?
• How can we facilitate a transformation that reviews all industrial landholdings or facilities developed, constructed or modified with careful attention to improving local habitats and species diversity while minimizing impacts on local, regional and global resources?
• How can we design products so that they can serve to produce other useful products at the end of their product-life?
• How can we ensure this approach transcends and includes all industries, involving material suppliers, manufacturers and producers, and consumers, to weave a cooperative network that minimizes packaging and enables the recycling and reuse of materials?

At a local scale, eco-industrial parks are providing practical examples of ways to find innovative answers to these questions. By locating different production processes in the same place and applying a whole-systems design approach to connecting their resource and energy flows, we can create many win-win-win solutions.

Among the economic wins are the reduction of overall raw material and energy costs, reduced waste management costs, better compliance, lower costs associated with environmental legislation, reduced costs from transportation, and economic benefits resulting from creating responsible brands for a responsible market.

The ecological benefits result from the reduced use of (virgin) raw materials and energy input through replacing imported raw materials with locally available waste streams. This in turn leads to a reduction in the waste and emissions generated by industries collaborating in the cluster.

In addition, the re-localization of production and consumption, the use of local and renewable material, and the business opportunities that are created by interconnecting different industries, all generate local employment opportunities (Saikku, 2006) and diversify and strengthen local economies. Increased participation and cooperation along the entire product life-cycle strengthens community as a further social benefit.

The design of eco-industrial parks is, for example, being promoted by the Indian Government in collaboration with the German ‘Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit’ (GIZ). A recent report on eco-industrial development in India said: “It should be noted that not only new industrial parks can capitalize on the principles of Eco Industrial Parks. Experiences in India show that even old parks with serious environmental problems can be transformed with often simple and inexpensive measures” (GIZ, 2012: 73).

The report highlighted the need for appropriate information systems and training programmes to help people apply ecological design thinking. To meet this need, the Asian Development Bank Institute has created a training manual to spread information and methodologies for the development of eco-industrial clusters (Anbumozhi et al., 2013).

Among the particularly noteworthy examples of applying biomimicry at the ecosystems level are eco-industrial parks like Kalundborg in Denmark, industrial symbiosis at Östergötland in Sweden, the ‘National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP)’ in the UK, and the ‘Green Industrial Park’ in Nandigama, India (still under development).

Marian Chertow from Yale University has reviewed and compared a number of important examples of ‘industrial symbiosis’ worldwide and concluded that “environmentally and economically desirable symbiotic exchanges are all around us and now we must shift our gaze to find and foster them” (Chertow, 2007).

Other instructive examples of eco-industrial parks include: the Tunweni Beer Brewery in Namibia (Cyclifier, 2015); ZERI, 2013); John Todd’s design for the Riverside Eco-Park in Burlington, Vermont (Todd et al., 2003); the ‘Envi Grow Eco-Industrial Park’ in the Forssa region of Finland (DCFR, 2012); and the ZERI integrated coffee production system in Western Colombia (Ask Nature, 2015d).

The whole-systems design approach of industrial ecology is a powerful way to make re-localizing food production systems more effective and less wasteful, by applying ecosystems thinking through the synergistic integration of multiple food-producing processes. We will return to this powerful strategy for transformative innovation based on closing the loops and cross-sector collaboration in the next chapter, in the section on creating circular economies.

[This is an excerpt of a subchapter from my book Designing Regenerative Cultures, published by Triarchy Press, 2016.]

Photo by Justin in SD

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Each commons has its own distinctive character because each is shaped by its particular location, history, culture and social practices.  So it can be hard for the newcomer to see the patterns of “commoning.” The term commoning means to suggest that the commons is really more of a verb than a noun.  It is a set of ongoing practices, not an inert physical resource.  There is no commons without commoning.  This helps explain why the commons is different from a “public good”; the commons is not just an economistic category floating in the air without actual people.  There are no commons without commoners.

Getting a grip on the commons can be difficult, too, because there is no definitive canon of works. The particular commons that you inhabit and participate in will shape your view of what perspectives are noteworthy and explanatory. A commoner in Africa will see the commons in a different light than a European or an Asian or an American.  Context matters.  That’s why a universal, unitary “defintion” of the commons is problematic.  The phenomena of the commons are so segmented and fractal — yet related!

As this suggests, there is no substitute for spending a little time exploring the commons from many different angles. The concept cannot be understood in one sound bite.

My website/blog tries to help by providing some resources for getting acquainted with the commons.  You’ll find my blogroll to leading commons websites and blogs, a select bibliography, a college course syllabus, assorted reports, a listing of commons projects, and my various books and writings. To find more about a specific types of commons or explore a theme, click on the tag cloud in the upper right of the homepage, or search by a topic of your choice. 

Here are a few items that can help orient you to the commons as a paradigm:  

The Commons, Short and Sweet (two-page statement)

Eight Points of Reference for Commoning  (Ostrom’s eight principles as seen by participant-commoners)

VIDEOS

• Thom Hartmann interview with David Bollier, Part I (12:46) & Part 2 (11:53)
• How Does the Commons Work? (animated short, 2:33), Next System Project
• What Are Commons? (cartoon animation)
• The Commons (video overview, 3:47)
• This Land Is Our Land (feature film, 46:00), Media Education Foundation
• David Bollier talk at American Academy in Berlin, December 2012  Video.  Text.
• David Bollier interview with Chiari Somajni (47:39)
• David Bollier interview with iRights (Germany) (24:37)
• Dave Rovics protest anthem, “The Commons” (video, 3:04)

BOOKS

Good introductory books include:

• Think Like a Commoner (2014), by David Bollier
• Patterns of Commoning (2015), edited by Bollier and Helfrich.  Available free online.
• The Wealth of the Commons (2012), edited by Bollier and Helfrich.  Available free online.
• Our Common Wealth (2013), by Jonathan Rowe
• Common as Air:  Revolution, Art and Ownership (2010), by Lewis Hyde
• The Value of Nothing (2010), by Raj Patel
• The Magna Carta Manifesto (2008), by Peter Linebaugh
• Silent Theft:  The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (2003), by David Bollier
• Governing the Commons (1990), by Elinor Ostrom
• Sustaining the Commons (2013), by John M. Anderies and Marco A. Janssen (free download)
• The Gift:  Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, by Lewis Hyde

….but also browse the select bibliography here.

SOME FAVORITE ESSAYS 

• Andreas Weber, “Enlivenment:  Towards a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture and Politics,” published by the Heinrich Boell Foundation, May 2013.  Here’s my summary of this remarkable re-imagining of evolutionary science, culture and commons.

• Joline Blais, “Indigenous Domain:  Pilgrims, Permaculture and Perl” [on the underlying commons logic and unity of indigenous culture, permaculture and free software], in Intelligent Agent (vol. 6, no. 2), published by the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts. Here’s my gloss on a brilliant analysis of shared patterns of commoning.

• Ugo Mattei, “First Thoughts for a Phenomenology of the Commons,” in The Wealth of the Commons.  A profound meditation on the commons as a challenge to modernity and the modern liberal polity.

• Eben Moglen, “Anarchism Triumphant:  Free Software and the Death of Copyright,” First Monday, August 1999.  A seminal, insightful and witty essay on the commoning that lies at the heart of free software.

• David Bollier, “Commoning as a Transformational Paradigm,” essay for Next System Project, May 2016.

INTERNATIONAL EVENTS AND REPORTS

Some of the most focused insights about contemporary commons emerge from reports about conferences and workshops.  Here are a few:

• Economics and Commons Conference: video and report of Berlin conference, May 22-24, 2013.
• International Commons Conference: video and accounts of a landmark gathering in Berlin, Germany, on November 1-2, 2010.
• The Asian Deep Dive (report from October 2012 workshop)
• The European Deep Dive (report from December 2012 workshop)
• The Commons: Prosperity by Sharing (report by Silke Helfrich et al., October 2010).
• The Commoners at Crottorf Castle (report from a retreat of commoners, June 2009), Parts I, Part II, and Part III

Greece:  Ebook on commons and P2P:  Πέρα από το κράτος και την αγορά: Η ομότιμη προοπτική(May 2014).  Free download.

Photo by iwishmynamewasmarsha

The post New to the Commons? Start Here appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The commons is….

• A social system for the long-term stewardship of resources that preserves shared values and community identity.
• A self-organized system by which communities manage resources (both depletable and and replenishable) with minimal or no reliance on the Market or State.
• The wealth that we inherit or create together and must pass on, undiminished or enhanced, to our children.  Our collective wealth includes the gifts of nature, civic infrastructure, cultural works and traditions, and knowledge.
• A sector of the economy (and life!) that generates value in ways that are often taken for granted – and often jeopardized by the Market-State.

There is no master inventory of commons because a commons arises whenever a given community decides it wishes to manage a resource in a collective manner, with special regard for equitable access, use and sustainability.

The commons is not a resource.  It is a resource plus a defined community and the protocols, values and norms devised by the community to manage its resources.  Many resources urgently need to be managed as commons, such as the atmosphere, oceans, genetic knowledge and biodiversity.

There is no commons without commoning – the social practices and norms for managing a resource for collective benefit.  Forms of commoning naturally vary from one commons to another because humanity itself is so varied.  And so there is no “standard template” for commons; merely “fractal affinities” or shared patterns and principles among commons.  The commons must be understood, then, as a verb as much as a noun.  A commons must be animated by bottom-up participation, personal responsibility, transparency and self-policing accountability.

One of the great unacknowledged problems of our time is the enclosure of the commons, the expropriation and commercialization of shared resources, usually for private market gain.  Enclosure can be seen in the patenting of genes and lifeforms, the use of copyrights to lock up creativity and culture, the privatization of water and land, and attempts to transform the open Internet into a closed, proprietary marketplace, among many other enclosures.

Enclosure is about dispossession.  It privatizes and commodifies resources that belong to a community or to everyone, and dismantles a commons-based culture (egalitarian co-production and co-governance) with a market order (money-based producer/consumer relationships and hierarchies).  Markets tend to have thin commitments to localities, cultures and ways of life; for any commons, however, these are indispensable.

The classic commons are small-scale and focused on natural resources; an estimated two billion people depend upon commons of forests, fisheries, water, wildlife and other natural resources for their everyday subsistence.  But the contemporary struggle of commoners is to find new structures of law, institutional form and social practice that can enable diverse sorts of commons to work at larger scales and to protect their resources from market enclosure.

Open networks are a natural hosting infrastructure for commons.  They provide accessible, low-cost spaces for people to devise their own forms of governance, rules, social practices and cultural expression. That’s why the Internet has spawned so many robust, productive commons: free and open source software, Wikipedia and countless wikis, more than 10,000 open access scholarly journals, the open educational resources (OER) movement, the open data movement, sites for collaborative art and culture, Fab Labs that blend global design with local production, and much else. In an age of capital-driven network platforms such as Facebook, Google and Uber, however, digital commons must take affirmative steps to protect the wealth they generate.

New commons forms and practices are needed at all levels – local, regional, national and global – and there is a need for new types of federation among commoners and linkages between different tiers of commons.  Trans-national commons are especially needed to help align governance with ecological realities and serve as a force for reconciliation across political boundaries.  Thus to actualize the commons and deter market enclosures, we need innovations in law, public policy, commons-based governance, social practice and culture.  All of these will manifest a very different worldview than now prevails in established governance systems, particularly those of the State and Market.

This infographic was produced for Commons Transition and P2P: a Primer, a joint publication between the P2P Foundation and the Transnational Institute.

Originally published in Bollier.org. Photo by Dykam

The post The Commons, Short and Sweet appeared first on P2P Foundation.

We hope the film Re-imagine the Future provoked your interest in exploring its themes more deeply. The quest to build attractive, functional alternatives to the world ordained by neoliberal economics is, in fact, growing. A kaleidoscope of innovations around the world is showing that the market and state are not the only players. A burgeoning Commons Sector is emerging and starting to flourish.

This webpage is a portal into the growing world of system-change activism, experimentation, legal and policy innovation, academic research and political analysis. Consider these links an invitation to enter into this world yourself. After all, the answers are not going to come from somewhere else; they have to start with us, personally and locally, and expand outward. We need to re-imagine the future.

Index

• What is the Commons?
• Key Commons Websites
• Activists/Thinkers Concerned about System Change
• Notable Movements
• 25 Significant Commons Projects
• Books and Essays
• Films & Videos

What is the Commons?

• The Commons, Short and Sweet
• Introductory resources

Key Commons Websites

• Bollier.org
• Commons Strategies Group
• Commons Transition
• The Commoner (UK)
• Digital Library of the Commons
• International Association for the Study of Commons
• International Journal of the Commons
• Law for the Commons wiki
• Maps in the Spirit of the Commons
• On the Commons
• P2P Foundation
• Remix the Commons
• Shareable
• Sustainable Economies Law Center

Activists/Thinkers Concerned about System Change

• Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment
• Schumacher Center for a New Economy
• Next System Project
• Democracy Collaborative
• New Economy Coalition
• Great Transition Initiative
• P2P Foundation
• The Corner House (UK)
• Stir magazine (UK)

Notable Movements

(an incomplete list)

• Co-operatives
• Transition Towns, US / Transition Network
• Social and Solidarity Economy (in French)
• Degrowth
• Peer Production
• La Via Campesina
• Indigenous Peoples / First Peoples Worldwide
• Care Work
• Climate Change / Climate Action Network
• Community Empowerment: Democracy Collaborative / Institute for Local Self-Reliance / Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund / Movement Generation

25 Significant Commons Projects

• Alaska Permanent Fund and other stakeholder trusts
• Berkshares and alternative currencies
• Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons
• The city as a commons
• Cecosesola (Colombia)
• Community land trusts
• Creative Commons licenses
• Enspiral: social enterprise with shared vision and values
• Farm Hack: open source farm equipment
• Free software
• Guifi.net (Spain): community wifi
• HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theater community
• Customary land commons in Africa
• multistakeholder co-operatives
• Museums as commons
• Open access scholarly journals
• Open design and open hardware
• Open Educational Resources
• Potato Park (Peru)
• System of Rice Intensification, open source agronomy for rice
• Timebanking

….and countless other examples. See Patterns of Commoning and the Digital Library on the Commons.

Books and Essays

• Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons
• David Bollier, Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Commons
• — “Commons as a Paradigm for Social Transformation” (Next System Project, April 2016).
• — and Silke Helfrich, editors, The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State (Levellers Press, 2012).
• Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei, The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community (Berrett-Koehler, 2015).
• Commons Strategies Group, “State Power and Commoning: Transcending a Problematic Relationship” (June 2016).
• Giacomo D’Alisa et al., Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (Routledge, 2014).
• Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia, 2004).
• Lewis Hyde, Common as Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership (Farrar Straus, 2011).
• —- , The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World (Vintage, 1983/2007)
• Peter Linebaugh: The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberty and Commons for All (University of California Press, 2008).
• Mary Mellor, Debt or Democracy: Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice (Pluto Press, 2016).
• Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Douglas Rushkoff, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity (Portfolio, 2016)
• Derek Wall, The Sustainable Economics of Elinor Ostrom: Commons, Contestation and Craft

Films & Videos

• The Promise of the Commons (2013). 50 minutes. Focuses on natural resources commons in the global South, with special attention to land grabbing and land rights in India, Nepal, Mexico. 20-minute version.
• The Commons (2103). A left-libertarian-anarchist perspective on the commons that explains the logic of capitalism and the potential of the commons to meet needs beyond the state and market. 36 minutes. Script for video narration.
• Peter Linebaugh: Who Owns the Commons? on The Laura Flanders Show. An interview with historian and author Peter Linebaugh on the 800^th anniversary of the Magna Carta and the significance of that legal document and the struggle behind it today. 2015. 18 minutes.
• Better Not More: Principles and Practices Towards the next Economy. This video provides an overview of activist movements to decomodify nature, re-imagine the character of work, liberate knowledge and democratize wealth. 5 minutes. Produced by Kontent Film and Edge Funders Alliance.
• Podcast, “The Deeper Magic of the Commons.” Host James Lindenschmidt interviews a range of commons scholars and activists. 2016.

Lead image by Nullfy; additional images by Michel Desbiens, Jaap Joris and Michael Dunne.

This post was originally published in Bollier.org. You can find complementary material at Anna Grear’s site.

The post Re-imagine the Future: A List of Resources for Commoning appeared first on P2P Foundation.