A lot of it comes down to how people are welcomed.

Last April, I joined a group of activists and academics in Madrid, Spain, to build software that helps communities self-organize. This group was part of the P2Pvalue project, a three-year research initiative that looked into what makes peer production sustainable in commons-based communities.

To see things in action, I reached out to dozens of community spaces, from meditation centers to pop-up events. My visits, interviews, and workshops with organizers only brought up more questions: Why are the most thriving community spaces often led by volunteers? How do some spaces accomplish so much without the help of any digital tools? And what about these spaces made it possible to charge people either very little or nothing to participate?

At the end of August, I honed in on one space: The PLACE for Sustainable Living in Oakland, California. PLACE, as it’s known to friends and neighbors, is an experiential learning center. It’s a thriving space, where people cowork, garden, repair bikes, make art and music, and so much more. The organization gets people involved through a concentrated effort — a monthly “Action Day.” Every month, PLACE invites people to explore the space, connect with peers, and learn how they can join.

At PLACE, I learned a key lesson: organizers can improve their community space simply by looking at where things break down in welcoming new people.

Translating this and other lessons made it possible for the group in Madrid and me to build a better self-organizing platform. It is now online at http://teem.works and serves dozens of communities.

And to create a second, more accessible resource for community spaces, I repurposed the stories, data, and cartoons from the software development process and created a guide and worksheet to help community space organizers welcome people.

To download the guide and worksheet, scroll to the bottom of this blog post

Here are key points from the guide:

1. What Happens When Someone Shows Up To a Community Space

Welcoming new people is the first step to getting them involved in the space — first impression matters. The next steps after welcoming can lead to three different outcomes: failing, struggling, or thriving.

• Failing

  The community space is a one-time stunt. At first, it enjoys waves of excited visitors — a grand opening party, friends inviting friends, and more. But without organizers showing the work behind the scenes or asking people to get involved, only a few people offer to help and fewer end up actually helping. Sooner or later, the space closes.

• Struggling

  A group manages to keep its space open. Organizers spread the word about activities and projects and open decision-making meetings to the public. Once in awhile, someone “gets it” and takes initiative. They might do neighborhood outreach or balance the books. But without defined roles and responsibilities, even for the core group of organizers, participation is unpredictable and limited. Managing the space involves all kinds of unexpected, unsteady work.

• Thriving

  The healthy, sustainable participation most groups hope for. A critical mass of volunteers show up to help at the community space one day, thanks to word-of-mouth, an article with a call to action, or good timing. After a positive experience, many volunteers come back. Some become active organizers, taking on defined roles and responsibilities. The space grows organically.

In all three of these cases, different practices might lead to better outcomes. What principles are behind better practices?

2. Principles For Welcoming People

How can organizers lift up the vision and values of their community space without shutting down volunteers who bring new perspectives and capacity? The two principles of alignment and affirmation can help turn frustrating questions into productive conversations. This helps bridge the gap from a visitor to a volunteer.

1. Find alignment

   Work towards a common goal by integrating diverse opinions instead of rejecting them. For example, when people are in alignment, they listen to and respect one another — any stakeholder can support a decision even when they have concerns.

2. Offer affirmation

   Encourage and support people, especially as they try new things and take initiative. For example, organizers can encourage everyone to help — even if they fail at first — by sharing positive stories and recognizing effort.

How can we apply these principles?

3. Improve a Space by Making it More Welcoming

One way to explain what happens in welcoming new people at a community space is to break it down into three steps to help people:

1. Visiting – getting curious

2. Trying – seeing connections

3. Joining – making a commitment

To help understand these steps in action, I’ll use the PLACE for Sustainable Living as a case study:

1. Visiting

• Goal: To help people experience the vision of the space.
• Practice: Helping people get curious and explore instead of simply explaining how things work.
• Avoid…
  • welcoming people half-heartedly.
  • making requests for help that are vague or ad-hoc.
  • deferring to outdated documentation, a dense wiki, or a messy Facebook group/page.
• Consider…
  • doing regular outreach to build local relationships.
  • hosting a regular action day.
  • outlining a clear path for volunteers to become organizers.
• Example: Because PLACE is dedicated to spreading its model, it invests heavily in making visits a positive experience by hosting a monthly Action Day, when people can see everything for themselves.

2. Trying

• Goal: To help people imagine being part of the community and understand its priorities.
• Practice: Creating ways for people to connect with opportunities instead of just matching skills and tasks.
• Avoid…
  • recruiting only for narrow, predefined roles.
  • using jargon, rituals, and “inessential weirdness”.
  • setting a do-it-yourself standard that favors connected people.
• Consider…
  • creating a buddy system.
  • hosting regular trainings and orientations.
  • showcasing projects and the groups behind them.
• Example: PLACE has a vision of resilience that combines self-sufficiency and mutual aid. People become stronger by supporting one another. Getting a real taste of that experience is key for new people to believe another way of life is possible. It also adds capacity to get work done.

3. Joining

• Goal: To grow participation in a healthy way and minimizing growing pains.
• Practice: Making it easy for new people to commit and come back.
• Avoid…
  • sending visitors custom-tailored instructions on how to help.
  • assuming everyone can take initiative alone, or feels comfortable asking for support.
  • hosting one meeting for internal work, for welcoming visitors, and for reviewing proposals.
• Consider…
  • conducting trainings on how to become an organizer, with supporting resources.
  • supporting new people in making decisions in working groups, committees, pods, etc.
  • asking, “Who has power and control in our community? Is it us? Why?”
  • scheduling regular meetings, and regular retreats.
• Example: Stewardship is essential to the way PLACE runs. Its organizers are actually called “stewards” and they take responsibility for everything from facilities and administration to education and events. More broadly, PLACE is organized as a set of groups called “pods” where stewards and others collaborate. Joining the space happens through these pods, where people can propose a project they bring with them (like a pedal-powered pasta maker) or simply work until inspiration strikes.

4. Practice Makes Progress

In community spaces, welcoming people often leads to collaborations on projects that keep everything growing and thriving. However, some people may never feel welcomed in a space.

Progress means returning to these issues time and again. For example, you can continually develop community agreements, a statement of solidarity, or a set of policies. This is where the principles of alignment and affirmation matter most, because they emphasize the role of practice in bringing intentions to life.

Please fill out this form to get PDFs of the full guide and worksheet.

And if you use this resource, please let me know how it goes! Email [email protected].

The post How to Welcome and Engage People in Community Spaces appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In this light, the editorial below illustrates some of the many and diverse ways in which a call for sharing is being expressed, whether it’s by campaigners, activists, progressive economists, academics or anyone else. To learn more about STWR’s campaign, please visit: www.sharing.org/global-call

In January, the case for sharing the world’s wealth was given major prominence at the annual gathering of the super-rich in Davos. Although the issue of inequality was noticeably pushed down the agenda at this year’s event itself, Oxfam again made newspaper headlines with its latest review of statistics on the growing gap between rich and poor – showing that 1% of people now own more wealth than the other 99% combined. Their new report titled “An economy for the 1%” revealed how the global inequality crisis has reached new extremes, with the wealth of the richest 62 people growing by 45% in the past five years. Meanwhile, the wealth of the bottom half has dropped by 38% in the same period.

Whether or not there was a previous in time in history when so few people controlled so much wealth, one thing is for sure: any so-called recovery from the global financial crisis in 2008 has been overwhelmingly captured by the “Davos Class”, and hardly shared by the world’s majority poor.
According to Oxfam’s report, inequality is the result of “an economic system that is rigged to work in the interests of the powerful”, leading the anti-poverty charity to call on governments to commit to a number of common sense policies that can “end the economy for the 1%” and start building “a human economy that benefits everyone”. Above all, they call on world leaders to agree a global approach to end the era of tax havens. “This global system of tax avoidance is sucking the life out of welfare states in the rich world,” the report states. “It also denies poor countries the resources they need to tackle poverty, put children in school and prevent their citizens dying from easily curable diseases. … Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being sucked upwards at an alarming rate.”

Yet civil society demands for tax justice – meaning greater transparency, democratic oversight and redistribution of wealth in national and global tax systems – were delivered another blow following recent negotiations on corporate tax dodging at the European Union. The Anti-Tax Avoidance Package (ATAP) agreed by the European Commission at the end of January was widely denounced by progressive analysts, despite some previously high expectations. Far from making it harder for companies to dodge tax via tax havens, the Tax Justice Network reported that the new measures will do nothing to enhance the transparency or accountability of the EU’s tax rules. It may even add “fuel to the fire” by, in some cases, weakening member states’ own rules, or by the creation of major loopholes.

The EU has still to adopt the minimal measure of country-by-country reporting, which could help ensure that multinational corporations pay their fair share of taxes where they do business. The latest Google tax row in the UK has also further underlined how the British government lobby’s on behalf of major profit-making interests, and has no real concern whatsoever of ending the abuses of blacklisted tax havens.

Who then can blame the residents of Crickhowell in the heart of Wales, where small local businesses have decided to use the same tax-dodging practices of the likes of Google, Amazon and Starbucks by moving their entire town offshore. They have now become the UK’s first Fair Tax Town, with a brilliant campaign to copy the tax dodging practices of the big corporate players. As they state on their video below: “Either we all pay tax, or none of us do. If it’s optional for the multinational corporations, then it’s only fair that it’s optional for us small high street guys. If the government doesn’t act now to close the loopholes, then we’re going to use them too!”

Looking ahead towards 2016, there are of course many other areas of policy and activism where a call for sharing is central to political demands, especially in new economic activities on a more local or national level. Chief among these is the initiatives and practices that form part of the sharing economy, which is also becoming a hot topic of intellectual debate among academics and progressive thinkers. As another recent academic paper questions: is the sharing economy “a pathway to sustainability or a nightmarish form of neoliberal capitalism?” The answer of course depends on what you mean by economic sharing, which from STWR’s perspective is an explicitly political question in relation to the power structures and policies that maintain an unjust status quo.

We’ll soon publish a valuable contribution to this debate from STWR’s founder Mohammed Mesbahi, who has a unique and visionary take on what the sharing economy means in its most spiritual, universal and futuristic meaning. Of the Top 10 sharing economy predictions for 2016, we can only agree with Neal Gorenflo, founder of Shareables, that mounting social crises are bound to “elevate sharing and the commons as a systemic solution”. Another important development to look out for in the field of online sharing, as pointed out by commons theorist David Bollier, is platform cooperativism – which can be described as where the cooperative movement meets with 21st century technologies, or “an online economy based in democracy and solidarity”.

A separate but connected field of scholarly debate concerns the degrowth or post-growth movements, which are fast increasing in popularity as we transition towards more democratic, just and balanced modes of economic organisation. In many ways, the degrowth discourse – despite the issues it raises in terms of its negative framing – is one of the most important economic debates for students and activists, and one that is entirely predicated on the need for a fairer and more sustainable sharing of global resources.

All of the core proposals that are generally discussed within the movement – from a citizens debt audit and basic income to green tax reforms and setting environmental limits – in some way reflect the “new common sense of sharing” that must govern social and political relations in the new millennium. It also embraces the question of living more simply, which has monumental significance in relation to resolving the huge imbalances in consumption patterns across the world. To quote from a recent article in the New Internationalist by the prominent degrowth scholar Giorgos Kallis:

“From a degrowth perspective, the issue is not that the Global North consumes more than it produces (or produces more than it consumes, à la Keynesians). The issue is that it produces and consumes more than what is necessary, at the expense of the Global and inner ‘South’, other beings and future generations. Producing and consuming less will reduce the damage done to others.

This is a question of social and environmental justice: a ‘shrink and redistribute’ from the global 1% (and to a lesser extent the 10%, which includes the middle classes of the EuroAmericas) to the rest. Such invocations of sober simplicity may resonate with dormant common senses about the ‘good life’ present in many cultures, East and West. It can recover the commonsensical critique of ‘excess’ from the grip of austerians, who hypocritically use it to justify their regressive policies.”

Along with the visions for fairness and equity in civil society campaigning on climate change, these debates on global degrowth encompass some of the foremost populist discussions on sharing the world’s resources. To be sure, the emphasis in these debates is on community-level alternatives or national policy proposals for governments, but there is nevertheless a vital focus on the question of a sustainable transition to a new international economic model. No doubt many of these big-picture issues will be discussed at the next International Conference on Degrowth, to be held in Budapest from 30th August to 2nd September this year.

There are many other ways of recognising and understanding the growing call for sharing, however implicitly it is expressed, especially in terms of worsening humanitarian crises across the world. What kind of sharing is there in a world where fears of terrorist attacks and mass refugee flows are driving many Western governments to roll back human rights protections? Where most governments (both North and South) are further cutting welfare spending, increasing fees and payments for healthcare systems, making the labour market more “flexible”, and further privatising public services and assets – all in a time of economic contraction and extreme wealth inequality? It seems that all the trend lines for social cohesion are going in the wrong direction, while the world is fast approaching an intensified period of economic turmoil, conflict and tension.

The case for sharing cannot anywhere be clearer than the ongoing refugee crisis, reportedly the largest humanitarian crisis since the second world war. The leading light of generosity shown by Germany and Sweden is now rapidly waning, and the prospect of a “fair and proportional share of refugees” among all European and other states is becoming a pipedream – let alone the viable prospect of legal entry and safe passage for the million-plus people fleeing war and persecution. Instead, EU governments are collectively spending billions on border controls, policing and razor wire fencing, while already scant international aid budgets are being diverted to domestic expenditures for dealing with asylum seekers.

It appears hopeless to rely upon our government leaders to “bear witness to the full arc of the refugee crisis”, when there is no official acknowledgement of how – in Professor Noam Chomsky’s words – this “human catastrophe” is “in substantial part the result of Western crimes”. Yet despite the increasing disunity and lack of empathy or compassion being demonstrated among nation states, there is a “solidarity explosion” from ordinary citizens who are working tirelessly to help the refugees. As reported on Common Dreams:

“Europe’s governments have largely failed the million refugees they’ve helped create – cue doors and wristbands of shame, theft, teargas and racist backlash – but its people often step up to declare “we are one, united humanity.” Greek islanders have earned a shot at a Nobel by saving thousands; online wise guys have shredded Denmark’s greed; Banksy has decried French violence; and Finnish clowns mocking racist patrols have taken to the streets to let “peace and love flow without borders.”

There is much more to say about the economic, political and even spiritual significance of the refugee crisis that STWR will discuss in the period ahead, including the inner or psychological changes that are needed before we can truly let “peace and love flow without borders”.

The above survey is, as ever, but a brief snapshot of recent trends and developments that relate to the growing call for sharing, and there are numerous other causes and issues that are worthy of mention – such as the growing campaigns against TTIP and other free trade agreements, and the budding Democracy in Europe movement (DiEM25). We will continue to highlight these issues in blogs, articles and future editorials. For regular sharing-related news and information you can also visit STWR’s Twitter and Facebook pages, as well as our Scoop.it! page on “what we’re reading”. If you haven’t done so already, please sign up to our newsletter on the homepage if you’d like to receive periodic updates in your email inbox about what we’re up to at STWR.

Photo credit: Metropolico.org, flickr creative commons

The post Letting “peace and love flow” for a world in crisis appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In response to criticisms that the sharing economy appeals mainly to white middle class populations, it must become more inclusive and closely aligned with other fundamental forms of sharing in economic and political terms, argues STWR’s Rajesh Makwana.

For those of you who are not familiar with Share The World’s Resources, we are a civil society organisation campaigning for a fairer sharing of wealth, power and resources within and between nations. As the name suggests, the principle of sharing is central to our advocacy work, and we have been following the development of the ‘sharing economy’ movement with interest over the past few years. During this time, it’s been very encouraging to witness the emergence of a more visible public discourse on sharing as a new economic model, and I am sure all of us here are now quite familiar with the transformative potential that has been attributed to the sharing economy.

However, we are also aware of the critique that the sharing economy has been subject to: that it is not living up to its full potential, and it is often being co-opted by purely commercial interests and stripped of its potential to pave the way for a more just and sustainable economic alternative. This increasingly polarised debate is of real interest and concern for us at STWR, as our focus is on how sharing within the private, public as well as the emerging commons sector is pivotal to addressing some of the world’s most pressing crises.

So in the context of today’s event, which considers excluded communities and the future of sharing, I would like to take a brief look at whether the ethic and practice of sharing really can create fairer, more sustainable and more democratic societies. And if so, what can proponents of the sharing economy do to play a more effective role in this transformative process? To help answer these questions, we firstly need to be clear about the nature and extent of the crises we face, not just here in the UK but globally.

Let’s look firstly at global poverty. From a systemic perspective, there has actually been a dangerous shift away from the practice of sharing across the world, as illustrated by growing levels of hunger, poverty and deprivation in both rich and poor countries. Of course, extreme poverty is far more severe in the Global South, where around 95% of people survive on the equivalent of less than $10 a day. As Oxfam reported earlier this year, the global situation is getting ever more extreme, as the richest 1% of the world’s population will soon own as much wealth as the rest of us combined.

So there is clearly an urgent need for more effective forms of economic sharing, especially in terms of the measures needed to end extreme poverty and life-threatening deprivation, no matter where in the world it occurs. The question we should perhaps ask ourselves is how we can talk about supporting the practice of sharing – in the truest sense of the word – when so many people go without access to the basics. Every day, around 40,000 people die due to lack of access to nutritious food, clean water and essential healthcare. Surely these people are part of the many communities that really are excluded from the sharing economy in any of its forms.

Let’s also touch briefly on the scale of the ecological crisis. It’s often said that humanity is consuming natural resources 50% faster than the planet can replenish them. Indeed, the average person in the UK has a ‘three-and-a-half planet’ ecological footprint, which highlights the extent to which all of us here would need to reduce our consumption levels if we wanted to live sustainably from a ‘one planet’ perspective.

But the challenge of sharing the planet’s finite resources is further complicated by huge imbalances in consumption patterns across the world. Currently, the wealthiest 20% of the world’s population consume 80% of global resources and are therefore responsible for the vast majority of climate change and environmental destruction. Again, that would probably include all of us in this room. Unless we make some radical changes to the way we extract, produce, distribute and consume goods and resources, we are clearly heading for a devastating rise in average global temperatures of up to 6 degrees centigrade by the end of the century.

Finally, let’s also consider conflict over scarce resources. Resource wars are perhaps the most dangerous consequence of our failure to share in economic terms. As we know, historically the powerful have always waged war to gain control over land and resources. Between 1965 and 1990, 73 civil wars over resources occurred in which more than a thousand people a year died, and at least 18 international conflicts have been triggered by competition for resources since then, including the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Unless communities and nations find ways of sharing rather than competing over scarce resources, a number of factors all but guarantee a further escalation of resource wars in the near future – including a rising world population, soaring global consumption rates, rapidly disappearing energy supplies, and of course climate change. It goes without saying, therefore, that a viable resource security strategy for the 21st century must be based on governance systems that facilitate cooperation and sharing on a global scale.

So what do all these rather grim and worrying statistics mean for the future of the sharing movement? There can be little doubt that we need radically new social and economic models that can address these crises, and economic sharing clearly has an important role to play in this process. But it needs to be a genuine form of sharing that reverses the rampant commercialisation and consumerism at the heart of social and environmental problems, and it must also address the power structures and politics that maintain the status quo.

This presents a real challenge to those working in and supporting the sharing economy. If the sharing economy movement is to be truly transformative, we will have to move beyond the solely personal, community and commercial view of sharing, and embrace a much broader understanding of this timeless principle. As the following points highlight, there are many ways in which systems of sharing could become more effective at reaching those in excluded communities:

• Strengthen sharing businesses models
  In order to really disrupt the business-as-usual economy, sharing enterprises should at least be set up as not-for-profits or cooperatives, which could mean that no single individual or finance group drives the company for their own benefit. Instead, business models and practices that truly embody the principle of sharing should ensure that ownership is democratised and income is fairly distributed among employees.

• Avoid ‘sharewashing’
  If sharing economy enterprises are going to remain genuinely aligned with the principle of sharing, then it does mean that the movement must resist co-optation by the big corporate sector. As we well know, this sort of co-optation is already well documented in relation to social and environmental issues through the various methods of ‘greenwashing’ and ‘whitewashing’ a company’s activities. A similar process is now evident in the sharing sector as businesses rebrand themselves under this trendy new meme.

• Scale up sharing in the ‘core economy’
  A truly sharing economy is often free and not commercial, and has always included the unpaid care, support and nurturing that bonds us as human beings. The transformative power of interpersonal sharing lies in scaling up these non-economic dimensions through, for example, strengthening networks of mutual aid, pooled skills and community support.

• Build the commons sector
  A vibrant commons sector could function independently of markets or direct government involvement and include many sharing economy activities. To help build this sector, we need what P2P theorist Michel Bauwens refers to as the ‘partner state’ – a reformed governmental apparatus that builds on the welfare state model and actively supports the development of the commons.

• Broaden our definition of economic sharing
  On their own, interpersonal forms of sharing will never be enough to deliver social justice and environmental sustainability. A much broader definition of the sharing economy is therefore desperately needed, along the lines of the one Benita mentioned earlier. A truly ‘sharing society’ would include, for example, systems of universal social protection, effective public services, as well as accessible public spaces – and a lot more besides. We can even relate the concept of sharing to democratic forms of governance in terms of how equally power is distributed throughout society.

• Support efforts to share internationally
  We must also support efforts to share on an international basis, as this global aspect of sharing is the most crucial with regards to addressing the underlying causes of inequality, climate change and conflict over resources. Almost by definition, sharing resources on a finite planet is a process that must take place globally, yet it is rarely discussed among proponents of the sharing economy.

• Recognise that sharing is a common cause that unites us all
  If the sharing economy movement is to make a real difference to the social and ecological crises we face, we are going have to join forces with the millions of people around the world who are calling for a wide range of political and economic reforms that embody the principle of sharing. As part of our global call for sharing campaign, STWR has recently released a report called ‘Sharing as our common cause’ which demonstrates how a call for sharing has long been fundamental to demands for social justice, ecological stewardship, true democracy, and even global peace.

I hope these brief points will stimulate some thoughts about how to make the sharing economy movement much more inclusive in the future and more aligned with other fundamental and radical forms of sharing. To wrap up, I’d like to mention that we have also launched a campaign statement that individuals and organisations can sign in order to demonstrate their support for the principle of sharing in relation to their work and activities. Since you all broadly support the sharing economy movement, it would be great if you could add your signatures by visiting www.sharing.org/global-call

Image credit:Tobias Leeger, flickr creative commons

– See more at: http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/articles/excluded-communities-and-future-sharing#sthash.Id09lsaL.dpuf

The post Excluded communities and the future of sharing appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Giorgos Kallis, a prominent scholar on ‘degrowth’, recently wrote an essay that was the subject of debate among members of the Great Transition Initiative network. Below is a comment from STWR’s Rajesh Makwana that responded to the following theme of discussion: is degrowth, as currently formulated, sufficiently rigorous and inclusive to offer the theoretical legitimacy and political unity for a system shift?

To read Giorgos Kallis’s essay along with other selected comments from the discussion, as well as Kallis’s response to the debate, please visit this link. 

This is an excellent article on the immensely important issue of degrowth, with a comprehensive overview that avoids focusing only on local-scale solutions to global-scale problems. Clearly, the vision and principles underpinning the degrowth perspective can contribute much to the discourse on planetary limits and the urgent need for a new paradigm for economic development—especially since it is inherently a political perspective that directly challenges neoclassical economics.

However, in relation to the debate on how to facilitate a great transition, I think the issue of degrowth is likely to be a red herring. As a popular framing that can mobilize a global citizens movement or enable system change on the scale needed, degrowth is limited. Apart from concerns around what might (paradoxically) still need to grow in a degrowth society, which might even include GDP, a key concern is its negative and unappealing framing.

In an interconnected world, any great transition can only happen if it is underpinned by broad principles that have real transformative potential and can mobilize support on a scale never before achieved. Almost half the planet still lives in two-dollar-a-day poverty, and this number increases dramatically if we shift the poverty line upwards. The demand for degrowth is not likely to appeal to the poorest and most disenfranchised—those who will benefit the most from a great transition, and whose support is therefore essential in the creation of a “movement of movements.”

I suggest that the concept and practice of sharing could be used to reframe the degrowth debate, as it embodies critical concepts such as redistribution and participation while also alluding to the need to live within the constraints of “one-planet living.” For example, we could talk about the creation of a “sharing society,” “sharing the Earth,” or even “shared planet economics.” This more positive framing lends itself to an important debate on sufficiency—the ethic of “enough” versus the materialistic culture of “more.” It also speaks to the many sharing-related reforms that must be part of any transition to a degrowth society (some of which Kallis mentions in his essay)—from redistributing wealth, power, and jobs to sharing knowledge, land, and natural resources. In particular, the frame of global sharing lends itself to the growing recognition that humanity must work together on an international scale if we are to create the conditions to thrive peacefully on a planet with finite resources.

As for the central problem of economic growth, rather than promoting degrowth as a policy framework or a collective demand, the aim should perhaps be for governments to simply deprioritize the pursuit of GDP growth so that it is no longer considered a panacea for prosperity. Instead, public policy should be geared towards more appropriate goals and indicators that focus on the attainment of economic, social, and cultural rights within an overarching global framework of planetary limits. But as Kallis rightly points out, this paradigm shift will not be possible until governments find more effective ways of cooperating on global issues and reforming systems of global governance so that they are far more inclusive and democratic than is currently the case.

The post Debating the degrowth alternative appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This week, a coalition of NGOs launched a campaign for a new law in the UK that could make sure that corporations pay their fair share of taxes to public coffers. Dubbed the ‘Tax Dodging Bill’, the proposed law could generate at least £3.6 billion a year for the UK treasury (equivalent to £600 for every household below the poverty line), and billions more for developing countries.

As a policy brief accompanying the campaign outlines, a just tax system is fundamental to a society that shares its wealth and resources fairly among the population. When those most able to pay can unfairly escape their contributions to society, inequality increases and there is less public money available to benefit the majority of people, including the poorest.

News headlines in recent years have revealed just how little tax big corporations pay, causing public outrage at a time of brutal austerity measures and growing inequality. In the UK, for example, the 7 big digital companies – Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo and Facebook – made combined UK sales of about £9.5 billion in 2012, but only paid £54 million in corporation tax.

Many campaigning organisations highlight what a scandal this is when 8 million people in the UK live on less than is needed to cover a minimum household budget, while the richest 100 people in the country increased their wealth by over £40 billion in the last year. The direct action protest group UK Uncut have long pointed out how government austerity measures are geared towards transferring wealth from poor to rich, benefitting the richest and most powerful in society at the expense of the most marginalised.

As one UK Uncut activist states: “The tax system is one of the ways that wealth is supposed to be transferred from the rich to the poor, redistributing the wealth that our economic system concentrates at the top. When companies dodge tax it undermines this redistribution, and leaves less money to fund the public services or welfare this government is now ideologically intent on cutting beyond all recognition.”

ActionAid write that the news-grabbing controversies of big corporations who dodge paying their fair share of taxes in rich countries are just the tip of the iceberg. Developing countries lose an estimated $160 billion in tax revenues each year as a result of corporate tax dodging and rigged tax rules – more than all rich countries provide in overseas aid. When 1 billion children live in poverty in these countries and 57 million children are missing out on primary school, recovering this money could fund vital public needs like hospitals, schools and social welfare.

The Tax Dodging Bill sets out a pragmatic and balanced package of reforms to the UK system that represent some key steps the UK government can take on its own to tackle corporate tax dodging. These measures – explained in some detail in the policy brief – would make it harder for multinationals to dodge UK taxes, prevent them from getting unjustified tax breaks, make the UK tax regime more transparent, and also ensure that UK tax rules do not encourage British companies to avoid tax in developing countries.

As a set of campaign FAQ’s make clear, the effects of the UK’s biased tax rules are not limited to the UK itself, as they also incentivise overseas tax avoidance by UK-based multinationals – depriving poorer countries of tax revenues that are essential for fighting poverty. And this is clearly at odds with the UK government’s efforts to tackle global poverty and help developing countries to end their aid-dependency.

Campaigners therefore argue that the UK government should take action on tax dodging on its own, while continuing to engage in global processes to fix the international tax system. They write: “By committing to a UK Tax Dodging Bill within the first hundred days of taking office [after the general election in May 2015], UK political parties would demonstrate the UK’s commitment to tackling the problem of corporate tax dodging, showing leadership and setting the bar higher for global reform.”

However, the Tax Dodging Bill campaign recognises that stopping corporate tax avoidance in the UK and developing countries will ultimately require action at an international level. Although some official measures have been taken through the G20 group of countries and the OECD, progress remains slow and efforts don’t go far enough to prevent big companies from shifting profits and dodging tax. Oxfam are therefore proposing a World Tax Summit that would be more far-reaching and give an equal voice to those poorer countries excluded from current negotiations, which is planned to take place alongside the UN Financing for Development conference in Ethiopia in July 2015.

Share The World’s Resources is not a formal member of the Tax Dodging Bill coalition, but supports its aims as well as the essential framing of its message: that corporations must pay their fair share of taxes, as this is a key part of the established and most important system of sharing that we have (yet) created.

Image credit: wheelzwheeler, flickr creative commons

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At this year’s gathering of the world’s richest and most powerful at Davos, the World Economic Forum founder has urged delegates that the motto for their 2015 meeting should be ‘sharing and caring’.

Inequality is again on the agenda (if not considered the top threat to world stability, as last year), which has prompted many critics to point out – as usual – that the solutions to inequality are unlikely to come from the global elites that are largely responsible for creating it.

Despite all the media debates and high-profile discussions there is mainly talk and no action when it comes to creating a more equal society. And the only kind of sharing that is championed by the corporate executives and world leaders at Davos is within the context of charity and big business, rather than discussing any real solutions that would require government interventions and wealth redistribution.

A new report and series of interactive infographics from Global Justice Now, formerly the World Development Movement, exposes the core myths that define the worldview of this tiny group of elites. In a refreshingly straightforward and incisive way, it demonstrates the fallacies behind their ideology that is now deeply ingrained in society and a serious obstacle to building a fairer, more sustainable world for the majority.

For example, it is not true that the ‘poor are getting richer’ in the face of soaring inequality, which is starkly illustrated in sub-Saharan Africa where there has been almost no improvement in poverty rates since 1981 (indeed, the number of people living on less than $2 has doubled over this period). As often repeated, the vast majority of the fall in global poverty since the 1990s is the result of China’s effectiveness at tackling poverty, which it famously achieved without following the prescriptions of the so-called Washington Consensus.

The reality is that while the rich have certainly got richer as a result of economic globalisation, most of the poor have remained in poverty. Believing otherwise is to conveniently overlook the devastating impacts of free market, neoliberal economic policies in many developing countries, as well as the inequalities of power that keeps poor people poor. But this is, of course, unlikely to be the chief concern at Davos where discussions revolve around a common theme: that their business practices, overseas investments, entrepreneurial talent and philanthropy are the only answer to world problems.

Another myth is that economic growth is the panacea for social ills and poverty, despite all evidence to the contrary. As the Global Justice Now report argues, growth – while important – is never enough, unless a nation’s economy is geared to sharing the benefits of growth fairly. As long as the benefits are increasingly captured by a small global elite, it is inevitable that the lives of those at the bottom of society will continue to get worse. A neat graphic illustrates a stark fact from the New Economics Foundation’s report Growth isn’t working, asking the reader to guess how much of each $100 of global economic growth has actually contributed to reducing poverty – which is an astonishing $0.60. (Equally shockingly, 95% of the proceeds of growth in the US went to the top 1% during the three years of economic recovery that followed the 2008 financial crash.)

Several of the report’s myths also simply describe how the global economic system is fundamentally skewed in favour of rich countries, which is the real reason why billions of people in poorer countries are lacking the essentials for life, such as adequate food, water and energy. So the image of Africa as poor and helpless is wrong, because the continent is one of the richest in terms of natural resources – and far more money is extracted from the region (such as through profit repatriation, debt repayments and tax evasion) than is given in aid.

The report also argues that international aid could make the world a fairer place, but only if it undergoes major reform so that it is genuinely redistributive and no longer a tool of free market policy. At present, aid is increasingly being used to support multinational corporations in their quest for profits, such as by forcing poor countries to privatise their public services. But this does not mean that overseas development assistance should be entirely scrapped as a system, as “redistributing wealth from the richest to the poorest is a necessary element of creating a fairer world – as it is in creating a fairer society.”

More ambitiously, the report suggests, we should see aid more as a system of global taxation in which it is used to help build what we might call ‘sharing societies’ in all countries. It concludes: “The funds would have to be much bigger than they currently are to create such a change, and the mentality would have to change completely. Creating a better world is not generous, especially if you have created the unfairness in the first place. What’s more aid can never be seen in isolation. Fairer trade, cancelling unjust debt, stopping climate change, tackling tax havens and securing democratic freedoms are all more important in achieving global justice.”

Such common sense is sadly not the preserve of orthodox thinking among the majority of attendees at the luxurious ski resort of Davos, where there is no hint of the poverty and hardship suffered by billions of people elsewhere in the world. As ever, it is up to campaigners and concerned citizens to challenge the myopic outlook of those elites who are concerned about growing inequality, but unwilling to embrace the necessary measures to reverse it.

Photo credit: World Economic Forum, flickr creative commons

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Twitter feeds and newspaper headlines were again dominated this morning by new statistics on growing wealth inequality, as released by Oxfam ahead of this week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

It is now customary for Oxfam to publish new research on how severe the gap between the 1% and the 99% is growing, prior to the gathering of billionaires and politicians at the Swiss ski resort of Davos. The latest research has heralded another media coup for the anti-poverty charity, demonstrating how extreme is the lack of sharing in our societies when just 80 rich people have the same wealth as the bottom half of the planet.

This is in contrast to the 85 billionaires that held the same amount of wealth last year, according to wealth data drawn from Credit Suisse that also grabbed news headlines in January 2014. (Interestingly, Forbes magazine – who publish the annual billionaires list – later contended that it was actually 67 people who own as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion).

Oxfam estimate that in 2014, the richest 1% of people in the world owned 48% of global wealth, leaving just 52% to be shared between the other 99% of adults on the planet. However, almost all of that 52% is owned by those in the richest 20% of the global population, leaving just 5.5% for the poorer 80% of people. If current trends continue of an increasing wealth share to the richest, the top 1% will have more wealth than the remaining 99% of people by 2017.

Oxfam’s short research brief, Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More, illustrates this staggering inequality with a series of graphs that show how the wealth share of the top 1% has continued to increase since 2010, while the bottom 99% have experienced a decline in their share of total global wealth that is set to fall significantly further over the next 5 years. The wealth of the very richest continues to expand at an inconceivable rate, typically increasing by over a billion dollars per individual between March 2013 and March 2014 – or $4 billion in the case of the Italian pharmaceuticals magnate, Stefano Pessina.

In the words of the paper’s author, senior researcher Deborah Hardoon: “The extreme wealth at the top of the distribution… is not only mind-blowing, but quite obscene when compared with how wealth is distributed to the rest of us in the world.” The main reason for this upward redistribution, according to the brief, is the entrenched cycle of wealth, power and influence that enables the super-rich to create an environment that protects and enhances their interests, particularly through government lobbying activities and campaign contributions.

The most prolific lobbying activities in the US are on budget and tax issues, which Oxfam states can directly undermine public interests where a reduction in the tax burden to companies results in less money for delivering essential public services. In other words, the billions that are spent on lobbying is increasingly moving society away from the direction of economic sharing and redistribution on behalf of the common good, a pernicious trend that is set to accelerate without a dramatic change in government policy and business practices.

The reality of extreme global inequality and the case against it has now been well made in any number of books, reports and conferences, from Thomas Piketty’s tome of analysis to the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank last year, where the chosen theme was ‘shared prosperity’. But the need for real action from policymakers to share wealth and resources more equitably is ever urgent, especially in the midst of ongoing austerity measures, wage cuts and high unemployment in many high-income as well as low-income countries.

As STWR has often remarked, this will inevitably require government intervention, regulations and laws that guarantee fairness and equity in society, however anathema this may remain to the neoliberal rulebook still held by most of today’s politicians. Although the richest 1% had an average wealth of $2.7 million per adult in 2014, we cannot expect the members of this global elite to voluntarily share their wealth as a response to world poverty, one that is based on charity instead of justice and structural reform. Indeed as Oxfam acknowledge through their many sensible recommendations, the policy solutions for reducing inequality are plentiful and widely known. So if 2014 was the year when the need to tackle inequality went mainstream, perhaps 2015 will be the year when a call for economic justice and sharing becomes the presiding theme of political conversation.

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To address the epochal challenges of the twenty-first century, we will have to heed Christ’s simple message like never before—and finally share the world’s wealth and resources more equitably among us all. 

In Christianity, the need to share is central to the teachings of Jesus and a major theme throughout the New Testament. According to Luke, the earliest Christians tried to put Jesus’ teachings into practice by sharing what they had so that the poor among them would be provided for. And there are many quotes and parables from the Bible that elucidate Jesus’ instruction to care for the sick, the poor, the widowed and the least fortunate within society. Those who are more privileged than others should always open their heart to “do good and share with those in need”, as written in the final exhortations to the Hebrews. Indeed the essence of Christ’s teachings was focused on the need to serve and love others, to share and not hoard wealth, and to seek justice for the poor and dispossessed.

What, then, would Jesus make of the world we live in today? Regardless of the advancements of modern society through mass education, a communications revolution and economic globalisation, still humanity is characterised by super-divisions between the very rich and the very poor. Total global wealth has grown to record levels, yet the bottom half of the world population own less than 1% of all this financial abundance. The number of billionaires doubled between 2009 and 2014, and now 67 people possess as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion.

To be sure, our social order is at odds with the basic teachings of every major religion, all of which expound the importance of sharing wealth and essential resources fairly. And perhaps nothing describes the lack of sharing in our societies more than the incidence of hunger and poverty within affluent nations like Britain, where growing numbers of people on low-incomes are turning to food banks to survive. But there is no escaping the fact that the impact of extreme poverty is generally far more severe in less-developed countries, where millions of people face constant food insecurity and starvation—despite there being enough food available in the world to feed everyone one-and-a-half times over. As a consequence of life-threatening deprivation and inadequate social protection, around 15 million people die every year from largely avoidable causes—equivalent to more than 40,000 people every single day.

Christian churches and groups are long aware of these disturbing facts, and many concern themselves with the need for a fairer distribution of wealth and resources in the world. Charities in the UK such as Tearfund, Christian Aid and CARE do their best to raise awareness of the scourge of poverty amidst plenty, and campaign for dramatic changes in government priorities to ensure a decent standard of living for all. For example, Christian Aid point out that the wealthiest 20% of the world’s population account for 80% of consumption of global resources, whereas the poorest 20% lack the resources to have even a decent standard of living. We are also using 50% more natural resources than the Earth can sustain, which is having devastating impacts on poor people and the planet. In addressing this epochal challenge of the twenty-first century, we will have to heed Christ’s simple message like never before: to think of those less fortunate than ourselves, to make sacrifices where necessary on behalf of others, and to share the world’s resources through compassion and goodwill.

If Jesus’ instruction to share was truly embraced by all peoples and nations, it would clearly have radical implications for the relationships between countries in our divided world. To begin with, a massive redistribution of resources will be called for on an international scale, with a view to securing the long-agreed human rights of the poorest people as a foremost global priority. However, overseas aid alone will never be enough to transform society along more just and spiritual lines. At present Africa is losing $192bn every year to the rest of the world, more than 6 times the amount of aid given back to the continent. Developing countries as a whole lose about $1 trillion each year through tax evasion and other corrupt practices, which is nearly 10 times the size of the aid budget. Tackling the root causes of poverty and inequality will therefore demand major structural reform of the global economy, based upon a genuine form of multilateral cooperation and economic sharing.

We cannot conceive of a ‘global sharing economy’ in the truest sense until everyone has their basic needs met within the environmental limits of our living planet. And this will require an entire rethinking of our political and economic systems, our global governance institutions, even our conception of ourselves as human beings. A recent spate of scientific literature contradicts the notion that selfishness and greed are innate human characteristics, and shows that we are naturally predisposed to be altruistic and cooperative. These findings challenge many of the assumptions that sustain our unequal societies, and give hope and inspiration that we can build a fairer world that nurtures solidarity, compassion and equality.

In the end, there can be no solution to world problems unless we inculcate spiritual values, such as loving kindness and generosity, into our everyday practice of politics and economics. To resolve the interlocking crises of our civilisation we have no choice but to acknowledge our global interdependence, and to accept that humankind is part of an extended family that shares the same basic rights and entitlements. Hence all of the food, raw materials, energy, knowledge and technical know-how of the world must be used for the benefit of everyone, and shared more equitably according to need.

The call for sharing is already on the rise in diverse countries, and underpins many existing initiatives for social justice, environmental stewardship, true democracy and global peace. But a significant shift in public debate is needed if the principle of sharing is to be understood as integral to any agenda for transformative change. In this light, our London-based organisation has launched a campaign that aims to influence public opinion around the need for a global movement of citizens who embrace sharing as a common cause. By signing up to our campaign statement, anyone can pledge to raise their voice for greater sharing in our societies, and help spark public awareness and a wider debate on the importance of sharing in economic and political terms.

To sign up as an individual or organisation, please visit: www.sharing.org

This article was originally published in the Parish Magazine Supplement of All Saint’s Church, Highgate, January 2015.

Photo credit: Rodrigo_Soldon, flickr creative commons

– See more at: http://www.sharing.org/information-centre/blogs/heeding-christ%E2%80%99s-teaching-share-21st-century#sthash.eXGW1bSf.dpuf

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