The sustainable use and the organisation of common resources is highly complex. With the focus on alternative, utopia-inspired urban neighbourhood initiatives in Switzerland this research project proposes experimental design and inquiry into media-based thinking tools which will help to better illustrate, demonstrate and negotiate the complexity of these sharing processes.

Commons are sustainably and collectively managed resources, such as food, or communication infrastructures, such as Wi-Fi. Commoning, then, is the activity of sharing these resources. The aspiration formulated throughout numerous alternative, utopia-inspired projects that seeks to design infrastructural aspects of urban everyday life in an alternative and autonomous way, through commoning, raises several questions. Since, based on the high level of complexity that (occasionally) comes with the shared use of resources, for the individual community member it is often difficult to estimate his or her own action and consequences to the very last detail. Especially when it comes to unpredictable, complex adaptive processes, he or she can no longer completely grasp them intuitively nor follow them without the help of media-based thinking tools — such as computer-based models or scenarios — which make those processes not only visible but also comprehensible.

For this reason, a mobile software application will be developed and tested in close collaboration with the members of three Swiss urban neighborhood projects: NeNa1 in Zurich, LeNa in Basel and Warmbächli in Bern. We will create playful simulations and design new thought-spaces for commoning. Our aim is to enable alternative and engaging ways for future social participation and transformation processes.

The four-year project, which combines methods from humanities, social science and design inquires the following central question: How could an experimental and community-based approach to design and development of a digital game system stimulate reflection on the intuitively incomprehensible complexity of commoning, make it more understandable and negotiable through playing and gaming?

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0 by P.M. Remix and effects by Kayla Bolsinger

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Today’s WIR-Bank, originally the Wirtschaftsring (“Economic Circle”), was founded in 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression. It was based on the ideas of Silvio Gesell, a German-Argentine merchant and economist who saw how ordinary money circulation had collapsed. Money fearfully clutched rather than freely exchanged only makes a downturn worse.

By reinventing their own currencies based on long-term reciprocity among community members – rather than gold or central bank limits – communities can break this vicious cycle. Hundreds of such currencies sprang up in the Great Depression, as noted by Yale’s Irving Fisher, the early monetary economist.¹ Recent research by the authors² confirms that WIR circulation does indeed accelerate in a recession; as people hoard their limited holdings of Swiss Francs (SFr), they are more willing to use WIR for market exchanges.

WIR are actually somewhat less valuable than SFr because they are less negotiable: not easily changed for another currency, nor accepted outside the circle of WIR users. But that circle of Swiss circulation is fairly wide. In 2013, WIR counted some 50,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) among its clients, enabling 1.43 billion Swiss Francs (SFr) of trade, or US$1.59 billion.³ About 80 percent of WIR users are SMEs and larger firms; the rest are households.

What is the social basis of the WIR’s long-term reciprocity among people? Textbooks on the origin of money usually start with the “double-coincidence of wants” problem: If you and I are both to benefit from barter, it’s not enough for you to want what I have – you also need to have what I want. As the division of labor grows, such double-coincidences are harder to find. We need to find long circular chains of single coincidences, wherein A gives Bread to B, who gives Cheese to C, who gives an Apple to A. Money helps solve this problem by serving as an intermediary “good” that everyone wants.

This explanation begins and ends with individual wants. But our species has not survived primarily by such exchange. A century of anthropological and historical research shows that it was gifts – not money or barter – that brought the original human economy into being.⁴

In his Great Transformation, Polanyi characterizes the gift economy as “free gifts that are expected to be reciprocated, though not necessarily by the same individuals – a procedure minutely articulated and perfectly safeguarded by elaborate methods of publicity.” This is the original solution to the “double coincidence” problem – a network of multilateral gifts and reciprocity between individual and group – not just two individuals.

Even the earliest forms of currency were community records, not impersonal stores of value. Lietaer’s Mystery of Money describes pottery-based currencies centered on ancient temples to Mother Goddesses and medieval shrines to the Virgin Mary. These early monies were a way of remembering personal indebtedness. The Latin root for “monetary” – deriving from the temple of , the mother goddess who “monitors” all exchange – reflects this fact. The WIR is Juno’s descendant, a way of monitoring multilateral (not just bilateral) reciprocity, within a community of named individuals.

Impersonal money as the basis of trade came much later, allowing the economy to stretch far beyond interpersonal community. But this new impersonal money creates its own new problem – How should its quantity be controlled? Too much means inflation and wasted resources; too little causes deflation and unemployment. Precious metals are an arbitrary form of control, and central banks a blunt one. History shows shortages and gluts for gold and silver, and the limitations of central banks are confirmed by current conditions.

The supply of WIR is not limited by gold or central bank “base money” – it grows by as much or as little as people are willing to trade in it. That willingness is greatest (a) in a recession, (b) in highly cyclical industries like construction and hospitality, and (c) among those shortest on cash. Unlike ordinary money, it flows where it is most needed.

WIR is a community currency, but at even its small-nation scale, it is no longer highly “communitarian.” Time Banks (US), LETS (Canada) and Fureai kippu (Japan) are other notable currencies that are closer to their community roots. But like all of these, the WIR recreates an awareness of need-based gift exchange. It may be the form of exchange to which our species is best suited.

James Stodder (USA) teaches economics and econometrics in the School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Management Department at the US Coast Guard Academy. His research is on exchange systems, behavioral economics, inequality and economic anthropology.

Bernard Lietaer (Belgium) is the author of The Future of Money (translated into eighteen languages), and an expert in the design and implementation of currency systems.  He codesigned and implemented the convergence mechanism to the single European currency system (the Euro) and served as president of the Electronic Payment System at the National Bank of Belgium (the Belgian Central Bank).

Photo by AlicePopkorn

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In Valais, Switzerland, a network of “artificial canals” was rediscovered in the 1980s. They were “drilled and built into mountainsides, enabling the irrigation so important to land cultivation by transporting water across several kilometers,” as Auguste Vautier recounts (1942:19). Above and beyond their original purpose, the canals have become important for tourism today, contributing to the establishment of popular hiking trails, among other things. The irrigation canals are of interest in connection with the commons because of their long history of collective management.

Irrigation canals were mentioned in the Swiss Alpine canton Valais for the first time in thirteenth century documents that referred to structures that had likely been built 200 years before. Yet it was not until the fifteenth century that the Golden Age of the bisses dawned. Historically speaking, the development of the network of canals can be explained by events that left deep scars across Europe: the plague of 1349 and the epidemics that followed. The population of Valais was hit hard by these epidemics and was decimated by at least 30 to 50 percent. The decline of population density in the Alps in turn meant that land that had previously been used for growing grain was freed up for other purposes. At the same time, the demand for beef increased sharply in the cities of northern Italy. These two factors prompted the farmers of Valais to increase their herds of cattle and to convert their land into hayfields. They had to build the famed canals to transport water from the mountains to their pastureland. So the owners of the hayfields and pastures joined forces, and “collective operations [began] which often involved the entire village community,” as one researcher of the canals, Muriel Borgeat, has said.

In the nineteenth century, population pressure and the expansion of vineyards sparked a new phase of irrigation canal construction. In 1924, there were 300 irrigation canals totaling approximately 2,000 kilometers (Schnyder 1924:218). The last survey in the canton of Valais, in 1992 (unpublished), found 190 extant irrigation canals spanning a distance of at least 731 kilometers.

One of these canals is part of the Savièse irrigation system. It was built in several stages. More than a century after it was put into operation in 1430, it was expanded through an impressive wall of rock in order to increase its holding capacity. Hundreds of years later, in 1935, a tunnel through the Prabé Mountain was finally completed, making it easier to maintain the system and to pipe the water across the high plateau. The sections of the bisse built at dizzying heights were then abandoned. Only in 2005 did some enthusiasts of the Association for the Protection of Torrent-Neuf¹ decide to reconstruct this emblematic part of the bisse with the support of the municipality of Savièse. This section bears witness to the high-wire acts undertaken by earlier generations in order to secure irrigation.

The traditional form of common management of the bisse has endured. Since the Middle Ages the feudal lords granted the rural communities water-use rights, either to the entire community or to a group of people who joined together in a community of users, a consortage. Such a consortage has always had a special statute that determines the rules for use of the system, details of construction (what, by whom, how), maintenance, financial management, and monitoring of the canal system. In the spring, the canals had to be cleaned, and sections damaged in the winter had to be repaired so they would again hold water. Women attended to sealing the wooden channels, collecting twigs and branches and stuffing holes. Today, municipal employees take care of this job, occasionally supported by passionate volunteers.

Members of the consortage were granted certain rights to use water proportional to the area of land they cultivated, and for a precisely defined period of time. Each family’s coat of arms and its allotment of water rights were carved into a wooden stick. The rights were distributed at regular intervals. “Water thieves” – people who violated the rules of distribution or disregarded the relevant time periods – were punished. “Water theft was considered a serious offense, and the community treated the thief with contempt” (Annales Valsannes 1995:348).

Managing the gates controlling the flow of water was a responsibility of great power because water supply was so fundamental to the farmers. Setting the gates was usually a task reserved for the canal guards (gardes des bisses) who saw to the proper condition of the system and guaranteed passage of the largest amount of water possible. Of course, this form of communal organization also reflected a commitment to shared values such as solidarity. Yet as historian and archivist Denis Reynard told us in an interview in July 2014, “It was first and foremost economic reasons that forced the landowners to join forces.

It was a way to keep the system going. It was always a necessity, first for farming cattle, and in the nineteenth century, for growing wine. Joint management was a good solution.” When we ask whether this management system will endure over the long term, he gets more concrete: “It works if people have a common economic interest – for example, in farming, cattle raising or growing wine. If that isn’t the case, then it has no future.”

Up to this day, the consortage of Savièse is responsible for irrigating the vines. Since common economic interests no longer connect the farmers as strongly as in the past, maintenance of the canals has become problematic. One possibility would be for the municipality to take over management of the system. The establishment of the Association for the Protection of Torrent-Neuf sparked new interest in the bisse as a piece of cultural heritage. “That made restoration possible, but it isn’t a consortage,” explained Reynard.

The Bisse de Savièse is majestic. It has been repaired, and it is located in the midst of a protected Alpine landscape. Thanks to the association, management today still functions similarly to the original system. Yet use of the system has changed. As a tourist attraction, cultural heritage and irrigation infrastructure – all at the same time – thebisse tells the story of the development of a Valais commons over the course of centuries.

References

Akten der Internationalen Kolloquien zu den Bewässerungskanälen, Sion, September 15-18, 1994, sowie 2. bis September 5, 2010, Annales valaisannes, 1995 and 2010-2011.

Reynard, Emmanuel. 2002. Histoires d’eau: bisses et irrigation en Valais au XVe siècle, Lausanner Hefte zur Geschichte des Mittelalters (Cahiers lausannois d’histoire médiévale) 30, Lausanne.ders. 2008. Les bisses du Valais, un exemple de gestion durable de l’eau?, Lémaniques, 69, Genf, S. 1-6.

Schnyder, Theo. 1924. “Das Wallis und seine Bewässerungsanlagen,” in Schweizer Landwirtschaftliche Monatshefte, S. 214-218.

Vautier, Auguste. 1942. Au pays des bisses, 2. Auflage, Lausanne.

Eric Nanchen (Switzerland) is a geographer and director of the Foundation for the Sustainable Development of Mountain Regions (www.fddm.ch). He focuses on development policy, in particular the effects of global and climatic changes on the Alpine world.

Muriel Borgeat (Switzerland) is an historian and project director at the Foundation for the Sustainable Development of Mountain Regions. Her research concerns the history of Valais and Rhône.

Patterns of Commoning, edited by Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, is being serialized in the P2P Foundation blog. Visit the Patterns of Commoning and Commons Strategies Group website for more resources.

Photo by Dave Lonsdale

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