The logic of the commons to build global citizenship and global justice at multiple levels and scales.

The Building a Global Citizen’s Movement conference in Johannesburg, November 11-13, organized by DEEP, Concord, Civicus with the support of the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation is kicking is starting a community to build a Global Citizens Movement and is crowdsourcing input from participants for a declaration of common commitment for this movement.

 

I proposed the commons as guiding vision for global citizenship and global justice:

“The commons can be seen as a social system that intimately associates people or stakeholders with their resources and the participatory and mindful ways they are managing/producing/caring for them.

Commons can be described in a variety of ways and along several dimensions. The three below function together as a whole:

• As object, the commons are the Common Wealth, the assets that we inherit or create, use and change,  and that serve our livelihood (our natural, social and cultural  resources,  genetic and biological diversity, knowledge, etc), that  people pass on to future  generations. These assets need to be nurtured, (re)generated and to be indiscriminately accessible to the greatest number.  They must therefore be protected against capture, over-exploitation, depletion and abuse.

• As practice, the commons are the Common Ethos of which people are an integral part; the culture and the relationships they build with each other, with their resources and with the earth, the ways of being and doing in common (caring,  sharing, nurturing, replenishing our  common assets with discernment, transparency, empathy, equity, justice,  mindfulness…). This practice critically depends on sustained and adaptive know-how, on increased knowledge flows, and continuous collaboration and learning including ways of working together on problem solving. This practice takes multiple forms and names. Sustainable living and development is one of them.

• As result, the commons are the Common Good, the outcomes of the practice (access, capacity, well being, quality of life, prosperity, abundance). They are the life blood of the process, those that make the world thrive, and become in turn assets to nurture…

Because of the relationships and interactions between these various elements, the commons are generative systems, which provide the tangible conditions that empower and enable communities in relation to their purpose and to the ecological contexts they find themselves in, at various levels and scales.

From this perspective, commons may serve as a medium for accelerating the adoption of sustainable practices that address social, environmental and economic dimensions in a sustainable, cohesive and interconnected manner. They can also serve as a vetting system to assess the impact of sustainability policies and practices.

Thus nurturing, and growing the commons in all their dimensions and manifestations can serve as a guiding vision for global citizenship and global justice.”

 

Here is the original link: http://deeep.uservoice.com/forums/226440-topic-1-vision-global-citizenship-and-global-jus/suggestions/4801603-the-logic-of-the-commons-to-build-global-citizensh?utm_campaign=shorturls&utm_source=deeep.uservoice.com

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