(early edit of Longer Version of the Jan 15 UN commons approach proposal)
Commons Action for the UN and the Commons Cluster Submission
for the Post 2015 Process on Environmental Sustainability
I. RECOMMENDED TOPIC AND ACTIONS
We urge the United Nations to adopt, and thus the Post 2015 Consultation to discuss, the benefits that could come from adopting a Commons Based Approach to Sustainable Development at all levels of government and throughout society to better achieve the agreements and goals that have been made. Such a Commons Based Approach would focus on environmental sustainability; link economic, social and environmental sustainability; address cross cutting issues; and honor the Rio Principles and Declaration.
Global commons-based solutions exist wherever groups or networks of people produce, manage or steward natural or social resources in an inclusive, democratic manner for the benefit of all stakeholders without harming other people or nature. Commons resources can be natural, social or cultural resources that are produced or managed collectively because of their intrinsic importance to the thriveability of all stakeholders.
Such a Commons Approach is based on the collective management and stewardship of Commons Resources by those that are invested in their safekeeping and thus are most motivated to restore and sustain them. Those involved with the Commons movement can provide many examples showing how its adoption as a fundamental principle and orientation of environmental sustainability could be instrumental in fulfilling MDG7 and the associated targets and indicators.
According to the UNDG Thematic Paper on MDG7 Environmental Sustainability, “Targeted interventions and investments in environmental sustainability can have strong positive impacts. However, the progress record to date indicates that countries and the international community have not committed the necessary investments to achieve MDG7 while the ecosystem’s capacity to sustain human development is increasingly compromised.” It is for these very reasons that the following actions, supporting a Commons Approach to Environmental Sustainability and creating a Green Economy, are needed to urgently and significantly increase the level of funding and implementation.
A) The world community needs to develop processes where there is real ownership by the people, they participate actively in setting the agenda and making key decisions, and actively oversee and participate in implementation. We suggest there are many Global Public Goods, ranging from watersheds and forests to the atmosphere and oceans, that must be protected and restored for the well-being of humanity and nature. Increasing levels of international cooperation are needed to protect such global resources.
We also want to mention and support the Major Groups paper on participation in UN processes and the new High Level Forum on Sustainable Development; Rio Principle 10 and the Access Initiative; the need for much more support for capacity development; adequate funds provided and civil society included as a primary actor in implementation; and ensuring that all people's basic human rights and needs as stipulated in the Universal Declaration are fully met.
B) The Sustainable Development Goals, Targets and Indicators need to be human centered, comprehensive in scope and sufficient to fully accomplish all of the multinational goals and agreements on sustainable development that have been made to date. We need to use a scientific orientation in setting the targets and indicators given that much of what we need to include and measure is either not visible, apparent, or as with economics we often measure the wrong things.
The new Goals, Targets, and Indicators also need to focus on making a complete transition to full sustainability as rapidly as possible; be based on the prerequisites needed; and the Rio Principles implemented through adopting a Commons and Rights Based Approach to sustainable development.
C) A commons approach would embrace Green Tax Policies which are urgently needed to get the incentives right for transitioning to a green economy; will help us to protect and restore the natural environment; and the profits from the management and use of natural and other commons resources can be equitably shared and benefit all peoples. Placing increasing levels of taxes on the ownership and use of land and natural resources will help us fund and accomplish all of the multi-national goals and agreements made to date.
D) All Local and National Sustainability Strategies and the Action Plans and 10 YFPs on Sustainable Consumption and Production should be based on the Commons Approach and the main points included here. These Strategies and Action Plans should be integrated with the efforts developed under the UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development and include a special focus on environmental sustainability, linked with social and economic well being.
2. RATIONALE FOR ADOPTING A COMMONS BASED APPROACH TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Commons communities bring people together to discuss, negotiate, design and implement solutions to their mutual economic or communication problems, such as managing, stewarding, and producing resources democratically so that all stakeholders benefit. Commoners thus take personal care and responsibility for their natural and social resources, which are then typically much better managed and sustained.
There are also natural commons, like ecologies and societies, that are self-organized to function according to the responsiveness of stakeholders to each other. The term natural commons originates from the idea of a farm community grazing its milk cows on a common meadow. Commoning can play a major role in solving community problems as it relies upon and fosters collective creativity and decision making.
Commons are ubiquitous. They include intentional commons like Wikipedia, small local communities, cooperatives, open source software, and the multi-stakeholder resource partnerships that came from the environmental movement and that Elinor Ostrom received a Nobel Prize for studying. They offer wonderful examples of social entrepreneurship for creating value and solving economic problems.
Natural commons are less well understood, but easily recognized as the parts of ecologies and economies that have their own cultures, and provide an environment for the parts of which they consist. Our global commons, our "common meadow" of the earth, is suffering from the tragedy that so often befalls financially managed commons, where the parts often seek to expand their demands on the whole, and do not understand the peril for the whole that their demands create.
Nature has greening down pat; it is humanity that runs counter to nature and violates her fundamental processes. When we experience and can begin to understand our interdependence with nature, we will restore our harmonious relationship with the earth. A commons approach moves public policy and opinion toward the recognition of our interrelatedness and the rights and responsibilities intimately linked with human social interaction and a sustainable environment.
A commons approach is robust, allowing for linkages to rights that we recognize globally as basic and which are found in the Universal Declarations and UN Conventions on Human Rights, including the right to life, an adequate standard of living, health, clean and safe water, food, right land use, information, etc.
Environmental sustainability is essential to human wellness and material welfare. The earth itself provides these essential constituents as real tangible gifts of life. A collective sense of responsibility toward the commons as a viable means to end warring over these life giving basics can eradicate poverty, realize a collective global peace and unleash the creative potential of a mature human species.
UN sponsorship of both the study of commons and implementation of the principles of commoning can give it a new major role in creating an environment where the collective will and creative potential of world citizens as commoners is utilized to address global problems at the local to global level. In 2025, the majority of voters globally will be 25 and under. A change is already underway at the grassroots level and the great turning is being fueled by young people already wired to act as a commons, preferring cooperative models in housing, work, food, social interactions, etc. The people are not waiting for governments to resolve their challenges. However the UN's leadership is crucially important and much needed and a commons approach is an ample framework during a time in which collective creativity and decision making are urgently needed.
3. PRESENTATION OF EXISTING FINDINGS
Adopting a global Commons Based Approach to Sustainable Development will help to heighten the commitment of the international community to achieve MDG7 and help to increase the ecosystem’s capacity to sustain human development.
Such an approach would build on much that is already in place: One billion people are registered members of cooperatives -- businesses that use a commons approach. The Danish agricultural sector; Norwegian Pension Fund; Alaskan Permanent Fund; and the Raiffeisen and other Banks and credit unions, insurance companies, HMOs in the USA, farmers markets, forest management in Nepal, and most local communities in Ethiopia and Barbuda use commons approaches. While a basic minimum of resources need to be available if a commons community is to succeed, even the 370 million Indigenous People, many of whom live in marginalized conditions, have much to teach us about how the governance structures of commons can work well.
In addition a Commons Abundance Network (CAN) is being set up to help commons communities and networks learn from one another and form stronger unity in diversity. CAN has the potential to enable a commons-based economy to form bottom up and top down, will encourage natural alliances to form, and support the development of public/private/civil society partnerships.
A Self-Regulating Financial System Optimized for Long Term Prosperity
From a commons point of view the world economy ought to behave as though it were a commons, thus optimizing the value of resources by collective decision making, Principle I. Instead it acts more like a completely blind and unresponsive growth machine that has become a threat to itself and is in danger of collapsing its own food and resource chains. It thus needs to develop and learn an "invisible hand" self-organizing principle, Principle II, which is to act as many natural commons do by limiting its own growth.
This second principle is seen in many natural commons. When growing parts start to conflict with each other, they need to stop using their profits to expand and use them instead to make their community work. Many small businesses do this as they grow, switch to using their profits to make their community work better when growth becomes less profitable.
Our current world economic model could be gradually moved in this direction, as a collective choice thus enabling us to live within the carrying capacity of the earth, reverse the depletion of our natural resource base, and avoid exceeding planetary boundaries and tipping points. The development of scientifically sound methods of measuring true whole economy cost/benefit ratios, etc. are needed to achieve this, Principle III.
A pair of RioDialogue 2012 proposals for achieving these goals, by Jessie Henshaw, suggest "commons-based economic models" that would support a more general proposal by Helene Finidori to develop institutions to cooperatively steward and manage the global commons and adopt commons-based economic models. See: http://www.synapse9.com/signals/2012/06/07/the-news-of-the-commons/
EXAMPLES OF COMMONS APPROACHES AND HOW THEY CAN HELP US ACHIEVE THE POST 2015 AGENDA:
A growing number of governments support commons-based approaches, for example:
In 2008, Ecuador incorporated the rights of nature in their new constitution. Rather than treating nature as property, these laws affirm that nature has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles. And the citizens have the legal authority to enforce these rights and protect these commons resources.
Ethiopia has thousands of small agricultural commons or village clusters. They help to increase market products and food production and are lifting rural people out of abject poverty. Ethiopia has set a goal of carbon-neutral growth while planning to raise the living conditions of its people to a middle-income level by 2025 through the country's Climate-Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) strategy.
Many Hawaiian communities still rely on the ancient Ahupua'a system, an early sustainable model of permaculture. Under this mountain-to-the-sea approach, each community holds an interest from the top of the mountain down and gives its people access to all sources of food production. Their interests are held in common and the bounty shared by the stakeholders. As with other commons, interference by outside interests gravely threaten this system and create an uncertain future for the Hawaiian Indigenous Peoples’ way of life.
With a commons approach natural and other resources are collectively managed so they benefit all people and are sustained in a healthy manner. Water resources can thus be priced to sustain the resource while ensuring they equitably benefit and are easily available to all people. Taxes collected on overuse of this resource can be used to ensure full access.
Similarly, 90% of waste water flows back into the watershed untreated in the developed world. Many examples show how we can collectively manage water and wastes using biological methods; clean up our water bodies; and use waste resources in a circular manner providing much needed nutrients for agriculture. In addition with green tax policies we can raise the revenues needed to invest in infrastructure development.
This will enable us to reach a target that is not to halve the proportion without but to ensure that all people have access to the basic services that are mandated under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, HR Conventions, Rio Principles and UN Charter.
From the local to the global level we need to shift taxes off of labor and productive capital and onto land and natural resource rents. Thus, municipalities can collect the surface land rents within their jurisdiction. Regional governing bodies the resource rents from forest lands, mineral, oil and water resources. And a Global Resource Agency should be established to collect user fees on such transnational commons as satellite geostationary orbits, minerals mined or fish caught in international waters, and the electromagnetic spectrum, etc.
Our global atmosphere is one of the largest commons on the planet. It could serve as the fulcrum to turn our unsustainable and unjust ecological, economic and political situation around. Under a proposal for a Feasta Sky Trust emissions permits could be used to provide a right to use of the atmosphere – a resource which would then receive a scarcity value based on the carbon price. Current schemes like the Emissions Trading System (ETS) assume the carbon scarcity rent should go to polluters or governments – but really it should be used to provide for the well-being of all of humanity instead. See: www.feasta.org
According to the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Environmental Sustainability:
"At the national level, civil society organizations can contribute by publicly advocating for environmental issues, helping design solutions in collaboration with local communities and stakeholders, working with governments to implement scaled-up investment programs to protect the environment, and monitoring efforts to ensure that implementation is aligned with objectives. At the international level, organizations can mobilize and build public awareness of environmental challenges, deliver direct services, and share knowledge of best practices." Adopting a Commons Approach would help us to achieve all of this.
As the report says, "A viable financing strategy for achieving environmental sustainability is required in all countries, but is currently lacking in most." The report goes on to provide many recommendations for financing environmental sustainability which we support; so we have included key excerpts from it in an attachment.
It concludes by saying "By earmarking the proceeds from environmental taxation for environmental expenditures, funding for the environment can be made predictable, thus allowing longer-term investments to be planned and implemented. A good example is Brazil’s ecological value-added tax; a portion of this tax on goods, services, energy, and communications goes to municipalities based on various indicators of environmental performance (May and others 2002). In Parana and Minas Gerais, this tax has supported an increase in the size and number of protected areas. Similarly, in Colombia, revenues from taxes levied on petroleum and charcoal support activities of the National Environmental System. In Ecuador, a percentage of all electricity revenues are directly allocated to watershed management.” These are again the types of Commons Initiatives that will really help us to achieve environmental sustainability.
UN General Assembly resolution 64/292 of 28 July 2010 "recognizes the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights." We suggest it is therefore:
• imperative that water sources, springs, head waters and aquifers be held in common by those cultivating and protecting them and
• we connect water quality to industry, access, and land stewardship to ensure that all water is kept clean and available
We also recommend that the same status be urgently accorded to all other commons goods as well, without which people cannot survive and thrive.
4. A PROPOSED SET OF QUESTIONS
How does a commons approach promote environmental sustainability? How widespread are commons and what types of commons exist?
How can existing commons and commons organizations foster environmental sustainability; develop increasing levels of resiliency; and perhaps even create a global economic system that is based on and fosters environmental sustainability? Which initiatives exist that can promote this?
Are you actively involved in any natural or intentional commons? If so, how can lessons learned from them be applied to bringing about environmental sustainability? What are the challenges and benefits that could come from this? How can we adopt and use such a commons approach?
How is the commons approach different from and/or the same as and thus would support what the governments and UN have already agreed to do?
Is our business model for the earth bankrupt? Would it be better to have a financial system that is self-regulating, like the markets of an ecology?
What can we learn from intact Indigenous people who live long, healthy lives in balance with the ecological system of their region? What is their organizing worldview? How is it the same as or different from a commons based approach to sustainable development?
Why do we persist in maintaining the inequities that lead to the degradation of the environment and the destruction of life?
What story will restore our right relationship with the earth and others; and how can it be embraced and shared with the world?
Additional Questions:
Why are commons communities and natural ecologies so creative and frequently work smoothly too? Does this imply that a commons appraoch is deeply rooted in how nature and ecosystems work?
How could your activity be expressed or described in terms of commons? What commons does it help 'grow', nurture, replenish... etc...
What services would your commons need from a "commoning commons" like the Commons Abundance Network (CAN)?
Are laws to make people behave or to confirm how people mostly agree it works best to behave?
In what ways, can we recognize and heal the wound that feeds our propensity to deny the basics that the earth provides to others? How does this related to the need to develop increasing political will for sustainable development?
What unnerves us about equitably sharing the basics given so freely by the earth?
Do we have the collective will to address Environmental Sustainability now? If not, what will help to generate the necessary will?
Is it possible that the needed change is not a question of money?
How can we build on the activities of the one billion members of cooperatives (commons businesses), the 370 million indigenous peoples and the millions of those who have created social and natural commons to help nature and society to flourish? Can these connect in mutually advantageous ways? Are there actions already geared to bring this about?
ENDORSING ORGANIZATIONS
Commons Action at the UN
The UN major group Commons Cluster
All Win Network
Institute for Planetary Synthesis (IPS)
Earth Rights Institute
Climate Change Network, Nigeria
Kosmos Associates
ECOJURE
Eco Foundation for Sustainable Alternatives (EFSA), India
CAFSO-WRAG for Development
Campaign 2015 and International Campaign 2015
Civil Society Coalition on Migration and Development
Womenʼs Rights Action Group
Maria Ebun Foundation
Planning Alternatives for Change, LLC
Uganda Environmental Education Foundation (UEEF)
Association of World Citizens
Primary Authors:
Rob Wheeler; Jesse Henshaw, Myra Jackson, Helene Finidori, and Lisinka Ulatowska
Contact Information: lisinka.ulatowska@gmail.com