Helene Finidori

Growing the Commons as Meta-narrative?

How about 'Growing the Commons' as a meta-narrative for a paradigm shift?

Ann Pendleton-Jullian in her Power and Ecosystems of Change talk suggests that a new type of metanarrative is much needed to change the world. Something strategically ambiguous towards which to head despite our differences, and that would aggregate coherence from a variety of disparate micro narratives that shape events and build trust at the grassroots level. She talks about networks and how network architectures change power structures, and describes ecosystems of change as scaffold to aggregate different kinds of powers and mecanisms that are out there, and support the emergence of the new until it becomes strong enough.

 

The idea of growing or expanding the commons as meta-narrative and the type of ecosystem of change that could support it are worth looking into. An idea I developed in 'Common-Sense Commons' as a guiding vision for a Self-Caring System & Thrivable World. A vision with a transitive verb attached to it conveys an idea of 'movement', 'action', 'agency' and potential engagement. It can draw people in from beyond the intentional commons circles and traditional 'supporters' of the commons.

The growth imperative, as we have experienced, is a great generator of engagement and action! It got [almost] everyone these last decades rolling up their sleeves to do it best -and not only for self enrichment-. Unfortunately not applied with discernment, nor to the right things, and with the result that we know: the consumption of our host and part of our social fabric! Much would change if, rather than applied indiscriminately to GDP and profits at all cost, to means that lose tracks of ends, or to extraction, consumption, addictions, and other toxic, enclosing or exploitative behaviors and practices, growth was directed at (re)generating, and expanding a variety of enabling resources and outcomes (capabilities, abundance, health, well being, thrivability, resilience, creativity, knowledge...), and all types of ways of doing things right, with an eye on how it impacts the whole as well. An outlet for our intentions, attention and cognitive surplus!

The commons in its widest definition is 'fuzzy' and ambiguous enough to encompass many forms: objects (resources, biological commons, knowledge & digital commons...), processes (manners in which, commoning, nurturing, regenerating...) and outcomes (consequences such as well-being, prosperity, capability...) that connect people together and to their contexts and/or place. Commons convey an idea of togetherness and mutuality, of care and responsibilities. It holds an ethical dimension. Commons are at the same time whole and parts, input and output, medium and outcome... As a living system commons accomodates complexity. Yet at the same time there is a potential to make the language of the commons simple and relevant.

Much of the initiatives around sustainability, resilience, thrivability, or social innovation strive to maintain the integrity and grow or nurture a piece of the commons, and could be thought and expressed in terms of their impact on the commons even if not organized as intentional commons. These initiatives would gain from a commons discourse that would help forward their own activity and the commons as a whole at the same time.

Each individual or group has a different definition of the commons and a 'prefered' commons to focus his/her attention and efforts towards. Each has a different story to tell. A convergence generating meta-narrative such as growth of the commons would ensure a variety of solutions necessary to make the system resilient, without having to chose or prioritize; enabling small or large steps to add up in meaningful ways, consistent with the values that each wish to see in the world, from which ever place they wish to start from, the impact thereof being greater than the sum of the parts!

Several approaches are based on a wide multidimensional view of the commons and on a transition that springs partly from the current paradigm:

• Benni Bärmann: Commons as a strategic perspective for social movements 
• Tom Atlee's Wholesome Capitalism
• David Ronfeldt's Speculations on assurance commons 
• My Commons at the core of our next economic model

We should multiply opportunities to formulate this meta-narrative and examine how various micro-narratives could be expressed in relation to the commons, which mecanisms could empower engagement and how networks could enable it. This would generate discussions on the basic principles for the integrity of the commons and how they would be best 'grown', providing some feedback on the modalities and boundaries of 'growth', transforming in the process the definition of growth itself. It would give the commons a voice, and set a framework to prevent or limit further enclosure, cooptation and corruption of the commons and the commons vocabulary. It would provide a basis for viral communication.

So what type of commons does your activity grow or replenish, and how? To what extend does your activity deplete the commons and what could you do about it?

Let's share stories and make the shift happen...

'Common-Sense Commons' as a guiding vision for a Self-Caring System & Thrivable World

 

Our World is in crisis as its systems have been pushed toward exceeding their limits of resilience. Much of what we care for and need in the various aspects of our lives is under threat. We need a whole system approach, one that enables all parts to thrive while addressing the threats that endanger the whole.

But we all have different visions and views about the crisis and how it should be met. We are driven by different interests and moved by different types of stories, even if ultimately, we all seek a more viable, sustainable, thrivable and mindful world. So we need a practical vision for our sustainability efforts to converge.

For a while I have been playing with the idea of bringing together some guiding principles that could help us coalesce streams of engagement and passion... Guiding principles that can help the system take care of itself - the physical dimension- and underpined by an archetypal vision or aspiration - the metaphysical dimension- with a power to attract and catalyze potential for action and engagement to seed and amplify emerging change and  the positive feedback of the system.

After two years of discussions with many groups involved in social change, I believe the approach of the commons as complex living system and embodiment of the change we want to see could constitute the guiding vision we need to face the challenges ahead and generate the driving force for the system to heal itself. In short, we would need to think sustainability in terms of commons, to coalesce in a self-organizing way disparate sustainability efforts.

This article is inspired from a group discussion addressing the question from UN Secretary General on an Economic Model for survival, in discussion since Feb 2011 on the LinkedIn "Systems Thinking World" forum. 7200+ posts, and many other discussions around the Commons, P2P, collaboration and technology. 

It is a work in progress written with the collaboration of Jessie Henshaw. I welcome your comments and suggestions. Here is a tool where any of us can make suggestions and additions to this text. We are also working with the Commons Action group at the UN to develop a People's Sustainability Treaty based on these ideas. 

 

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The Vision and Principles

The commons are vital for our sustenance, our social cohesion and our well-being [ An archetype?]

 

The commons is what serves mankind as a whole. We think of it as our shared environment and resources, and as a medium for interactions. It includes the natural environment we humans are all a part of, and all what we inherit and create, use and change, and then pass on to future generations.  It connects us and nurtures much of what we produce and accomplish. It is vital for our sustenance and livelihood, our individual expression  and purpose, our social cohesion and well-being.  The  commons also embody the  relationships we build between people and with the earth, our  communities and the knowledge they may share. It's an inheritance, one that all humans now need a living vision of and a feeling of common responsibility for.

The commons take various shapes [At the same time object - process - result]

The commons can be described in many different ways and along various dimensions. It is at the same time object, process and result operating at various levels and scales, from the most global -the whole system, to various nested or fractal 'local' levels -the parts.

• As objects, the commons embody the Common Wealth, the 'Assets' that are inherited or created, shared in  common, and serve a livelihood (natural, social &   cultural  resources,  genetic and biologic diversity, knowledge, etc),  that people  can take care of, nurture, replenish, grow.                        
• As a process,  the commons embody the Common Ethos, a  Culture, the ways of being and doing in common that epitomizes in commoning (caring,  sharing, nurturing, governing the assets in relationship with others with  empathy, equity, justice, mindfulness...)                        
• As a Result: - the commons embody the Common Good, the outcome of the process  (well being, quality of life, prosperity, abundance) which is the life blood of the process and a condition for the growth of the assets.

The commons is both an input to the dynamic interactions between people and their contexts, and an output thereof.  All these dimensions need each other for the world to thrive. For  progress to  materialize, output must be greater than input. Commons in all their diversity and all the types of value they create must grow. And ideally each of our sustainability initiatives would be geared to grow a part of it. 

On all dimensions, levels and scales it is a tangible condition that serves as a medium for economic and political  cooperation, development of common social and cultural values, and the  establishment  of a shared  stewardship of the  earth that can be deployed at multiple levels and scales; with a goal of satisfying needs and enabling self realization along all its various  dimensions.

The commons as guiding image for a socio-cultural shift

The crisis that threatens the survival of humanity as a whole needs a vision that can help transition to a sustainable and thriving world. One that can not only encourage desired behaviors but also inspire us all to work towards it, as we articulate and develop our own designs of who we want to be -- as individuals and as community.

 
In 1973, a team of researchers from Stanford university established that cultural  transformations occured with the presence of a strong image to embody change and crystallize imagination and action toward new visions of the world:

Images of humankind that are dominant in a culture are of fundamental importance because they underlie the ways in which the society shapes its institutions, educates its young, and goes about whatever it perceives its business to be. Changes in these images are of particular concern at the present time because our industrial society may be on the threshold of a transformation as profound as that which came to Europewhen the Medieval Age gave way to the rise of science and the Industrial Revolution. - Changing Image of man -Stanford research institute

The survey sugested a provisional list of six characteristics for transition informing image necessary to guide the current transition:

• provide a holistic sense and perspective on life
• entail an ecological ethic 
• entail a self-realization ethic 
• be multileveled, multifaceted, and integrative 
• lead to a balancing and coordinating of satisfactions along many dimensions 
• be experiential, experimental and open-ended

The image of the commons encompasses much of these characteristics. It adds to sustainability and resilience a common purpose or interest, the dimension of mutuality -the networks of things we can do with and for each other-, and a vision of the whole where humanity is meant to realize our potential and thrive. It can speak to our logic and reason as much as to our intuitions and emotions. As it speaks many languages, it can be conveyed in many different forms to many of the worldviews, aspirations and streams of initiatives that strive to create a better world, so that people from where ever they are located can learn and do what they feel the urge to do, and the system itself will put things together.

Think of the various sensitivities or movements that can coalesce under a commons sense banner (gaian, ancient tradition, legalist/human rights and expression, ecology, socio-political, risk/precaution, cooperative ownership and management, craddle2craddle/regenerative economy, conservation/malthusian, thrivability/prosperity/abundance, P2P/hacker/localist, peace/love) that are moved by different narratives and passion, all an expression of the same aspiration...

The commons as complex living system

The world, as a complex living system, operates along principles that help the system take care of itself. That's the actual invisible hand. The ultimate commons?:

• The nature of the system is a multiplicity of parts in partnership working individually as whole local parts, and operating at various integrative levels and scales, forming emergent wholes. What connects any part with a whole is most often hidden from any local viewpoint. Each whole self-organizes and self-realizes while being conscious of and responsive to each other's behaviors and locally responsive to its changing environment, not controlled by external forces, only shaped and limited them. 

• Patterns of behaviors emerge -or arise- in each part and whole out of a multiplicity of interactions, initially invisible and often coming into sight all at once (tipping points). Emerging behaviors are often the only thing visible from parts or wholes that may be hidden from sight (the unknown). 

• Change is made continuous by successions of interactions and relationships generated by the system. Radical change can occur when emergent patterns of change converge and accumulate into systemic change. Possibilities for convergence and amplification of feedback which shape a system's behavior increase with density and tightness of connections.  

In practical terms it means that a systemic approach would concentrate on:

• Encouraging self-organization and self-realization at the local level for the parts to be resilient and to thrive while learning from and empowering one another through expansion of partnerships and interactions; learning both how to work independently  and together at various integrative levels or scales to empower larger  systems and share responsibilities as a way to assure individual  freedoms.

• Encouraging the understanding of how things work and the awareness of emerging behaviors to be responsive, anticipate potential conflict or collaboration and recognize change as it unfolds; and ultimately enable positive trends to be amplified and new learning to be integrated and made applicable.

• Enabling the parts to be aware of other parts and wholes, and the whole system from discovering their behavior, even when they are hidden from view. Enabling them to be aware of how they use and depend of the whole and how they can contribute to keep the whole viable and thriving. 

As complex living systems themselves, described by Elinor Ostrom as “self-organized” and "polycentric", where the people closely involved help “develop rules for themselves", the commons mimic the conflict-free self-organization observable in natural economic systems and can help materialize the need and possibilities for a systemic change.

There are clear opportunities making a commons approach relevant today. These complementary parts seem ineffective mostly for being disconnected. The commons provide a guiding vision and operating principles for learning how to search for the matching parts as the solution, and the system itself will start putting them all together. It provides a role for everyone to play in making the transition to a sustainable future; it provides opportunities for everyone to contribute to organizing efforts in a self-organized and multi-path yet converging way.

Developing the vision - The conditions & dynamics for thriving commons

We focus both on devising means to grow the commons by acting on the most obvious amplifyers and levers, and on developing a commons vision that will inspire, empower and enable the transition, based on principles that can be easily shared, understood and customized at the various 'operational' levels:

• To amplify emerging change, encourage local organization for local needs, users to become producers or stewards of their own resources. Starting on the short term by testing innovative methods in  coordinated regional emergency interventions.

• To accelerate convergence, expand cooperation at higher levels and wider scales, and foster learning and collaboration processes that enable co-creation, co-governance and conflict resolution on multiple scales, adopting subsidiarity principles to define the boundaries of the commons. 

• To protect the viability of the commons, develop a commons sector alongside the private and  public sectors, conferring rights and responsibilities to communities over resources they create or on which they depend. Embedding the commons approach in local and national sustainable strategies. 

• To replenish and grow the commons, develop circular and [re]generative economic models that ensure the conditions under which profit and growth can be viable and sustainable.

• Use finance to grow the commons and restore the natural generative and replenishing functions of the economy, revalue future value, find KPIs that measure progress and the actual creation of common wealth and abundance.

• Stop growing toxic and harmful practices toward the environment, health, human rights. Fight abuses of power and corruption. Establish basic responsibilities.

• To make sense of emerging change, create assessment and reporting systems for transparency and monitoring of impacts, growth of the commons and compliance with sustanability goals and targets.

• Create frameworks and platforms to support the transition and collaboration, make needs and solutions as well as possible partnerships visible and actionable. 

The building blocks

We focus on the dynamic interactions that help build the social and material resiliency necessary for the development of a thriving economic and social fabric at various levels and scales, allowing at the same time for various unintended consequences of human action, and for recovery from natural disasters, pandemics, etc.. We also look into what enables an economic balance between member communities, ensuring rule of common law and accountability underpinned by monitoring and evaluation systems. A critical element is the establishment of a framework for enabling learning, conversation, evaluation in view of decisions and conflict resolution, in a way that can scale horizontally (P2P) and vertically (subsidiarity).

'We' here is the emergent 'collective', all those who undertake converging actions.

Local organization for local needs [P2P, many to many]

Principle: Communities must be encouraged to cultivate and produce their own livelihoods and co-govern their utilities, services and resources, in relational dynamics that foster self-realization and adaptation.

Emergence: A variety of  innovative, creative small and local initiatives and projects are actively pursuing alternative and more sustainable forms of agriculture, industrial production, social and economic organization,  currencies and credit systems, education, (self-)governance, and ways of life. At the edge we find the collaborative and P2P economy.

Amplificators: Communities, groups and individuals develop a sense of ownership of the process, a sense of immediacy and transparency, of shared destiny and emotional experience that foster trust and resilience, and a shared 'commons sense'. Local collaboration and peer to peer (P2P) dependencies are something graspable and immediate, and also expand awareness of what empowers one another and larger systems, creating channels by which they can discover opportunity and be brought into balance.  

Positive feedback: Continual community learning about how those regional systems work should be encouraged and  supported. This is key to sustaining the complexity of larger scales of  integration, and the specialization of remote services that empowers  them. Then trust, co-creation and co-governance  practice and working skills develop at each scale, and so also spread to the whole in a distributed manner. This encourages conflict resolution and transparency  approaches.  It develops a sense of enduring responsibility for the  commons and roles shared with future generations.

Coordinated Regional Emergency Interventions 

Application: An immediate application would be to promote the use and testing of these innovative methods and initiatives in ‘innovation zones’ established in areas damaged by disasters, or to reverse damage caused by past and current  practice.  Promote the study of how interventions affect each scale of the systems they take place in.  Responding to the threats of disasters, cultural and technological dislocations, as a need to develop resiliency and adaptability, and so also anticipating, avoiding and allowing more effective response, should all be be encouraged and funded, now aimed at making the commons work more smoothly as a whole too.   Projects directly aimed at relieving the growth of crippling debt without continued growth of demands on the earth are inseparable from reducing emissions, reversing desertification, soil erosion, deforestation, overfishing, increased disparity between rich and poor,  corruption, abuse of power. 

Expanding cooperation at higher levels and wider scales [subsidiarity principle]

Subsidiarity is an organizing principle stating that a matter ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized authority capable of addressing that matter effectively, and that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.

Principle:  Learning from grassroots community practices and early adopters, fostering growing awareness in each locality of the nature of local and global integration. This would draw from the people-context-interactions- assets-culture-resultant dynamic that defines and powers local relationships to the commons, and enable scaling vertically from there.

Emergence: Simple  principles for a  more realistic and purposeful science of economics and management for an  animated world, drawing from "systems intervention",  "action learning",  "systems thinking" and "whole system assessment"  practices, among others, to deal with the systemic complexity of the  relationships and the shift required.

Amplificators: Promoting "connections" conversations to help build on interactions and facilitate  integrated shifts in larger and smaller scale practices allowing stakeholders to discover new ways to solve their mutual problems. Adopt  appreciative methods of enquiry and conflict resolution, being open to seeing things as they are, to experiment, learn and adjust.  Encourage questioning, learning, discovery and innovation, and our capacity to bootstrap, to invent seeds of  change, plant and nurture them, and evolve. Find ways to work together and actively engage in learning processes that enable co-creation and  co-governance and conflict resolution on all scales.

Positive feedback: Expanding from the above on the "whole system" approach to learn from example, to mimic the  conflict-free self-organization observable in natural economic systems, and other "exemplars" recognized good design; to observe patterns of behaviors emerging and to recognize change as it unfolds, so that theory is always checked against reality of what is observed and emerges, and new learning can be integrated and made applicable. 
Application:  This includes finding the boundaries and governance principles best suited to the needs of the commons at local levels (subsidiarity), acknowledging multiple logically or physically overlapping or intersecting commons, and devising more practical means of enforcement for laws, treaties, and agreements at all levels by making them confirmations of nested and/or fractal common needs.

A Commons Sector, alongside the Private and public sectors

Principle: Reinforcing and developing a sector of the commons alongside the private and public sectors, conferring  rights and responsibilities to communities over resources on which they depend. There is no question here of ending private property or the role of the state. Rather it is to establish a provision for 'sanctuarizing' within appropriately governed institutions a certain number of commons from public or private overexploitation and enclosure to ensure access when exploitation and enclosure for the pursuit of profit impinges on the rights or livelihoods of the users of the commons or the viability of the common. The most obvious examples are the air we breathe or the human or natural genome, the internet is another. Defining modalities would be in the political realm.

Emergence:  New forms of cooperatively or mutually governed organizations to steward the commons at various levels, starting with the enforcement of existing common law.  

Amplificators: The commons must be acknowledged as the foundation of the collaborative free markets needed for the health of competitive free markets, enabled by effective education systems, research and development programs, and universal telecommunications infrastructure that enable distributed networks to operate mutual sense making and exchanges of all kinds.

Positive feedback: This would prevent the double risk of 'Tragedy of the  commons' either from overexploitation by individual parts detrimental to  the whole or from private enclosure and appropriation for the benefit  of the few. This would ensure that the people who have a long-term stake  in the preservation of these resources (natural, physical,  intellectual, social, cultural; from local to global) would protect  them while enabling the development of a flourishing commons-based  economy around them. 

Application: This may include linking and embedding the commons in existing systems  such as the international  commons of Outer Space, Antarctica and the  Law of the Sea.>  See approaches here: Blueprint for P2P society by Michel Bauwens, 'Stewardship Corporations' by Jack Harich; Commons Trusts and Social Charters developped by James Quilligan and the Global Commons Trust.

Transition to a circular economy

      

Our  economy's current purpose is to maximize flows (of goods, capital). It is a machine for perpetual growth that uses its profits and its  knowledge to continually escalate its demands on  humanity and on the  earth and to constantly multiply its capacity to  inflate itself as  private wealth and power. As such, it is brittle and  prone to breakdown,  undermining productive activity as well as leading  to the abuse of the  commons in a never ending spiral.

Principle: The challenge we are facing is to ensure the conditions under which profit and growth can be viable and sustainable, and improve at the same time the material and non-material (intellectual, emotional, spiritual...) wellbeing of the people, and the viability of the commons that enables it. 

Emergence: The "circular economy" model focuses on optimizing the flow of goods and services over time in relation to the size of capital and resources (stocks). It is a replenishing and regenerative model based on closed loops and systems resilience, and the rebuilding of natural and social capital. Products are designed for more complex cycles of disassembly and reuse, the out-design of waste and toxic emissions.
Amplificators: Introducing clarity between consumables and durables, it puts the responsibility of the performance of the product and its becoming as a new resource at the end of its life on the producers, leading to a whole new approach of production, consumption and ownership as it  encourages leasing, renting and sharing while giving way to new approaches of business co-evolution and integration of the commons.

Positive feedback: The circular economy can contribute to create a positive entrainment effect. In the economic sphere there is an acknowledgement that as externalised costs become internalised benefits prices will increasingly reveal full costs. This entails a natural shift towards renewables and internalization of externalities.  In systems terms the system will be exhibiting increased interdependence and the use of different scales, niches and possibiities. See The circular Economy and the Compression Institute.

Application: In the spirit of circular economy closed loop urbanization and community utility & production systems and projects and initiatives that have multiple effects, and serve several different objectives, such as co-generation, closed water/energy/food production systems or solutions such as developed by the Blue Economy or systemic approaches around buildings/energy/transport should be encouraged. 

More generally, sustainability as "circular economy", also involves that whatever available resource or asset businesses or other economic actors don't use, other parts of their environment can, with mutual benefits. This includes local policies to make use of idle resources to strengthen local economies.

Use finance to grow the commons.

Principle: The transition to a circular economy for the investment and financial commons must start at natural limits to profitable growth and for vitality and balance, sustaining investment profitability and guiding investors to higher purposes for their profits than putting money into the productive economy to take growing amounts out of it.  The world economy doesn’t yet have a "purpose" to live better, only to grow and grow even as it becomes unprofitable, brittle and toxic; ignoring a natural need for "maturation", time to turn our attention from inward to outward.

Emergence: The practical transition is for investors of all kinds to find higher purposes for their profits, such as healing both their world and environment, avoiding direct liability for growing hidden impacts, and in the spirit of the commons and well-being. Developing some responsiveness to the emerging and unexpected needs of their environment, and ready to explore errors and omissions in their own teachings and past conclusions, that
living in a changing world may make important. See articles A biomimicry for self-regulating commons and Self Organization as niche making. The Giving Pledge is a move in this direction, that needs to be adequately channelled...

Amplificators: More trivially, shifts from taxing income to taxing depletion of commons such as non renewable resources and waste will reinforce this, as will real world commodities and energy price rises. The removal of perverse subsidies which promote extraction over regeneration or stock over flow would add impetus.

Positive feddback:  Since money and money as debt is an endogenous variable in the whole game an unaltered financial sector undermines efforts and money will work best as a medium of exchange (issued debt free). Other ideas include the use of negative interest rates to promote long term investment in productive activities (see Bernard Lietaer) as against the compound growth driver which is compound interest that systemically reduces future value to negligeable.

Stop growing toxic and harmful practices

 

Application: This process can be accelerated by identifying and targeting investment practices that systemically undermine productive activity and future prospects, such as speculative manipulation of finance instruments and resource shortages, mechanisms causing systemic credit and asset bubbles, development of addictive appetites of various nature at the cost of public, environmental and financial health, the promotion of faster use of depleting resources serving to increase not decrease the economy's dependence on them, etc.  These are both some of the most profitable investments and increase rapidly as people take the profits from them to inflate their investment in them. This include creating incentives, regulations and taxes and eliminating subsidies and loopholes that encourage these practices.

>> As a leverage point: to remedy the above reinforce and enforce anti-corruption laws and eliminate 'legal' corruption and political manipulation by banning or strongly limiting the use of private funds for political financing and political speach.    See: (Larry Lessig, the founder of creative commons is campaigning against this see Republic Lost, Jack Harich's study of political power.

Methods of assessment and reporting

Promote transparency and reporting for monitoring and evaluation systems.   Create  metrics to measure impacts and outcomes, that measure each part's demand on and contribution to the whole, and not just local visible effects.  Provide open access to knowledge, data, and information to allow comparative studies and the correction of misconceptions. Promote a general knowledge commons, and creative commons, allowing all to see inside the silos of others so their different views of common subjects, their values and ideas, can be understood and connected. Share methods for recognizing irreversible processes and anticipating their tipping points of transformation as well as recognizing seeds of change and anticipation of limits of change. Set up processes to ensure that what follows is right and continues to be right, exploring means of confirmation, and a meta-process of reflection and evaluation of measures. Enable trial and error and the possibilities to readjust.  Respond to the abuse of misleading and selective metrics and evaluation systems, defining subjects with only selective variables, and generally assure the fidelity of information to its subjects and their changes.  Apply rules of fiduciary duty to the speach of corporations and lobbyists,   to be liable for being misleading about the true interests of their   investors, customers, employees and other stakeholders, as having   natural concerns for their own and their society's wellbeing. See Jay Youngdahl's expansion of fiduciary law at Harvard.

Frameworks and platforms [tightening connections - amplifying positive feedback]

These approaches would be well supported with frameworks and platforms to deal with the systemic complexity of the relationships and the shift required.  A platform would help the various problematiques and existing initiatives to be made visible to each other and encouraged in the context of a global sustainability & resilience objective, and to connect the dots in order to help people pull and pool resources and collaborate to grow what works for them and for the common good. It would enable learning, exchange of knowledge and experience, engagement,  coordination of cooperation and action, and evaluation, debate, deliberation, decisions of specific projects or outcomes. Ultimately this could facilitate the first steps and adjustments of the formation of commons governance systems that would where required enable the creation of new institutions. (see A Global Framework)

Ultimately, such frameworks and platforms could be an instrument for the transition. It would provide the support for the embodied characteristics of the transition informing principle listed above and the signs of emerging change to become visible as interconnected in a whole. It would enable the discovery of possibilities and the application of solutions at multiple levels throughout the cycles of the transition:

• setting up sensors for detection and sense-making;
• making initiatives and what emerges visible to the whole and to each other 
• understanding issues and what is at stake across silos; 
• inspiring, empowering, enabling people to collaboration and action; 
• facilitating deliberation and implementation;
  
• providing means for horizontal (P2P sharing) and vertical (subsidiarity principle) scaling of processes
  
• diffusing, applying, improving, sustaining solutions 
• monitoring performance, accountability, early detection of new issues and feedback
  

All this in an emergent manner. (See platform project)

 

Thank you to all who have engaged in a common generative and reflective conversation and provided actionable thoughts and material during this and other discussions. In particular: Jessie Henshaw, David Price,Thoebjoern Mann, Nicolas Stampf, Mary  Saunders, TA Balasubramanian, Ken Webster, Douwe Jan Joustra, Dawna Jones, David Alman, Bill Williams, Bill Smith, Dan Strongin, Nick  Ananin, KK Aw, David Hawk, Vlad Kunko, Eero Hollming, Stephen Scott Wright, Patric Roberts,  Gene Bellinger, George Por, Anna Betz, Jack Harich, James Quilligan, Michel Bauwens, Rob Wheeler, Lisinka Ulatowska, Wolfgang Hoeschele, Irma Wilson, Glistening Deepwater, Bonnitta Roy, Erika Ilves, Alex Lavigne Gagnon, Dante Gabriel Monson, Markus Loponen and all the many participants and contributors to this and other discussions.

These discussions have also inspired the intents of "Commons based economic models" submitted to the 2012 RioDialogues.org process  and the various articles on the commons I have posted here.

The various individual and small group outputs of the discussion is available here. This conversation and the Linkedin group discussion format highlighted how difficult it is to capture and harvest collective intelligence to reiterate and reprocess its content effectively, other than doing it 'by hand' in real time... A new tool has been put very recently at our disposal to search and mine the richness of this discussion. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have suggestions.

Another output in the past months is a pealtree map of the alternatives viwed via wikipedia for a start. Many of the concepts explained here can be found on the 'exploring the alternatives' pearltree I started last month: http://www.pearltrees.com/t/team/id5509379

Rio+20 – Tragedy of the Commons 2.0?

 

Are the discussions on sustainability at Rio about to end once more with no serious commitment to the fundamental transformations needed? These coming three days will be decisive with heads of state coming to a closure at the end of the week. They are summoned to exercise leadership and face their responsibilities.

The feedback received from Rio is unpromising, after mobilizing for proposals via The Future We Want and other avenues for feedback and recommendation, most of the organizations representing civil society feel they have hardly been able to get their voice heard and they are now circulating a petition on The Future We Don’t Want… An admission of failure and the sentiment of having been played? Gro Harlem Brundtland herself, the chair of the sustainability commission that shaped the 1992 summit and introduced the concept of sustainability, and a member of the Global Sustainability Panel that prepared the 2012 summit calls upon world leaders to move beyond aspirational statements and exercise a collective responsibility for planetary stewardship… It seems the whole UN sustainability machine and the efforts deployed by its ‘forces for good’ to drive an agenda based on planet and people resilience and inclusion are being proven useless by a process which is leading to strengthening the power of the corporate sector over the biosphere… Tragedy of the commons 2.0 is unfolding…

Discussions so far in Rio seem to offer an avenue for an ‘all economic’ agenda, one which is feared by many as creating a ‘more of the same’ [neoliberal] economy, except it can be painted green, so more legitimate in the eyes of the public…  This agenda, based on the postulate that we only value that which has a price and an owner, and generates profits, poorly addresses issues such as limits to growth, boundaries, poverty, risk, rogue behaviors, governance and accountability. It does not include any of the provisions for internalizing externalized costs or elimination of subsidies on polluting or overexploiting operations to the detriment of cleaner and more sustainable solutions (and in particular fossil fuels). Of course, the economic and financial crisis and the somewhat schizophrenic positions on growth (to be contained for environmental concerns, but sought out for socio-economic concerns) are not making things easier…

Optimists are hoping that a 'non constrained' green economy approach will initiate virtuous circles and positive results overall… Privatization (or the outsourced ‘caring’ for resources & the environment to those who will know how to manage them efficiently) is seen as a solution to the tragedy of the commons: with no owner, no one cares... Markets for carbon or environmental services are seen as ideal solutions to regulate overexploitation and pollution. The corporate sector is called upon to restore land, forest, and deploy new technologies. But where are the boundaries, inclusion, resilience, accounting and accountability mechanisms to prevent the green economy to be an institutionalized free ride, and who will enforce them? Is this optimism sustainable?

As a result, the People Summit held dialogues outside of the UN participation structure and published 'Another Future is Possible' in direct opposition to the orientations the UN negociators have been taking in the past few months. Their position is very clear: the green economy as defined in the negociations deepens “the commodification, privatization, and financialization of nature and its functions. It is a reaffirmation of full control of the entire biosphere by the economy” and is to be rejected.

The document urges to break out of the capitalist “civilization” model which has proven its domineering and destructive power… and suggests an alternative social model built around environmental and social justice and on the ethical value of care, cohabitation, and sharing… The new economy, the Social Forum argues, must be build around the principle of care as the central element of power.

Because of its resolute anti-capitalist tone, we can't really expect such a program or any significant portion of it to be adopted as a model at the end of this week... It is however a wake up call against the risks of the green economy. The demonstrations and discussions the People Summit has generated can certainly help those who are promoting, from within the agencies and civil society participation structures of the UN, the idea of a commons based approach as a safeguard against the cooptation of the commons discourse and of the commons themselves by the corporate or private interests, as well as a way to reinforce engagement and organic policy making at the grassroot level, such as Elinor's Ostrom describes in her last article. Introducing and occupying assertively the commons in all its dimensions from within the mainstream as a paradigm complementary to private and public may well accelerate the transition to a new post-capitalist model.

The big risk of the discussions in Rio is that price tags be attached or speculative markets be created on nature goods and services with arbitrages motivated by the wrong objective (using the meaning of commons in its most restricted way) without this policentric and multilevel notion of commoning and sustainable governance and preservation.
 
We must transcend the dilemma of chosing between on the one hand the financialization and enclosure of nature when there is a value attached, and on the other hand having no means for check and balances and accountability when nature is too priceless to put a tag on it. Adopting the green economy as it seems to be shaped, or opposing it from the outside could well be tragedy of the commons 2.0…
 
Commons need to be 'sanctuarized' fast. It is urgent that all the 'forces for good' inside and outside mainstream institutions, and the UN negociators, the governments and the heads of state understand the risks of corporate dominance over the commons (alltogether defined as a 'capital', a way of sharing and caring, and the outcomes it embodies) under the green economy label. They must recognize the need for the commons to be preserved, managed and governed independently from the private and the public sectors, in the spirit described by Nobel Prize for economy Elinor Ostrom. A green economy operated under the checks and balances of commons governance institutions (of a new inclusive type) such as commons trusts governed by social charters, bringing togehther users and stakeholders in the decision process would provide such a safeguard.  It would ensure that the people who have a long‐term stake in the preservation of these commons (natural, physical, intellectual, social, cultural resources; from local to global) would protect them while enabling the development of flourishing commons‐based economies around them.

We are waiting for the head of states to show they are up to the task, and counting on the activists to make enough noise for some key messages to get through while sanctuarizing the commons from the classic polarization of political discourse, even if commons discourse is eminently political!

The Commons at the Core of our Next Economic Models?

Photo: Sylvan Sunset | Scott Carpenter CC BY

Every day new voices speak up against the toxicity of an economy based on credit-fueled growth depleting finite resources and destroying much of the social fabric in the process.

Suicide Economics

There is a growing acknowledgement that something is wrong and will not get better. David Korten notably describes mainstream economics as suicide economics, and suicide economists as notorious for their lack of understanding of life:

“Suicide economics gets it wrong on nearly every major issue because it is built on a foundation of fallacies.  It ignores natural limits, confuses means and ends, uses the wrong measure of value and the wrong unit of analysis, and it relies on a single improperly defined criterion function.”

A few months earlier the secretary general of the UN himself had called for revolutionary thinking and action:

“For most of the last century, economic growth was fuelled by what seemed to be a certain truth: the abundance of natural resources. We mined our way to growth. We burned our way to prosperity. We believed in consumption without consequences. Those days are gone.

In the 21st century, supplies are running short and the global thermostat is running high. Climate change is also showing us that the old model is more than obsolete. It has rendered it extremely dangerous. Over time, that model is a recipe for national disaster. It is a global suicide pact.

So what do we do in this current challenging situation? How do we create growth in a resource-constrained environment? How do we lift people out of poverty while protecting the planet and ecosystems that support economic growth? How do we regain the balance? All of this requires rethinking.”

The two suggest that new economic models could help recover a sense of living harmoniously with the world and the Earth. A year later nothing has changed.

Getting to root causes

So how can this be achieved? Both the Institute for Policy Studies in DC co-chaired by Korten and the Global Sustainability Panel of the UN which presented its Resilient People Resilient Planet: A future Worth Choosing report to the Secretary General last January suggest policy frameworks based on new indicators, means for innovation and entrepreneurship, for resilience and empowerment, incentives for long-term investments. The IPC adds banking and market regulations, and more equitable distribution of wealth to the mix. The UN GSP Panel recommends the adoption of some form of externality accounting and activation of political will.

What strikes me in all the discussions, beyond a converging recognition of what is broken, is that very few of the solutions address the multidimensional crisis we are going through and its root causes in systemic and dynamic ways.

This is a question I asked on the Systems Thinking World group on LinkedIn. And the outcome is clear. After more than a year and five thousand posts, we have come up with very few systemic answers capable of effectively turning the vicious circle into a virtuous one (or at least no one has shared such a model in our discussion).  

Most of the responses revolved around alternatives aimed to replace the old with the new, or around concepts and paradigm shifts that have no material representation or shared definition and provide little scaffolding to hook applications onto for scope and scale.

The best systemic analysis I have found to date is from Jack Harich from Thwink.org. Jack identifies two major necessary couplings to achieve. A social coupling between corporate and human life forms and an economic coupling between economy and environment. He argues that all the ‘truths’ and solutions necessary to operate these couplings already exist and are well known but that classical activism continuously fails to succeed because it deals poorly with the ultimate root cause of change resistance which is found in the effectiveness of political deceptiveness –and this is where Occupy actually makes a difference because the movement focuses on root causes and leverage points rather than piecemeal demands. 

As hinted by the Un Global Sustainability Panel, and in this recent interview of Joe Stiglitz, the issue is above all one of political will and power ascendency in political decision making. It is also one that requires the adoption of a framework that can influence policy and mobilize private initiatives just as ‘growth’ has done in the past decades.

Accelerate coupling & power breakthrough

So how do we accelerate the emergence of new economic models that deal with the challenges we are facing in a systemic way? How do we lay the ground for both a social and economic coupling and a political breakthrough?

What could constitute an effective transformational model? An umbrella under which our aspirations could be gathered? A tree from which to grow a wealth of micro and macro solutions? A social object that could mobilize efforts so as not to leave the healing of our ills to the adoption of scattered and confidential initiatives and to the natural evolution of consciousness and behaviors… while time is running out…

Could a new economic model be built around the commons? Think a minute. What are the commons? All the things that we inherit from past generations that we 'find' around us, which enable our livelihood. The natural, genetic, material, physical, social, cultural, intellectual, creative resources; the capital and assets that belong to no one or to humanity collectively, that enable us to become what we can become, live what we can live, access what we can access, accomplish what we can accomplish and evolve as part of an ecosystem. They are the pillars around which the social and economic couplings can be catalyzed, where the corporation can meet society’s needs and where economy can meet ecology.

The School of Commoning's campaign for Commons Literacy

From straight growth to growth of the commons

This excerpt from poet Stephen Collis’ talk at “The Tragedy of the Market: from Crisis to Commons,” gathering last January in Vancouver nicely brings together commons and living systems around the notion of metabolic commons. He suggests that “Taken as a whole, all life, all production and reproduction, begins in the commons” and asks “what if the goal of our economy, or our social metabolism, was to return to the commons so that the commons at the end of our social metabolism was just as healthy and full, as a totality, as it was at the beginning of our life process?”

If we treated commons as assets that must be preserved and nurtured, then they would gain some tangibility as socio-economic objects -even when they are intangible-. And if we take this principle of growth of the commons as a starting point for an economic model, we could derive a value and accounting system to measure inventories, flows and variations, we could create all kinds of economic instruments.

Setting up accountability against free rides, i.e. the depletion of the commons, and accounting for externality costs is easier on the basis of asset or risk management systems than it is on the basis of sustainability reporting.

If as the saying goes, anything that can be measured can be improved, taking a commons approach to the economy would enable the creation of a systemic macroeconomic conceptual framework and value system based on the growth of the commons that would help the development of an effective microeconomic sustainability practice.

A new narrative

The conceptual framework of a commons based economic model would enable a series of narratives anchored in the socio-political-economic-environmental and integral spheres...

It would bridge and provide a coherence and mutual-reinforcement to a variety of concepts and perspectives such as life, living systems, sustainability, thrivability, alternatives, edge & mainstream, corporate social responsibility, well-being, millennium goals, development, ecology, economy, community, relationships, gift, shared & sacred economy, circular economy, big & small, local & global, old & new economy… It would find some form of mainstream legitimacy in the metrics and mechanics of an economic model, but it would also be truly systemic because it would address the ‘why’ rather than the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. It would be dynamic because it would incorporate a time intergenerational dimension.  

Last week, I discovered a description of the demise of capitalism somewhere I wouldn’t have suspected it: the news letter of Jeremy Grantham, founder of the $100bn GMO asset management firm summarized in this BusinessWeek article. In particular, Grantham takes a stance against damage to the commons and discounted future values, which threatens future livelihood and assigns no value to our grandchildren…

"Damage to the “commons,” known as “externalities” has been discussed for decades, although the most threatening one – loss of our collective ability to feed ourselves, through erosion and fertilizer depletion – has received little or no attention. There have been no useful tricks proposed, however, for how we will collectively impose sensible, survivable, long-term policies over problems of the “commons.” To leave it to capitalism to get us out of this fix by maximizing its short-term profits is dangerously naïve and misses the point: capitalism and corporations have absolutely no mechanism for dealing with these problems, and seen through a corporate discount rate lens, our grandchildren really do have no value."

Assets speak to asset people. This is a direct invitation for a conversation on the emergence of a commons-based economy outside of the traditional market vs state political polarization.

A kick-off Conversation

The conversation will receive a great boost during a series of 12 seminars on the Emergence of a Commons-Based Economy in London in May  (7^th-18^th).

The event will be facilitated by James Quilligan, Chairman for the Secretariat of Global Commons Trust and Managing Director of the Centre for Global Negotiations, currently collaborating with several United Nations agencies on global commons issues.

The seminars will be convened by participating organizations such as NEF, the Finance Innovation Lab and the Civil Society Forum around questions such as:

• How would a commons approach shape the future of finance? 
• What power does the concept of the “commons” have for creating a world that sees wellbeing, social justice and environmental limits as central to its modus operandi?
• Can science of complex systems help us manage the local and global commons better?
• How can we adjust our organizational models, systems and ways of working to better steward the commons?

James Quilligan's overview of the focus themes selected by the convening participants shows how these themes inter-relate in the context of the key economic, political, and social issues of the Commons.

The closing seminar will be the articulation of a Convergence vision, building on materials from the event, to develop practical, workable proposals for the a 'commons for the commons', not a set of solutions but a process for reaching such solutions, a meeting place for educational, research and project cooperation among interested individuals and organizations. This includes reflecting on new forms of commons-based social institutions, new engines of innovation and value creation.

Providing for the next steps

The School of Commoning who is the co-organizer of the event has set up a crowdfunding site to collect funds for a free, educational "commons economy" toolkit, downloadable  worldwide, which will be comprised of videos, an e-book and a knowledge map.

I am participating in this initial project by volunteering and giving as this is the first step of an ambitious plan to roll out the platform project to engage for the commons that I refer to in my previous posts, and create the ecology for conscious evolution and transformative action around the commons that I have been dreaming of for the past year.

The commons is what gives life to WE, all of us. Adopting a commons based economy is what will transform the finite game into an infinite game, the tragedy of the commons into the triumph of the commons. 

Please join us in the adventure! Help us fund the project, enter the conversation, share your dreams, passions and intentions. How would you envision a new commons-based economy?

Time to Activate Agency & Action

To Bring About a Sustainable Economy

 

We are facing a systemic crisis of great magnitude, which requires radical thinking and action at all levels. We find ourselves in a logic that tells us that the system can only survive and thrive with more growth in an open-ended chain of production and consumption.  This requires ever more credit –which caused a crash in the first place- and the use of yet more natural resources… We live however on a finite planet, with finite reserves. The system cannot mechanically absorb such exponential growth in consumption of energy and other resources at the current stage of our technologies and practices, and in the current state of the world’s finances. This perpetual machine model, supported by the 20% wealthiest on the planet – to which any one of us reading this article belongs – however justified by the noble objective of elevating greater numbers to the middle class worldwide, is mindless of its impossibility and spiraling side effects that make the problem even worse. Even if our economies picked up a bit in the near future and if the credit crisis was eased off, even if climate change was not the ‘reality’ some think it may be and even if we continued to find oil and gas reserves and energy efficiencies to buy some time, we would not be able to infinitely exploit a finite environment, and we would be facing the limits of the earth’s carrying capacity within the next decades, this century, with price tensions on raw material and pressures on financial and social systems that would put economies, people and the planet at enormous risk. The problematic won’t go away… It will hit us harder –permanently?- next time… 

Mourning the Future

The animated documentary below is a good one to illustrate the interconnection between growth and fossil fuels and the impacts of its intensive use, our dependence and its rarefaction, with climate change left aside: 

 

I shared this video widely, although it contains a few inaccuracies and the happy ending falls quite short, wondering if it wasn’t feeding the doom discourse that causes over pessimists to hide helplessly in their shelters and expect the sky to fall upon them… As a natural and active realistic optimist I think I am not contributing to the gloom. I will not however blindly assume that solutions will emerge on their own, like they always have...  neither will I consider the perspective of a total breakdown as a negligible remote probability, hardly accounted for in risk management. I prefer to take the ‘enlightened catastrophism’ approach of French philosopher Jean Pierre Dupuy, who suggests that holding the possibility of a catastrophe credible enables us to become more proactive and to chose, among all options available, those that will in the end push the catastrophe away or make it acceptable...  Wouldn’t it be wiser indeed to acknowledge that all things remaining equal, there actually may very well be No Tomorrow, and after having Mourned the Future as Dupuy calls it, to move on to make tomorrow possible again?

What does a thriving tomorrow look like?

What is there to do? What story can we tell? As much as the documentary is showing us in a sequence how we will reach the breakdown, is there an equivalent scenario on how our vision of a brighter future will unfold and materialize?

I have been on a quest for a while, involved in several group discussions around sustainability, change, new technologies, on how to make the world a better place, or to stop engaging in these 'suicidal' activities, with people from various backgrounds, cultures, age, disciplines…

Conversations are taking place everywhere. There is something palpable in the air, a feeling that ‘Something is happening here’ to quote Thomas Friedman in the New York Times last fall.

From, once more, the pessimists’ angle: talks of a Great Disruption, a subject dear to environmentalist Paul Gilding who describes quite well this notion of infinite consumption of finite resources, but also claims a breakdown is necessary before effective change occurs:

 

And from the optimists’ perspective: signs of a Big Shift, as John Hagel likes to describe, expressed in a swarming of ideas and possibilities that announce a new era, made possible by science and technology. Optimism is  epitomized here by Peter Diamandis co-founder of the Singularity University in his Ted talk: Abundance is our future.

And here they are the two of them, Guilding and Diamantis in a debate. Well... both of them are probably right... you need the ingenuity of inventors and innovators to be ready to roll out bottom up effective technological solutions, but you also need the political will and the genuine involvement of corporations and governments to create the conditions favorable for these solutions to get implemented at a sufficient scale, not only in getting out of the way, but in espousing some basic operating principles for sustainable business and governance to happen... 

What gives me the most hope because it talks to human nature is Charles Eisenstein's vision of "the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible" beautifully expressed in Ian MacKenzie's video of Eisenstein's Sacred Economics. But this should go further to show how this is doable, not just a dream, how it could scale and become effective:

 

From a realistic perspective, the transformation needs to be undertaken not only from the periphery but also from within existing institutions. The World Economic Forum too presented a case for a Great Transformation, and shared a forceful call to action video as an introduction to its 2012 Global Agenda. The need for a transformation seems to generate lots of talk. But there isn’t much visible action yet… the brewing is under the surface…

The world has entered an intense mode of conjecture and research, of trial and error, that precedes the birth of something new. Various possible paths, many needs to fulfil, many sensitivities, expectations and aspirations are driving us. We each have our explanation of what is going wrong, we have a vision of the future, an angle or a lens from which we see tomorrow. Some want to impose their own view, others wish to embrace and connect them all. But when we ask each other and ourselves what the solutions are, what is coming next, the question hardly finds a response.  Even when systemic solutions and levers are known, we don't quite know collectively where to start, we can't collectively anticipate which steps to take moment after moment... There is no universal model to apply, no global one-size-fits-all solution to roll out top down that could be agreed on.

There are however innovative models being explored and experienced on the field... When we dig a little deeper, we find sustainable solutions swarming everywhere, ready to be implemented, projects to start trying out, new clean technologies ready to be implemented or further developed that could secure Energy-Food-Water supply, regenerate local economies and provide sustainable alternatives to existing challenges and the bio and geo-engineered ‘blanket’ solutions that are being considered.  However because most of them are developed as entrepreneurial ventures locally, these initiatives appear as scattered efforts and seem invisible…  a drop in the ocean… a whisper in the noise…

Making possibilities visible and accessible, helping navigate possibilities and course of action, showing how they combine to impact and evolve -what I have described in my article here is one of the challenges for those who are building the strategies, tools and solutions for tomorrow.

Towards a distributed economy

The path that seems to materialize is made of multiple paths emerging organically from the development of agency and capability at the user or citizen and community levels. Something A shift, enabled by a growing capacity for self expression bootstrapped by technologies, from a decentralized top down hierarchical model, to a distributed model. A natural movement toward autonomy, resilience and sustainability that manifests in many areas. This orientation toward local empowerment and access to resources is a real motive for hope and what we should work to consolidate.

• We see it with internet enabled access to independent information combined with extended authorship and voicing capacities to challenge the existing order. This is has affected the press industry, politics, intellectual property, collaboration and business to consumer relationships.

• We see many alternatives to fossil fuel and nuclear energy co-generated locally, making use of what is available, reducing online losses and waste and unnecessary dependencies.  Gunter Pauli’s Zeri and Blue Economy are a good example.
  

 

• We see local traditional agro ecology providing up to twice the yields of mass agriculture, addressing systemically at the same time regeneration of soil, water and energy and the [re]construction of community life and economies.  This is supported by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Report: Agro-ecology and the right to food  or with examples such as the Savory Institute’s holistic management of land and numerous bio intensive and permaculture initiatives.

• We see the development of open source production and 3D manufacturing that enable to build goods and spare parts locally on demand and the growing number of fab labs, hacker and maker spaces around the world, that combined with the growing and unsuspectedly significant penetration of mobile phones in every remote part of the globe provide access to new types of products and services adapted to actual social and economic needs.

 

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• We see the development of local and alternative consumption and monetary systems based on the sharing Economy, collaborative consumption, barter, alternative currencies, mutual credit, and the return return of the girft economy as described by Charles Eisenstein in his book Sacred Economics.
  

• We see new corporate structures and management practices emerge that favor autonomized teams and distributed decision making or new ways of doing business. These are embodied in corporations such as Semco, or management hack platforms such as Gary Hamel’s Management Exchange
  

Robustness is acquired through flexibility. Agile is replacing solid. A circular regenerative, waste-is-nutrient, cradle-to-cradle approach is replacing the linear exploitive extract /produce /consume /dispose logic.

This doesn’t necessarily entail the re-localization and re-fractioning of everything. What is vital and more effective when centralized/ decentralized for social, economic and environmental reasons is likely to remain so. The principle of subsidiarity that stipulates that matters ought to be handled and commons governed at the most relevant and effective level in terms of agency, capability and outcome is likely to provide a good criterion to define governance boundaries.  Transforming politics and governance into an effective operating system is another challenge of the coming decade.
 

Our mindsets, institutions, infrastructures are currently systemically dysfunctional because they are conceived for branching out and establishing exchanges along designed paths that solidify - and channel overexploitation- with time and size (the decentralized tree model), with each node empowered through its upstream nodes. The natural movement described above is pushing towards paths that form to respond to specific needs (the distributed brain model) with each node self-and context- empowered and (re)forming connections on ad hoc basis.

If the sustainable economy is to be built on distributed solutions, tailored to needs and available resources in concert with local stakeholders, the way these solutions will be diffused and implemented at a scale that makes them become more than a series of scattered initiatives and a pace relevant to the urgency of the situation we are facing is another challenge we will be facing.

What new infrastructures, structures, institutions need to be in place to facilitate this process?  How can the current decentralized networks and institutions operating under the old paradigm, who have a firing power, a surface, a presence, to move mountains, be put to work to bring about the new rather than fuel the systemic failure mentioned above, without adopting the new models just to perpetuate the old abuses?  How can they be transformed? Distributing and enabling a sustainable economy from the periphery as well as from ‘within’ is requirement for a swift transition. The shift required is massive.  It cannot happen with alternative solutions and through social entrepreneurship alone.

The major challenge of morphing from an overall hierarchical model to a more sustainable and distributed model is one of distributing leadership, decision, and capability. This requires actors to be empowered and enabled for participation and action at the local level and requires political will within the current structures and institutions. There is a huge gap between local and people aspirations and what current institutions and governance structures are ready to offer and particularly what they are ready to renounce. We are dealing in the political.

It seems clear that the mainstream is progressively coming to senses. Pockets of consciousness in the corporate world, such as demonstrated in the sustainable consumption initiative of the WEF or as Corporation2020  dedicated to blend sustainability into the design, ownership, governance, strategy and practices of the corporation, or furthermore McKinsey backed Circular Economy rationale for an accelerated transition presented by the Ellen McArthur foundation are clearly showing directions. Insurance companies and re-insurance companies will eventually push the requirement for externality costing now endorsed by the UN to another dimension, if the increase of resource prices don’t do the job fast enough.  This process needs to be helped and accelerated further.

If today’s leaders and change agents can’t design and engineer global top down solutions, they can help create contexts and conditions and generate processes and dynamics to activate and accelerate self directed, emergent, evolutionary breakthroughs, that would help the 'willing', the 'bridge builders' within the mainstream to start a transition process from where they are located.

I have been exploring for a while the ways to "activate" human agency and political will, in the lines described in my  "We Move... building an ecology for transformative action" set of slides. In this other post I describe an action-oriented strategy and process methodology for generating engagement and accountability in the political, economic, social and environmental spheres. Inspired by Elinor Estrom's "Governing The Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action" with the objective of turning around the tragedy of the commons.

This all revolves around ACTIVATION.  Activation of human agency and what Clay Shirky calls the cognitive surplus, activation of political will, activation of possibilities, activation of on the ground action and implementation at all possible levels and of all possible kinds.

These are the challenges that we change agents are facing now!

Engaging Commons - Update on The Knight Foundation News Challenge

The finalists of the Knight Foundation News Challenge were announced on April 13th, and unfortunately, our project did not make it. We will nonetheless pursue it as we believe time has come for such a platform to become a reality. Here is where we are at, just a few weeks after framing the project and bringing it from an idea to a possibility.

Our Advisory & Concept/Project Development team has grown nicely:

• Sabine Amend: Bridge Builder and Movement facilitator 
• Tom Atlee: Founder, co-director and director of research of the Co-Intelligence Institute
• Michel Bauwens: Founder of the P2P Foundation
• Giorgio Bertini: Founder of the Learning Change Project
• Nadia El Imam: Creative Director of Edgeryders – Council of Europe
• Helene Finidori: Strategy & Experience Design - Creator of the concept and project
• George Por: Founder and Chairman of the Community Intelligence consultancy and the School of Comoning
  
• David Price: Co-founder of the DebateGraph.
• Bonnitta Roy: Process Philosopher and Meta-System Designer
• Caroline Smalley: The Citizens Media Tech development strategy
• Irma Wilson: Innovation and community

What I love in the process is that this is already an emergence platform: I announced that we would endeavor to bring "edge thinkers and doers into the process for advancement of platform design in the fields of learning and action research, social change, governance, institutions, participatory politics, collective action, sustainability, business, collaboration, design and systems thinking, linguistics, semantic web." Well this is manifesting as we speak!

Paul Hawken describes the challenge of sustainability and activist movements that he sees converging into an unnamed and shapeless 'movement' in his book Blessed Unrest:

" ... as yet there has been no coming together of organizations in a united front that can counter the massive scale and power of the global corporations and lobbyists that protect the status quo.
...The as yet undelivered promise of this movement is a network of organizations that offer solutions to disantangle what appear to be insoluble dilemmas: poverty, global climate change, terrorism, ecological degradation, polarization of income, loss of culture, and many more. The world seems to be looking for the big solution, which is itself part of the problem, since the most effective solutions are both local and systemic. Although the groups in the movement are autonomous, the coming together of different organizations to address an array of issues can effectively become a systemic approach. Although the movement may appear inchoate or naively ambitious, its underlying structure and communication techniques can, at times, create a collective social response that can challenge any institution in the world."

 

What we are trying to do here, rather than to organize a movement, is to provide a 'space', a dynamic and some tools, the conditions to inspire, empower and enable these organizations and all the individuals and entities who aspire to a thrivable future, to come together to learn and dialogue, to evaluate actions and possibilities, to address these issues and become stewards of the commons in synergy. Each of us from the place we are at, at our own pace, and following our own principles and purposes...

If I had a 'mission statement' to write, as of today it would be:

"Engaging people and entities that are concerned with issues and the welfare of the commons into issues or commons-based governance and accountability networks, thus creating an environment for on-going conversations, learning and repeated interactions so that resources can be pooled, and informed systemic and leveraged action can emerge at all levels required, from the local to the global level, from the grassroots to the institutional level. This is done through a pull and evaluation mechanism and the integration of open source tools to inspire, empower and enable all the forces for good to converge meaningfully and effectively"

 

 

What the Comments Tell Us:

The positive:

 

“There's nothing more urgent than supporting the emergence of real, participatory democracy and its collective intelligence and wisdom. You're bringing together the right disciplines in a potent mix, striking a masterful balance between orchestrating the process and nurturing emergence.” George - London

“I think you´ve got what looks like an interesting approach here. There is a need for structures that support network based action and collaboration between individuals around larger projects or aims, beyond the traditional stakeholder based initiatives. Especially when the participants are in different physical locations as the structures to support intra-national transatlantic initiatives are not really there.” Nadia - Strasbourg

“The platform has the potential to not just be "An ecology and process methodology structured around issues as social objects, designed to generate emerging forms of advocacy and governance." It could also be structured around a root cause analysis and model of the system. (analysis objects) It could be designed to generate emerging forms of high leverage solutions that advocates would promote. Since these are based on a deep, structured analysis of the system, the result would be much more likely to result in better forms of governance.” Jack - Atlanta

“I believe this to be an extremely important development. It is getting interested people together to deliberate and eventually act on important social issues, but it's really more than that. It could, in the future, be a core system to enable democratic government. This is a major trend for society - for how we choose to organize ourselves for best outcomes.” Sepp - Berlin

 

“This looks like an important piece of work to consider. I am not sure I fully understand the idea you have but I do know that we are losing a sense of involvement in all democracies and they need to be reawakened. Democracies and the involvement in communities that keep them fresh and evolving are urgent.” Carol – Seattle

Creating rivers of PULL -- from the most able, interested, intellectually capable -- to gather advocacy for political will and to curate & give access to knowledge, is IMHO not one but THE most important thing we can do next with this technology at this stage of our unfolding. Knight Foundation would illustrate their deep understanding of the creativity and innovation that lies at the heart of the network, specially the network of humans who care about the whole, by selecting this project. Irma – Johannesburg

 

"It's the people raising their hands in authentic accountability who shall earn 'the peoples' respect. The leaders of the future will be those able to understand and embrace the importance of collaboration whereby traditional/hierarchical systems of governance are turned on their head. This model will work because of the fundamental principles that relate to demand and supply. As authenticity becomes the demanded/expected approach, so the power of 'pull to engage' will take the world by storm. Thinking must (and WILL) change from survival of the fittest to unity." Caroline - Vancouver

I believe that those large map views may help to direct agency efforts into systemic change, acting at several environments with different methods, looking into scalable and replicable solutions, filling the map and giving density to it. Populating and increasing density with diversity may be a sound whole strategy. In that sense this project may play a big role. I would like to read it also simultaneously with cohere-compendium means. Giorgio – Santiago de Chile

 This looks like the most comprehensive proposal out there! Love the integration with community and capacity. Way to Go! Bonnitta – Winsted Connecticut

 I love the feedback loops and systems thinking here. Sabine – Boulder

 A very attractive and ambitious idea : if the first engagement issues are chosen well ("pick your battles"...), it can snowball into a magnificient form of enlightened governance. Patrick – Paris

 Helene and Team Commons: I really appreciated reading your proposal and especially the links. Your team are all systems thinkers, and you have committed to working on a planetary basis within the highest level of organizational structures spaceship earth has. You folks are so way ahead of most herein simply because you know what the real game is and are playing it big time with the big boys and girls! I just love your team, project, and energy! Mike – Eugene Oregon

This is a brilliant blueprint for an action-oriented metamoderation model, and has the potential to turn the tragedy of the commons into the triumph of the commons if implemented properly. Keith – San Francisco

To my non-expert ear, it sounds like this is a pitch for "the Internet". Jonathan – Chicago

 Good stuff. "issues as social objects" Mike – Wood Creek, Illinois

 The strength in your outline is getting the appropriate stake holders involved and help organise groups of people into collective action. Chris – Adelaide (from my blog post)

I like this very much. It articulates with a number of things I've been working with over the years. Joe – Alexandria VA (from my blog post)

 

“Dissemination of information for transformational action is key, which is precisely what I like about this project… Engaging citizen action in the developed world, one thing in particular I like about Helene's proposed network, is it's future potential for connecting with another project we're working on that's focused on Africa. That project in Africa will be developed in partnership with www.ideorg.org, and revolves around implementing grassroots approaches for driving community empowerment from within… By connecting Helene's proposed network to this and the broader CM network it will allow for the flow of resources and information as well as the connection between a much broader group of relevant stakeholders. The challenge will be to create participation and buy-in across the stakeholder groups in each network, enabling the push-pull to active and grow on its own as interactions increase. By interconnecting dynamic content on scalable networks each focused on a fulfilling a core need, potential for collaboration will know no end! One thing's for sure: the time to act is NOW!” Warren – Chandler AZ

"Dear Helene, Thank you for the link to your earlier graphic and document. I really like your graphics very much. They're very suggestive of system dynamics models or mixed models using system dynamics. Thanks also for the link to your We Move presentation. It's beautifully done. I'll look forward to keeping up and collaborating on transformations." Joe - Washington D.C.

The Advice

The platform has great capacities but requires consistent efforts that increase the number of people using it as a meeting place, and helping people understand and apply the information in their local communities. Funding intermediary projects that help outline complex problems into blueprints and virtual work groups, would be of great benefit. Daniel – Chicago

If you could pick three specific examples to illustrate how the world will be wildly different through the impact of these tools/the whole approach: Paint us a picture, what might/will have happened? I love the feedback loops and systems thinking here - and I find it easier to understand processes and implications from a sensory (see, taste, touch, smell., move..) perspective of a future vision. Would you be willing to illustrate? Take me/us on that journey in the context of your aspirations? Sabine – Boulder

I am not sure I fully understand the idea you have but I do know that we are losing a sense of involvement in all democracies and they need to be reawakened. Carol - Seattle

I haven't been able to fully grasp what this actually is or how and why various players would use it, but I get occasional glimpses, flashes of sunlight through the clouds of my incomprehension. In those momentary glimpses, a number of related ideas and initiatives pop into my mind, which I offer here. Tom – Eugene Oregon (from my blog post)

I would strongly encourage an emphasis on tangible prototypes, because I have trouble understanding what this will actually produce. To my non-expert ear, it sounds like this is a pitch for "the Internet". Jonathan – Chicago

You are talking to the wrong crowd here. 99% of the folks in this Challenge are into pieces not whole systems. They are attempting to solve a specific problem with a specific solution, even if they mash this and mash that together. Read all of the proposals in this Challenge, follow all of the links the proposals take you to and map each one against your excellent "design map". Mash-up whatever you select which will approximate your design map, make sure it is tightly integrated, and stay away from anything you have to create yourself. Performance on that stage will determine where and how you get to play next. You will get your funding and a chance to build something incredible only if you deliver something very tight and cool using COTS...commercial off the shelf technologies/techniques/tools... Mike – Eugene Oregon

“People need a 'hook' / the beginning of a reel of the thread from where what's created can evolve. Initiating this project through a simple prototype in the design phase is such an important step. Integrating leverage 'ratings' for building momentum to the push/pull affect then transposing those ratings onto visual maps will soon create an interesting story. Sow and let grow. As Seth Godin would say: 'Small Is The New Big.' Make it engaging to get informed; Give people specific 'easy to do' actions that each word toward driving sustainable reform; Provide simple visuals for individuals to 'feel good' about the result.” Warren – Chandler AZ

 

Pick your battles - Just a few concrete examples…

-  how to best deploy quickly decent emergency shelters after disasters (floods, tsunami, earthquakes, etc. ), lasting up to 2-3 years and yet very cheap ?
- could there be a ratio of one tree per urban dweller in all cities ? Is it desirable, and how to achieve that ?
- should the rewards of intellectual property -when applicable- be granted for duration (as is the case for patents or copyright) or volume concerned ? In other words, should the price of a software, a song, or a drug, automatically decrease when x thousands or millions have been sold ?
- etc. Patrick - Paris

 

Offers for help

 

“If you're interested in collaboration, why not consider the substantive commons knowledge repository we already built in the community knowledge garden of the School of Commoning. Helene, working with you and the crew on that translation [of design in technology terms] would be for me a dream coming true! Here's why. I started working on Internet-based collaboration and collective intelligence systems in the early 80s, learned from Doug Engelbart, and since then designed Innovation Architectures in dozens environments, both in the pre-Web and the Web era, (e.g. Lotus Notes, Drupal, various wikis, WordPress, Compendium, iCohere, etc.) During all that time, my vision were many years ahead what technology could do and what people recognized as desirable.” George - London

 

“I´d be happy to share my/our experiences from building Edgeryders and explore the possibility of collaborating around this.” Nadia – Strasbourg

 

“It appears that by using the analysis model in the paper, plus the Dueling Loops model and analysis at Thwink.org, plus additional models and analyses that platform collaborators can produce, the platform can generate discrete solution elements that are specifically designed to address the root causes in the Forces Resisting Change loop.” Jack – Atlanta

 

“I would like to think together how we could translate, complement, etc your work and outcome into a cohere (compendium) platform-map, for an array of complex (wicked) problems and complex solutions, involving several stakeholders.” Giorgio – Santiago de Chile

 

"Count me in!" Cauliflower ears - Barcelona

 

Responses

On Smart Immortal Cities, Thrivability, Generativity

Today,  Seb Paquet shared a very interesting article where Venkatesh Rao defines four broad narratives that inspire social design in the face of uncertainty. Definitely, this project is positioned in the Hydra narrative! http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012...

The present project aims to channel the restlessness that is palpable all around...

Venkat writes:

"What is new is the idea that we might be on the brink of a successful theory of social engineering.

The great hope is that we might somehow be able to put together ideas about anti-fragility, immortal cities and resilience to solve the problems that defeated the similarly-inspired authoritarian high-modernist (a term due to Scott) social engineers of a century ago."

This is what we have the ambition to dive into...

The Power of Pull

The whole point of this platform (or 'process, protocol, interface for pulling people, knowledge, tools and more together') is to create a proximity for 'things' to happen such as John Hagel describes in 'The Power of Pull' or Geoffrey West in his various talks about "Why Cities Keep Growing, Corporations and People Always Die, and Life Gets Faster". The critical generative process of action that we would like to create here is based on the fact of pulling the people, solutions, ideas, tools into a virtual space where they will be visible as possibilities to those who need, want and can act towards a specific issue, taking advantage of combined density, diversity and synchronicity of intent for things to emerge.

Here's a design map of the pieces and the process

The internet should be able to achieve this 'on its own'. The idea utlimately is to get objects on the internet to 'find each other'. For the moment it needs a little help...

This project is distinct from Debategraph, but will benefit from David Price's expertise in polarized debate moderation and complex argumentative data curation. It provides the people dynamic layer that enables to pull together by designation/nomination/sommation (please pick the right word) social actors who are believed to be part of the solution, the problem or the facilitation process, and provide the -inspiration, empowerment and enablement- tools to advance the issue. The idea is to bring a maximum of possibilities into the radar of those who have the will to influence action, to providing people at any level with a capability to 'read' their realities for change and act according to their understanding and place in the action space. And this includes understanding and making use of the information in all its nuance and complexity, in practice on the field and politically. In this respect, the work of Giorgio Bertini who commented here and others -your included- on learning, action and pulling networks together will be essential.

On Knowledge and dissemination of information

As far as disseminating the information, the challenge is to frame the knowledge, and present the data in ways that are simple and compelling enough to engage the intent long term and the action step by step, but nuanced enough to convey complexity when issues are complex.

As I wrote earlier, our goal is not to drive engagement and change through hashtags, slogans & tee-shirts. Our platform will not be used for Kony 2012 type of campaigns however powerful and gratifying this may be. We will talk to the intelligence of the crowds and channel it for systemic change.

On Participatory Democracy

Tom Atlee and Joe Firestone shared some insights on IVCS Interactive voter choice system, which could constitute a good user case for the platform.
http://menemania.typepad.com/h...

I'm very interested in participatory democracy which talks to collective intelligence and dealing with complexity and not to the possible tyranny of a well manipulated majority... I am very weary about mass organized deceptive or reductionist campaigns. We exchanged a few comments on Kony elsewhere...

I believe civil society and in particular young people should participate in policy making for the commons. This ought to be the real meaning of politics. Here's a paper I wrote on the subject at the end of last year: http://issuu.com/we-magazine/d...

On an eParticipation platform for Human Political Complex Adaptive Systems

Joe Firestone shared on my blog the links to the conceptual foundations and requirements for a Meta-Layer for Restoring Democracy and Open Democracy he wrote with Henk Hadders. This could well have been written for this project.

A Meta-layer for Restoring Democracy and Open Society

Part One, Conceptual Foundations: http://www.correntewire.com/a_meta_layer_for_restoring_democracy_and_open_society_part_one_conceptual_foundations

Part Two, Meta-layer Requirements: http://www.correntewire.com/a_meta_layer_for_restoring_democracy_and_open_society_part_two_meta_layer_requirements

"The new institutional framework must provide a meta-layer of political interaction and networking that places new ecological constraints on the current political system, driving it back towards a condition in which the ability of individuals to both arrive at more accurate constructions of reality, and act on them, through increased self-organization and distributed knowledge processing, is dominant."

Joe and Henk, I would be glad to collaborate further to make this platform a reality. We are converging here.

An idea whose time has come

I am quite confident this is an idea whose time has come. David Price is currently working with the Planet Under Pressure 2012 conference taking place right now in London to weave the main arguments and policy options discussed at the conference into a coherent, dynamic knowledge map that can be explored by a global public audience in the build up to the UN Rio +20 conference and beyond. He just confirmed to me that the need for networked governance models was one of the key themes of the conference.

A Blueprint for a P2P society?

Here is a Blueprint for a P2P Society by Michel Bauwens: http://www.shareable.net/blog/...

Michel describes the emergence of a new institutional model for peer production at the interplay between three partners:

1. A community of contributors that create commons of knowledge, software or design;
2. A set of for-benefit institutions which manage the "infrastructure of cooperation"
3. An enterpreneurial coalition that creates market value on top of that commons

This Pull Platform gathers a community of contributors and provides conditions for the emergence of the "infrastructure of cooperation", creating pull, evaluation and accountability mechanisms, and enabling the pooling of resources so that they can be redeployed where they are needed throughout the community of contributors and network of stakeholders will have assembled around the issues or commons. This community of contributors and distributed network of stakeholders constitutes the entrepreneurial coalition where the value in all its dimensions is ultimately created.

On Root Causes, Leverage, feedback loops and learning cycles

The whole objective of this platform is to leverage power and action dynamics with a political outlook, through a challenge/action/reporting/seeking accountability/identify gaps feedback loop. This is illustrated in the following diagram . 

There is a learning dynamic at the commons scale expressed in the central loops of the diagram, emerging from the action/reporting/evaluation/challenge cycle. I need to express the individual learning cycle or discovery journey in the diagram.  

I have already represented the learning dynamic and the feddback between the individual learning and the commons learning in an earlier work: http://bit.ly/wDMN4t.

The whole document (which actually underpins a great part of this concept) is available here: http://menemania.typepad.com/h...

 

On channeling conversations and driving commitment

From the experience I have acquired in social network conversations and crowdsourced discussions, I noticed that people are ready to give portions of attention, that may add up to significant time and involvement, but it is hard to obtain commitment to deliver something consistent, especially on wide open issues that are somewhat abstract and cannot be transformed into a project with a deadline and action plan. Most of the attempts at long term collective participation fall short because these pieces of attention get diluted or too focused on detail.

The whole difficulty of the exercise is to channel these chunks into meaningful and constructed action that operate on the proper levers and to drive more commitment. That's why constructing the platform around issues as social objects is critical. It enables to create ongoing conversations around and from disparate chunks.

Channeling the conversations can be achieved with collective intelligence tools that can piece together the chunks in meaningful ways and feed back patterns into the discussion to drive practical action, just as well conceived result and evaluation data can show evolution in the making and drive more action. I have illustrated this here in an older blog post: http://menemania.typepad.com/h...

Driving more commitment can be eased by facilitating access to what people really care about and to resources that can help them unfold their discovery and action journey step by step, moment after moment. Here is a diagram where I illustrated this: http://bit.ly/wDMN4t.

On implementing solutions and applying know-how on the ground.

We will work on systemic levers and levels and practical discrete concrete actions as well.

Empowering networks are key for the diffusion and distribution of resources and know-how. High impact solutions should get their way to implementation fast. But they don't.

Too many solutions challenge finalists fall short to implement their ideas because the actual distribution, implementation and scaling mechanisms are not imbedded in the process, and because the 'channels of distribution' of the distributed economy are not yet in place. Last time I heard of Open Ideo, they were struggling to see their winning projects implemented because implementation is not in their model, though they were looking at ways to increase their impact and accompany realization. The Buckminster Fuller Institute is faced with similar challenges with its prize-winners and studying solutions.

The unwillingness to take risks on untested 'technical' solutions and the absence of a 'distribution network' is actually what impedes bottom-up open source solutions to find big philanthropy funding, and what pushes big philanthropies to use the centralized distribution channels of big corporations to do the work, narrowing the possibilities for other innovative solutions.

The Pull Platform would provide the potential for local communities and networks such as CM and iDE to access and contribute to a wider pool of peer to peer resources and know-how to implement high impact solutions and undertake high leverage initiatives, and therefore increase their autonomy, resilience and well being.

On Occupying the Commons

I just watched the recording of James Quilligan’s talking about "why we have to Occupy the Commons". This Pull Platform enables to create common pool resources and to define the boundaries and domain of a common...

http://thefutureofoccupy.org/2...

 

On Responsible Business

In addition to the work that can be done in communities, I believe a lot of the sustainable outcomes hinge upon 'the corporation'. If we pull it off, I will reach out to Carol Sanford author of The Responsible Business so that she can participate in our corporate responsibilisation initiatives.

On Goals, Structure and Prototype

I want this project to be as open as possible to the most advanced thinking, facilitation and action AND structured in a way it can progress both openly and effectively in a scaled way.

I only briefly evoked curation and facilitation, but the idea is to develop a process, the tools and team who can valuably exploit density, diversity and synchronicity and put to work the data, stakeholders, resources that will have been pulled together in the network.

Our goal is to be the integrators of the best tools and process methodologies for informed action and impact. And I understand that this is the very subject of the challenge: to use and combine existing tools to create extended outcomes. In the short term we would do with light versions of what is available just to test our pull mechanics. In the middle term, we would convene all those able to come up with the best tools and ideas and start on some prospective.

My intention, once we know what the following weeks will be made off, in particular as far as the grant is concerned, is to convene a workshop of the advisors and potential technology partners we have in mind and work on an integration scheme and schedule.

The plan is to get a prototype going quite soon to test and fine tune the push/pull mechanism around data and evaluation and secure our presence around Rio+20. I am in discussion right now.

More on a technical roadmap

The technical roadmap is under construction. This map may give an overview of the pieces we would be looking at: http://menemania.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341e84bf53ef0163030ab6b4970d-pi

We will integrate/build the techno based on a conceptual framework, and experience and outcome requirements. We are concentrating on systemic dynamics and practical outcomes. We are not interested in reinventing the wheel either but to integrate and bridge the best out there (existing or in becoming middle term) both in terms of social and technology to deliver the experience and achieve the outcomes.

The project is totally open. We will be starting from a core component to build a distributed network of stakeholders around issues as social objects and start an interaction dynamic, and gradually integrate more empowering, collaborative, visualization, knowledge curation, evaluation tools.

We are currently mapping what is already available that could fit our framework.

Prototypes/proving through localized beta projects always key. (Caroline)

Prototyping an “emergent” platform (George)

Prototyping is certainly the key, particularly if it is not limited to a piece of novel technology but prototyping an "emergent platform" as Stephen Johnson talks about it:

“In nature a few species function as platform creators while most exploit the opportunities and interdependencies on an emergent platform. The platform creators cannot go solo to get their job done. Coral needs algae to fuel their endeavors. Beavers need willow saplings on the adjacent riverbank to build their dams. Once a platform emerges, a staggering volume of biodiversity joins the party. The quantity and quality of innovations, adaptations, co-optations and reciprocities are an inspiration to us.” (Where Good Ideas Come From)

So, how do we "prototype" or design emergence? Of course, we cannot, but we can design the *conditions* favorable for emergent platforms to manifest. That's what I feel Helene's project is about and that'w why I love it. There's nothing more urgent than supporting the emergence real, participatory democracy and its collective intelligence and wisdom. That's what I've been telling for the last 25 years, but nowadays, I'm definitely not alone, as this project and many others show it.

Part of my contribution to designing for emergence is what I call the Innovation Architecture that optimizes the social, knowledge, business, and technology layers of the emergent platform, for synergistic outputs...

How this network would use CM (Caroline) -

The 'issues' will be presented on customized Microsites (= mini participatory websites).

Microsites can be shared among any site in a network that's powered by CM. This means that any features and tools enabled through this network can be used to benefit others as well. Collaboration for complete scalability and growth. 'For the people; by the people', CM will be turned into an online information and commerce co-op (http://thecitizensmedia.com/pu....

Proposed Customizations of Microsites

1. Stakeholders:

Microsites have different member permissions. They could be customized so anyone can be a member and vote in the stakeholders.

2. Data Collection and Reporting:

For a network being proposed with iDE (http://newschallenge.tumblr.co..., we're looking to connect with SANGOnet (a South African network being funded by Gates Foundation) by integrating API's for sharing data collected through surveys enabled through ,the network we create will help local farmers gain easy access to info on market prices, as well as various other things such as monitoring usefulness of tools designed to help them get ahead (developing these tools is what iDE does).

Sounds like Rio's network could use GIS and visualization tools being proposed through the Catalyst Mapping project (http://newschallenge.tumblr.co.... Reports on 'Issues' would be created as blogs posted in applicable Microsite. Recommend tool would invite members to vote, which in turn would be transposed onto a 'catalyst map'. Such tools could also be put to good use with iDE. By collaborating integrations, costs are reduced, power to promote increased.

3. Assigning Tasks:

Microsites can feature voluntary/paid job posts, which could be used for assigning tasks.

NETWORKS EXPLAINED: http://thecitizensmedia.com/pu...

 

Engaging For the Commons - Global Pull Platform

 

 

In january 2011, The Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon, called for revolutionary thinking and action to ensure an economic model for survival. A year later, the Global Sustainability Panel he created to this effect published its recommendations report for Rio+20: Resilient people, resilient Planet, a future worth choosing. The vision of the GSP as expressed in the report revolves around choice, influence, participation and action, and calls for a political process "able to summon both the arguments and the political will necessary to act for a sustainable future."…

Whether one agrees or not with the principles of political economics put forward by the UN, "activating" human agency and political will and addressing the root causes for power unbalance and resistance to change is at the heart of tomorrow's paradigm shift.

This has been my research subject during the past year which led me to draft an action-oriented strategy and process methodology for generating engagement, accountability and outcomes in the political, economic, social and environmental spheres, which may contribute to enable this activation. Inspired by Elinor Ostrom's "Governing The Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action", the objective is to turn around the tragedy of the commons by empowering individuals and communities, nurturing public wisdom and collective debate, helping push issues onto public agendas, and influencing policy and corporate behavior in a systemic and dynamic perspective. 

A group of us is now working to pull together the best elements available or in the making on the web to create a global pull platform to engage for the commons  and enable a form of evolutionary activism as part as of an emergent collective response in the context of a citizen/actor network and peer to peer commons of knowledge. 

The principles of the platform.

The platform is structured around commons, issues of social, environmental, economic nature, such as those included in this framework for reliable prosperity, treated as social objects: the nodes around which social networks are created, conversations and repeated interactions are initiated, new territories explored, meaning and intents shared, learning achieved.

People subscribe to individual issues then designate (ping, invite & follow) the actors who they think may have an influence -positive or negative-  on the status of an issue. This ‘pinging of actors’ by ‘citizen-followers’ creates a pull dynamic. Bringing together the parties susceptible of impacting progression on an issue and those to whom they are accountable will yield conversations, knowledge flow, and feedback loops beneficial to learning, progress visualization, and evaluation. The goal is to create a context favorable to collaboration, exchange of ideas and know-how. The pull dynamic is intended to stimulate political action and on-the-ground response, and ultimately advance the governance of the commons
 

The process consists in letting people/organizations:

• Select, follow, learn as a 'citizen' about the causes, issues, commons they care for and the actors involved
• Keep informed and track progress and status of these issues
• Self assign actor role and communicate/report on self-activity and impact and status of issue. Self assignment is a declaration of engagement at various possible levels (governance institution, activist, champion, observer, kow-how or knowledge resource)
• Share practical solutions, proposals for tasks and collaboration, volunteer for tasks and collaboration
• Find solutions and potential collaborators for action
• Select or refer designated actors to acknowledge or request their engagement and action at various levels (governance institution, activist, free rider, champion, observer, kow-how or knowledge resource ).
  
• As a selected or designated actor, participate in the conversation, report on activity and impact (or if not, become the object of the action...)
  
• As a citizen-follower evaluate and rate activity/impact of and trust toward actors' activity, impact and progress.
• As a citizen-follower organize for collective action
• As a an actor, garner follower participation
• Initiate and participate in conversations, debates, deliberations

The ecosystem is composed of:

• Common’s spaces: carefully curated knowledge base, space for learning, evaluating, debating, deliberating, and planning collective action, crowdsourcing solutions. This would include planetary as well as local commons or issues.
• Common’s graph: shows network of followers and stakeholders, possibilities for collaboration, critical mass, power structures and possible leverage points for grassroots action or civil participation.
• Progress & Impact or Situation Dashboard: shows activity, status, impact and progress. Informed by reporting from stakeholders and evaluations by followers, as well as real time indicators provided by independent observers.

Graph, space dashboards of various commons can be combined at various levels for bigger picture views.

The platform creates a context for the following:

• Curate the knowledge flow and increase learning about issues, and physical as well as political solutions through visibility of activity and impact
• Connect and interrelate people, stakeholders, issues, and knowledge.
• Help situate an issue in its physical, metaphysical, political and social space and its network of interdependence and navigate within.
• Define boundaries of an issue/common through its graph of followers and actors, and help define the natural levels of governance or stewardship of a common or issue.
• Help situate self and others in the multidimensionality of an issues’ space (geography, graph, stakes, interests, roles, positions, possibilities…) and navigate within.
• Identify roles and interdependence between actors and issues.
• Visualize the emergent bigger picture, and adopt systemic or transversal approaches.
• Communicate and discern expectations, communicate and evaluate outcomes, identify and act upon gaps
• Discern patterns of possibilities and leverage points, as well as who can generate best impact for specific challenges.
• Stimulate stepping up to task, collaboration between stakeholders and collective response.

 

The design map above gives an idea of the types of modules that would be integrated together. The platform requires the integration of the best existing networks, tools, process methodologies and user interfaces in terms of learning and action research, curation and issues framing, evaluation and moderation, trustnets, debate and deliberation, e-government/governance, collaboration, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, collective action planning, data collection, visualization; with a focus on wisdom and integrity stewardship...

Such an ecosystem would need to be open source and supported by legitimate institutions willing to forward civil participation.

From a Systemic and Dynamic Perspective

In systemic terms the dynamics at play are the following:

Power Dynamics: users -citizens > pull (designate) stakeholders -actors- > seek accountability/evaluate status > push activity > visualize progress > identify gaps / form expectations : a dynamic + feedback loop >> increase learning & informed action >> building engagement culture >> engagement to participate

Action Dynamics: stakeholders -actors > entrusted & challenged to act by users -citizens> acknowledge expectations & gaps > pull & pool resources & solutions to act > report action & progress: a dynamic + feedback loop >> increase access, community & capability >> building a mindful action culture >> empowerment & enablement to act

 

From a user perspective.

A Pull Network emerging from Connecting Citizens, Issues & Stakeholders

The Citizen

• As social entities, individuals or groups, the users, 'citizens', designate the issues, topics, commons they care about and wish to follow -i.e. that they would like to learn about and where they would like to see some action engaged, some progress made, with various degrees of engagement on their part. By doing so they become a follower of this issue. Selected issues can be quite diverse, in domain or geography:  they can be very global, such as the pollution of oceans or poverty or obesity worldwide or very local such as the preservation of a river or biodiversity or traditional seeds in one particular area, or the economic insertion of a disenfranchised community in a particular suburb...

The Actor

• For each issue, the citizens also designate/refer and thereby ‘follow’ and 'ping/invite to the conversation' the actors that they believe can have an impact, whether positive or negative, on the progress of the issue or the governance of the common. By doing so, they bring the actors into their community of followers to create an Issue/citizen/actor network.
  • This designation/referral works at the level of stimulating an actor to rise to meet a challenge. It is at the very heart of the pull dynamic. Designated actors such as governments, corporations, governance institutions, NGO's, activists, social entrepreneurs, free riders, champions, independent observers are challenged and entrusted by their 'citizen-followers' to deliver outcomes and produce impact and subsequently become accountable for their actions and results.
  • Citizens have the ability to  self designate as actor to indicate their presence/activity as an actor and share resources, ideas and know-how. An expected effect of this dynamic is to unleash ‘agency’ and turn an increasing number of citizens into actors by providing them with access to possibilities and capacity in the areas that they have chosen and that they care for the most.

The Social Graph - Visualizing & Navigating the Network

• By this dual followship process, each issue/common has a network of followers and actors which can be visualized in the common's social graph. The scope and variety of the followers and actors show the reach (from the local to planetary) and depth (possible various ramifications and interdependences) of an issue. It outlines its boundaries: the natural levels of governance or stewardship of a common or issue and the possible perimeters for pooling resources. The graph shows the critical mass of followers & actors, its density and diversity. The entities who appear in the core represent key constituencies, others interact or watch, and can further be pulled in. The ‘proximity’ and interdependence between the players, the potential for synchronicity and synergies, the insights on power structures and possible leverage points create a context for action to emerge and for negative reinforcement loops to be inverted.

• The aggregation of issues produces a Global Graph that enables to visualize further interrelations and interactions, to navigate between the issues, the various players, and the various levels of intervention from the smallest local level to the planetary, see how some players are involved in several issues and can be 'activated' as such, and ultimately undertake action of a more systemic nature.

The Dashboard - Reporting, data collection and visualization

• Designated actors become entrusted or accountable of their actions toward their 'followship' of citizens. They are encouraged to work on outcomes and to report on actions engaged and the general progress of an issue.

• Informed citizens evaluate the impact of the actors they selected and their level of confidence in outcomes.

• This ‘internal’ reporting and evaluation informs a common's Progress & Impact or Situation Dashboard, and participates in the documentation of the issue.

• External indicators from independent sources also feed the dashboard.

• Visualizing data enables to:
  • show ‘evolution in the making’ how small 'local' actions add up to create large impacts, how big goals can be carried out from very small distributed initiatives.
  • acknowledge status and evolution of issues as much as possible in real time contributing to learning and informed action.
  • help actors engage into more effective political participation and on the ground solutioning.
  • highlight the gaps between expectations and outcomes and detect deceptive action
  • push things further onto political agendas

The Learning & Action Space

• The Common's Learning & Action Space is the environment where the density, diversity and synchronicity of the network can be valuably exploited, where the data, actors, resources that will have been pulled together to generate optimized outcomes can be put to work. These spaces will need to be widely and wisely moderated and curated in order to avoid oversimplification or hijacking to the benefit of special interests...
• Citizens and actors learn from each other and from the knowledge base, discuss the issue and undertake individual, collaborative and collective action. This is a space where exchange, dialogue, deliberation, facilitation takes place at the practical, social and political level; where users-citizens are able to design their discovery/learning/action journey; where actors can share know-how on solutions on-the-ground; where they are able to find parties to exchange, discuss, negociate with; where resources can be shared; where solutions can be spread and diffused, co-created or crowd-sourced; where civil participation to policy making and governance can be garnered... informed and bootstrapped by all what is described above.

We Move

WE. Inspired. Empowered. Enabled. Building For a Better World.

 

 

Are we really all Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace?

Creating better futures can’t be reduced to solving the world’s problems with the same type of thinking and behavior that created breakdowns in the first place - to paraphrase Einstein like everyone does these days... What we are now seeing is a startlingly rapid growth in the complexity and intricacy of the problematiques facing us – manifestations of interconnected dysfunctionality caught up in meta-systems - which old school types of thinking and action and even systems thinking are incapable of tackling. No matter if we are hoping for the whole system to be modeled and redesigned by ‘those who know better’ or whether we expect some natural order to replace old hierarchies and man-made chaos – or even if we’re waiting for Gaia to exact her revenge and destroy humanity, many of us feel powerless, helpless or doomed. The forces that impel us toward fulfilling our rational self-interest and our immediate selfish desires, or that were meant to liberate us from all forms of political and religious servitude, have led to our surrender to “The System”.

Adam Curtis explores this topic in ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’, a powerful and unsettling three part documentary broadcast in June this year by the BBC. He identifies three key strands of thought that have helped shape the 20th century ethos. Briefly put, these are that:

• market stability enabled by technology will liberate us from all forms of political control and help us become Randian heroes in control of our own destinies;
• old hierarchies will be replaced by (eco)systems that can organize themselves ‘naturally’;
• we are all soft machines driven by the impulses of our genes and therefore not responsible for the unforeseen consequences of our acts.

Such ideas have caused us to embrace a fatalistic philosophy that sees human beings as cogs in a mechanistic system or as computing machines in their own right, helpless and disillusioned in the face of those in power, with no idea of what comes next or of how to challenge and change the status quo. Isn’t this a great excuse for our political failure to change the world?

We are not ants!

But this is not the discourse we want to hear! No, we are not cogs in machines ...we are not ants either. And we are certainly not doomed or pre-determined – or at least it is healthy to presuppose we are not! One of my favorite quotes from Goethe offers an antidote to such deterministic thinking and shows a way forward: “If we take man as he is, we make him worse. But if we take him as what he could potentially be, then we make him capable of becoming what he can be.”

We need to hang on to our belief in mankind and our ability to change the world for the better! As Maturana and Varela point out in their “The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding”, while machine systems or biological organisms restrict the individual creativity of their component parts because these parts exist solely for the organism itself, human social systems, on the contrary, amplify the individual creativity of their component parts because the system exists for these parts. However, we are not selfish components in the system. As components of a social system, we are both a whole (an individual self) and a part (co-determined by our relationships with others and our environment) at one and the same time. In other words, we do not solely exist so that the system can thrive; the human social system exists for the parts to thrive, individually and collectively, in all their vast networks of interactions and relationships. We can only survive and thrive if we uphold both our “wholeness” and our “partness”. This notion of ‘agency in communion’ as Wilber calls it, or allocentric individualism is a leap beyond the polarization of individualism and collectivism that has underpinned 20th century thought and given us the idiocentric objectivism of Ayn Rand, the post WWI collectivist and totalitarian regimes and the communal ideologies of the 1970s.

Agency is our capacity to make choices and act. Our increasing ability to author, connect and share through communication technologies has made it easier to keep our human individuality and interactions independent of the infrastructure and the system – even if we are still to ensure that this remains so. At the same time, our individuality and our interactions are not separately determined. As much as we can influence and even create our social and natural environment through our choices and decisions, we are shaped by what is around us and by our interactions with our peers.

This is how evolution unfolds, and why we have been able to witness some progress in the history of mankind. So even if we can't do much more than anticipate, minimize impact and maximize recovery in the event of natural catastrophes, we can still influence everything that can be affected by our own choices and decisions and by our interactions and relationships.

We need not just sit around, do nothing, and wait for evolution, destiny, god, nature or the invisible hand to take its inevitable course. The fatalist outlook makes the mountain seem so huge that everybody despairs and gives up any attempt to climb it. Yet there are pockets of awareness out there, determination and possibilities to tap into, cracks to slip into and widen to help the world find meaning and purpose and move in the right direction. Great people are around, great things are being done everywhere and every day. They are waiting to be shared and snowballed – and taken together they create tangible transformation.

Opening up a world of possibilities and thrivability

Opening up a world of possibilities and thrivability is what Jean Russell suggested at the opening of Gathering11. She urged us to start looking at and talking about breakthroughs and the thrivable world that is emerging while this old industrial order breaks down. To tell ourselves stories of what actually works, to open up possibilities and co-create something new. We see many things happening at the edge, and we_magazine pays tribute to them. We see a whole generation of Millennials who refuse to embrace the world the way it is and have the determination and courage to change it. Many of us have become aware that things need to change, only we don’t know where to start. Many of us know we are on a treadmill going nowhere fast, but we don’t know how to jump off or indeed where we might land.

Yet there are ways to catalyze and accelerate the emergence of change, to become actors of transformation. For John Hagel, co-author of ‘The Power of Pull’, this can happen in creative spaces, where a critical mass can be achieved, where interaction and flows of tacit knowledge can be leveraged to achieve a greater potential, and where what is created can be used to boost effectiveness. It’s a similar type of phenomenon to what happens in cities where proximity to fringes, diversity and knowledge accelerates opportunities and creates further attractiveness – only it’s amplified because it’s purpose-based. The main idea is to increase the flow of possibilities and the level of consciousness so that each and every one of us can participate in the emergence of new mindsets and ways of operating by circulating ideas or putting them into application. We must refuse to be intimidated by the tyranny of problems and enter the world of possibilities, multiplied by the collision of ideas and our bootstrapped initiatives.

We must make the very best of what we have, map our assets, talents and resources, and see what they can spark. Donnie MacLurcan opened his Gathering11 talk by observing that there were enough talents in the room to save the world. Gunter Pauli, who spoke at the Amplify festival, and his Blue Economy
Foundation have enough projects and inventions under their belts to reforest, power, irrigate and feed the whole world and make it self-sufficient and thrivable. And there are yet many more assets, talents, resources, projects, and inventions to explore, make visible and put to work.
We need to interconnect and connect the dots. We need to channel the sense of common purpose, and accelerate emergence. And we need to inspire by sharing significance and possibilities, to empower by transforming knowledge and possibilities into intention, and to enable through concrete examples and tools that can transform intentions into actions.

The documentaries are not accessible anymore for copyright isues, but this is a trail that has been put together afterwards. Here is also a very interesting radio interview of Adam Curtis where he outlines the message of the documentary: the challenges of self-organization in the context of political power, and the need for inspiration, greater vision and leadership.

This article was written for the Australian edition of We_Magazine in July 2011 after I watched the documentary, and was released in November. The published article and the magazine can be found here.

An Ecology for Transformative Action

This project initially started with The Living WE, an article I wrote for Gathering 11 in Melbourne last June, with a name and unifying concept inspired by We Magazine and several of us have been discussing how to bring it to life. A few projects are under way, the latest is the launch of a multistakeholder discussion around global governance powered by a Greater WE as laid out in the new Thrive Magazine. 

I had been focusing on good practices, change, and action, and the triggers/motivations thereof for several years, and spent almost a year in research and conversations on several social platforms virtual or in presence, struggling to find common ground among people who seemed to be animated by similar purposes or a shared attraction but couldn't quite agree on the best way to do things. This lead me to start to outline the characteristics and ingredients required for transformative action to be inspired, empowered and enabled in order to evolve our current paradigms, systems, processes and practices in a coordinated yet self-directed way. I would like to bring this further. The idea is to leverage the dynamics of emergence and the whole dimensionality of the "political" or action space, from the individual to the planetary with a view to political action and civil participation. This involves that the actors know the position of an issue in this space and from which position in this space they are acting.

 A three tier transformation

To get a critical amount of people and organizations to change their ways or create new ways there needs to be a favorable environment or context, propitious conditions for synergetic collaboration, conflict resolution, co-creation, innovation, experimentation, enterprise etc.... that is as open and non directive as possible.There also needs to be room for diversity of perspectives and paths to get to the same destination.

Transformation also needs triggers at several levels with some form of scaffolding... one level leading to and reinforcing the other.

• Inspire - First is the realization that something needs to be done. This realization -call it also awareness or consciousness- is spreading, can be inspired further to reach critical mass but is not enough to lead to actual transformation.
• Empower - Second is the formation of an intention. Transformation needs a conviction that something can be done, and that each of us can have an impact. It needs some resolve. This is unleashing and channeling human agency, the willpower to go one step further, with more or less involvement. But here again, intention alone does not lead anywhere.
• Enable - Last and critical to the outcome is the partaking in the transformation, by being or doing. That's the ultimate trigger, making the first steps, starting the transformation, entering a transition stage. And this needs to be enabled.

This constitutes a three step process of transition: inspiring, empowering and enabling change, transformation, metamorphosis, evolution, however you may call it, the seeding at the various stages of a fruition process, that can be undertaken from the specific place each of us or our organizations and communities hold in the greater whole, with an awareness of our location and role and impact within this whole and beyond.

Configuring oneself for transformation

Our system of systems is made of parts that we could consider as coexisting in a milieu, an environment that is not just a container with properties greater than the sum of the parts, but that has a substance, a density, a richness. Something exists "in between" the parts, from which the parts get some "nutrients". Many metaphors can be used, call it a field of possibilities and potentiality, a collection of intangibles that would precipitate serendipity, attraction, connection, exchange, osmosis… and finally lead to a metamorphosis.

This ecology would strive to increase the richness of this field, this "in between" that would inspire, empower and enable people and organizations to "configure themselves" for transformation. Think of an operating ecosystem and API that would help form and channel realization, intentions, possibilities and transform them into outcomes and achievements by bootstrapping human agency and collective capability one step at the time in an exploratory and visible learning process. An extension of what I have described in this Shared Intent & Purpose for Action - Bridging the Gap between Micro & Macro article.

The idea is to design something scalable and reproducible and very tangible that can make this possible.

Don't hesitate to surf the map and share your thoughts. And drop me a note if you are interested to participate further. I would like to finalize the map as a blueprint, and then find or build the necessary tools.