Environment News 4.11.14 Part IV: Bring back the commons - Dont wait for the top down changes! The commons – where a community of people share, manage and have a stake in a shared property or project – are making a comeback according to author, Nathan Schneider. “Now, after centuries of being obscured by industrial smoke and no-trespassing signs, people are learning to recognize the commons again and I saw this firsthand at an historic conference (the first major conference on the commons in the US) at the Omega Institute last week called Building the Collaborative Commons.” He said adding that there are eight principals for managing a commons courtesy of Nobel Prize winning economist, Elinor Ostrom. “They include principals like defining clear boundaries, ensuring that commoners can modify the rules that govern them and vesting responsibility as locally as possible.” He said. The conference was opened by the author of seminal book, ‘Think Like a Commoner’ David Bollier, who said he is seeing people mobilize around the commons framework all around the world. Sharing the stage were speakers such as CNN commentator Van Jones, Indian anti-GMO crusader Vandana Shiva, Native American activist Winona LaDuke, and Bill McKibben, the writer and climate activist behind 350.org and lead organizer of September’s People’s Climate March. They had varying degrees of fluency with the idea of the commons, but all were using it in one way or another already — even 14-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Tonatitium. He is a rapper and activist who has been a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the state of Colorado for failing to protect the environment - the suit relies on the public trust doctrine, an ancient commons-based legal concept. Shiva spoke of seeds as a commons other speakers identified the commons as an umbrella for many struggles over rights to such essentials as land, water and civil rights. “In May I went to Ecuador for a policy summit that proposed the world’s first national transition plan toward a commons-based economy — imagining a society of businesses owned by their workers and customers, open seed libraries for farmers, and indigenous medicines that no drug company can patent.” Said Schneider who added that it remains to be seen what the commons will come to mean — a catch-all buzzword easily co-opted by the establishment or a genuine shift away from it. But, there ARE good reasons people are talking about the commons more and more these days. “It’s an approach to resisting the market’s profit-driven impulse to pollute the planet and patent every last shred of knowledge by expanding the realm of cooperative activity and mutual concern.” Said Schneider. Bollier agrees. “This conference was significant because it validated and explored the commons as relevant to American political culture.” He said. “Commoning, after all, is not just a kind of economy but a way of life – it won’t be legislated from on high. It’s a practice that spreads from community to community and from generation to generation, at least as long as we still have commons left.” america.aljazeera/opinions/2014/11/commons-environmentalismeconomicsinequality.html
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 21:02:13 +0000