Helene Finidori

A follow-up of my recommendation, some points discussed in the Systems Thinking World Linked In group:

The principles of the commons bring sustainability and resilience to another level as they add a dimension of mutuality and common interest and concur with the six characteristics⁽¹⁾ needed for a transition informing principle or image to operate the socio-cultural shift that we drastically need:

provide a holistic sense of perspective on life as growth yielding to higher purpose

entail an ecological ethic, a self-realization ethic and a whole systems awareness

entail observation of our changeable knowledge and changeable world

be multileveled, multifaceted, and integrative

lead to a balancing and coordinating of satisfactions along many dimensions

be experimental and open-ended

A commons approach embraces living systems complexity. It enables the parts to be responsive, to self-realize while being conscious of each other and of the whole, allowing the recognition of multilevel boundaries that are object dependent and not arbitrary. Parts are responsive to each other.

To set a transition in motion with the answer to financial and economic crisis in mind, we need to work at the systemic level with a transition informing process and concentrate on a few leverage points that will help create positive feedback loops. A path that could function is to:

Both encourage communities to cultivate and produce their own livelihoods and co-govern their utilities, services and resources, and sustain the complexity of specialization that empowers the whole. 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,complementary currencies and credit systems, education, governance (self-governance), and ways of life. They should be encouraged and supported as the way they are connected is brought into balance. They build trust and resilience through practice, the ownership of the process and the connections that bring the sense of immediacy & transparency and shared destiny. The shift of the practice to smaller environments is something graspable and sustainable commerce between them adds to their prosperity. P2P (peer to peer) and the immediacy of connections give an understanding of the proximate system. Trust develops working on that scale, and so do co-creation and co-governance practice and skills , and those principles spread to the whole. This encourages conflict resolution and transparency approaches. It also promotes a sense of responsibility for the commons goods for present and also future generation.

Immediate application: Use and test these innovative methods and initiatives in ‘innovation zones’ established in areas damaged by disasters, or to reverse damage caused by past and current practice. Projects actively aiming at reducing emissions, reversing desertification, soil erosion, deforestation, overfishing, increased disparity between rich and poor, corruption, abuse of power, etc. should be encouraged, supported, facilitated and funded. And so does preparedness for disasters: anticipation, prevention, and effective response

Learn from community practices and early adopters, building on the interactions and multiplying them to shifts in a more global practice. Adopt appreciative methods of enquiry and conflict resolution, being open to seing things as they are. Encourage questioning, learning, discovery and innovation, and our capacity to bootstrap and evolve. Find ways to work together and actively engage in learning processes that enable co-creation and co-governance and conflict resolution on wider scales. This includes means of enforcement of laws, treaties, agreements at the global level.

Promote transparency and reporting, set monitoring and evaluation systems and metrics to measure impacts and outcomes and account for whole impacts, quality and value. Open access to knowledge, data, and information to provide ability to see more clearly and correct misconceptions. Promote knowledge commons, open data, creative commons. Set up processes to ensure that what follows is right and continues to be right, and a meta-process of reflection and evaluation of measures as a response to the gaming of the metrics and system, and to the pathological focusing on only parts of the variables. Enable trial and error and the possibilities to readjust.

Encourage the transition from a linear to a circular economy. The circular economy is a replenishing and regenerative model for business and the economy based on closed loops and systems resilience. Products are designed for a cycle of disassembly and reuse, using only energy renewable from nature -this may include workforce-, waste and pollution are outdesigned. Introducing clarity between consumables and durables, it puts the responsibility of the performance of the product and the resources (waste) 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. http://www.thecirculareconomy.org/ http://www.compression.org

In the spirit of circular economy promote 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 http://www.blueeconomy.eu/ should be encouraged.

As a leverage point: use constraints and technical assistance the use of power and wealth for investment in multiplying appetites, resource depletion, debt and other addictive or scarcity building harms in the sole purpose of multiplying private wealth and power, eventually at everyone else's and the environment's expense.

As a leverage point: to remedy the above reinforce and enforce anti-corruption laws and eliminate 'legal' corruption by banning or strongly limiting the use of private funds for election campaigns and political party financing. (Larry Lessig creator of creative commons campaigns against this in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic,_Lost also of interest is Jack Harich's analysis of the political power place: http://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/005/DuelingLoops_Paper.htm)

Develop a financial commons seeking both vitality and balance: There's a natural point, for any kind of successful enterprise, at which it becomes more profitable to devote the proceeds to enjoying the fruits of the labor and securing one's own world, rather than keep expanding one's demands on it. For a family business it’s when they start taking their profits to live better and educate their children. The world economy doesn’t yet have a "purpose" to live better like that, only to grow and grow, and now it's very clear that expanding our impacts on the earth is now causing us to live worse, and creating global conflict. Growth is actually a circle with an ever bigger gap each time around, an ever more broken circle of expanding unfinished business. So now is the time for investors of all kinds to find their higher purpose, and start managing their funds like endowments, for using their wealth well, healing both their natural and economic environment, avoiding liability for growing hidden impacts, and choosing to live in fidelity to their own true purposes. It is a change of purpose.

Develop a commons sector, alongside the private and public sectors, conferring rights and responsibilities to communities over resources on which they depend. 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. This involves new forms of cooperatively or mutually governed institutions to govern the commons at various levels.

(1) Adapted from http://noetic.org/noetic/issue-six-january/staying-resilient-in-a-wild-card-world/