international

A week or two ago, I blogged about the rise of new sorts of eco-digital commons that blend virtual spaces with environmental management.  It's a bit of serendipity to learn this week about the a fascinating new online tool, the Great Lakes Commons Map.  The map is an interactive platform that solicits contributions and conversation by people who love the Great Lakes.  The idea is to turn a resource that is often seen as belonging to no one into one that is actively stewarded by everyone.  How?  By inviting everyone to post their own videos, text, photos and comments about specific portions of the Great Lakes.  Over time, it is hoped that the site will help build a new shared “mental map” and shared space for people to talk about the Great Lakes as an integrated bioregion -- and to take action to defend it.

The map was created by Paul Baines, an environmental educator, and Darren Puscas of reWORKit (“web production for unions and social change”).  Here is Haines' video introduction to the map.  Haines hopes that the website will help people annotate their conservation projects, cleanups, ecological education and restoration initiatives, activist efforts, walking tours, historical markings, and other Great Lakes projects on a single site, and thereby illustrate how and why the Lakes are a commons.  Anyone can post their own personal stories, reports of threats to the Lakes' ecological health, alerts that seek to organize and educate, notices about upcoming events, etc. 

Haines eventually hopes to make it possible to post and share video and audio on the site; use SMS and Twitter feeds for reporting and campaigning; host workshops and training on community mapping; and translate the website into other languages. 

What’s especially beautiful about the site is its use of Ushahidi, an open source, interactive geospatial platform for the crowdsourcing of information in crisis situations.  The platform has been used to enable the geospatial visualization human trafficking, for example.  Haines adapted it to serve as a way to crowdsource information, images, video and more that can create a new shared cultural space for saving the Great Lakes.

When thinking about the commons, most people make a sharp division in their minds between natural resource commons (for water, air, land, forests, wildlife, etc.) and digital commons (free software, Wikipedia, Creative Commons-licensed content, social networking, etc.)  It is assumed that these two universes are entirely separate and distinct, and have little to do with each other.  But in fact, these two realms are starting to blur – and we should be more mindful of this convergence and the synergies that it is producing.

The reflexive division between digital and natural resource commons is understandable.  One type of commons deals with rivalrous, finite resources that can be physically depleted, while the other manages non-rivalrous resources – information, creative works, research – that can’t really be “used up” because it is virtually costless to reproduce them digitally.  Most natural resources can be over-exploited if there are too many users, so the challenge is how to manage access and usage.  By contrast, the biggest challenge facing digital commoners is how to curate information and community participation in intelligent, respectful ways.

But the “obvious” logic of this mental map is deceptive – because a new constellation of what I call “eco-digital commons” is using networking technologies to better manage natural resources.  The digital and natural worlds are starting to “co-mingle” in very interesting and constructive ways, suggesting that the more salient differences between the two resources are perhaps less consequential than we had thought.  Indeed, there are many powerful new capabilities that arise.

An example is a new iPhone and Android app designed to help stop invasive species.  It was developed by my friend Charlie Schweik, a UMass professor, in cooperation with the UMass Extension service, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Conservation, the University of Georgia and other partners.  Invasive species are non-native plants, animals, fish, insects, fungi and other organisms that are often quite harmful to an ecosystem.

At a time when representative democracy is increasingly revealed as ineffectual, phony or both – a kabuki theater of empty formalisms that disguise the offstage conspiracies of corporate/state elites – many people look to the Internet for salvation.  After all, the Internet is far more open, participatory and meritocratic than the closed, corporate-dominated process of our formal democracy. 

But even with these capacities, the Internet is not a solution because in the end the Internet is only a hosting platform.  A basic question must be answered:  How should a more serious deliberative democracy be structured in online spaces? 

Let the record show that the insurgent Pirate Party in Germany has made some significant progress on this problem.  Its new open source software platform, LiquidFeedback, is credited with helping the Pirates host more open, participatory and serious internal debates about party policies -- and to organize themselves to take action in conventional political arenas. 

The makers of Liquid Feedback characterize their platform in a mission statement as “a bridge between direct and representative democracy.”  They believe the software “has the potential to empower the ordinary members of mainstream political parties, making these parties more attractive to citizens and democracy stronger.”  The software, released in version 2.0 in March 2012, is currently used by several associations and political parties.

I’ve always been disappointed that the rich diversity of commons projects and scholarship that is exploding internationally cannot be readily seen – and what does exist tends to be written by and for academics. The International Commons Conference in Berlin in November 2010 brought this issue home by showing the amazing breadth of commons activism and thinking out there. The question is, How can someone tap into this knowledge? 

My friend and colleague Silke Helfrich and I have tried to remedy this problem by assembling a big anthology of essays on the commons by leading activists, scholars and project leaders.  I am happy to report that the German version of this book, edited by Helfrich and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, has just been published.  It’s called Commons:  For a Policy Beyond Market and State, and it's available from the German publisher, transcript. 

The 526-page book is likely to be a sourcebook on the commons for quite some time.  At least I hope so.  It contains 73 essays by authors who live in 30 countries around the world.  The essays focus on everything from commons-based abundance and free software to land enclosures and P2P urbanism.  There are essays by Peter Linebaugh on the history of the commons, Silvia Federici on women and the commons, Rob Hopkins on resilience, Liz Alden Wily on the international land grabs, Massimo de Angelis on capitalism and cooperation, and Hervé Le Crosnier on modern forms of enclosure, among many others. 

The point is to highlight the remarkable international diversity of commons projects, activism and theoretical thought.  The book features a number of essays by academics working in the Ostrom school of commons scholarship, but also many scholars from other traditions and independent activists. A major challenge was translating many essays from English and Spanish into German, and editing them all into a standard format.  A hearty congratulations to Silke and the Böll Foundationfor tackling this formidable task over the past year!

If you’re in London or nearby, don’t miss the opportunity to hear commons scholar James Quilligan present a twelve-part seminar series, “The Emergence of a Commons-Based Economy,” starting Monday, May 7.  If we’re lucky, there will also be a live webcast of the talks.

You can see the schedule of seminars and register for them here. A fuller description can be found here.  Each talk will focus on a specific topic, starting with “Democratizing the Global and Political Commons.”  It will be followed by talks on the political economy; financial innovation and the commons; property, value and the commons; organizational practice and the commons; among many others.  (See pie chart.)

From an American perspective, it would seem unlikely that the commons could become a topic of mainstream electoral concern in the near future.  The cultural base just isn’t there.  Yet the surprising success of the Pirate Party in Europe suggests that a new cultural cohort – politically disaffected, digitally networked, culturally independent – is beginning to find its voice.  Such voices can be tremendously viral as the Arab Spring and Occupy movements have shown, and moreover, crash the insider games of mainstream politics.

My colleague Michel Bauwens has written a very thoughtful essay on this topic for Al Jazeera, in which he predict that a win by the German Pirate Party in 2012 elections would set the stage for a European coalition of the commons.  He sees a “new majority in the making” if the Pirates, the Greens, Labor and Social Liberals can find a way to come together in support of “a commons-centered transformation of European politics.”  Bauwens writes:

Opinion polls [in Germany] predict an average support rate for the Pirate Party hovering around the 10-12% range, making their victorious appearance in the German national elections almost a certainty.  The importance of this can hardly be overrated. If the Pirates are needed to form a national coalition government, which is likely, Germany would no longer be a player in imposing further IP restrictions on behest of the U.S. conglomerates, and would equally certainly start dismantling already existing restrictions to a substantial degree. With dominant Germany out of the game, and Eastern European states already mostly opposed to further IP repression, this also means the end of any EU support for international IP strengthening. In other words, a victory of the German Pirate Party is actually a global victory for the forces favoring information commons.

Now here’s something that doesn’t occur very often:  a respected Internet expert bravely explains to the U.S. foreign policy establishment why open networks are important to an open society – and why Anonymous, Julian Assange and other networked-based protesters are not terrorist threats. 

Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler’s essay, “Hacks of Valor,” in the April issue of Foreign Affairs, faces down some of the demagogic smears that are now being leveled at defenders of an open Internet.  He questions the moral authority of a government to go after Anonymous with such vituperation when it has itself normalized lawless activity such as detentions, torture and targeted assassinations, and refuses to bring the powerful past and present culprits to account. 

Keith Alexander, the general in charge of the U.S. Cyber Command and the director of the National Security Agency, has warned that Anonymous could “bring about a limited power outage through a cyberattack.” Vice President Biden has called Julian Assange a “high-tech terrorist.” 

A four-module online course on the commons has just been launched by the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) based in Geneva, in conjunction with the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. The four modules focus on the history of the commons, the special value proposition of the commons, the dynamics of enclosure, and a survey of commons-based strategies.  Officially called “Introductory e-Course to the Global Commons,” the self-paced course, taught in English, consists of videos, online readings and resource links, as well as self-test quizzes.

I helped develop this course over the past year, working closely with Professor Leo Burke of the University of Notre Dame and e-learning specialist Robin Temple.  There are, of course, many ways to introduce and teach the commons.  This is just one path into the subject.  We were especially mindful that we were devising an online course that could be interesting and accessible to a highly diverse general audience -- a special challenge since there is no moderator.

We think the course pulls together some notable talks and readings to introduce the commons to UN delegates and government officials, who are the target audience/participant group.  However, students, academics, businesspeople and the general public are also invited to take the course.  To register, just go here. The deadline for registration is April 20.

Interest in the commons in Belgium is much stronger than I had imagined.  At an environmental symposium in Brussels on Friday, the organizers of “The Commons:  (Co)managing Commonly Owned Resources,” had to turn away people at the door.  It was standing room only in a space meant for 200 people -- and then another 200 people came for an evening talk that I gave at the same location.  

The draw:  a full day of talks and workshops exploring the commons paradigm as a way to reclaim scientific knowledge, our genetic heritage, digital information, and natural resources.  The event – held in a lovely space at the Royal Academy – was co-hosted by the Green European Foundation, a Europe-wide political foundation with links to the Green Party, and two Belgian environmental think tanks, Etopia and Oikos. 

One doesn’t encounter too many historians of the commons, especially European commons.  I was therefore pleased to hear Professor Tine de Moor’s brief overview of the commons over the past four hundred years.  She hosts a rich repository of historical research about European guilds, cooperatives, waterboards and other commons at the website Institutions for Collective Action.

The following is an adaptation of my notes for my talk at the Occupy Wall Street “Making Worlds” conference on February 16-18, 2012. 

I am so pleased that the Occupy and Commons movements are finding each other and starting a new conversation.  Occupy is an incredible force for change.  It has a bracing vision, a deeply principled philosophy, and an independent, risk-taking spirit that is unusual in American political life.  There are many challenges for Occupy, however, as it tries to imagine new ways to move forward and grow.  I’d like to suggest how the commons framing and language may be strategically important by surveying the international scene of commons activism, which is remarkably robust.  There is a lot is going on -- but I won’t presume to be comprehensive; my apologies for any significant omissions.  

Let me start by giving a brief speculation about why people from so many backgrounds are embracing the commons.  First of all, it is a way for people to assert the integrity of their existing communities, or to try to reclaim that integrity.  The commons also provides a way to assert a moral relationship to certain resources and people that are endangered by market forces.  It’s a way of saying, “That _________  (water, air, software code, cultural tradition) belongs to me.  It is part of my life and identity.”

Many people are embracing the commons, too, because it provides a powerful critique of neoliberal capitalism.  But it is much more than that.  It is a pro-active set of alternatives that work.  And therefore it provides a positive, constructive scaffolding for practical alternatives to the prevailing market economy and corrupt political process.  But the commons is still more than this.  It is not just a policy critique or political philosophy, but equally a distinctive worldview, language and social ethic.

All of this means that the commons can give us a vision of a new world.  And in this respect, the commons is really about building a new vocabulary.  For example, what neoliberal capitalism generally calls “progress,” we would call “enclosure.”  People are starting to understand that market forces do not necessarily represent progress, but rather dispossession and destruction.   So-called economic development is more about environmental destruction than “progress.”