To judge from a flurry of conferences, resolutions and events about the commons, international interest in the commons is growing. Here’s a quick overview of some of the more salient developments:
International Commons Conference
The International Commons Conference, “Constructing a Commons-Based Policy Platform,” will be held in Berlin, Germany, on November 1 and 2, 2010. The event, is being convened by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a publicly financed non-profit organization affiliated with the German Greens, but working independently with various partners through its 25 worldwide offices.
The conference seeks to bring together a diverse group of about 150 international and Germany- and European-based commoners, intellectuals, activists and policy makers. It also aims to enhance participation and self-organization; stewardship, cooperation and networking; and open, non-linear ways to search for solutions.
Over the course of two days, the conference will assess the range of existing and potential commons-based policy approaches; develop the fundamentals of a policy framework that supports the commons; and identify and explore specific strategic opportunities to advance commons-based approaches.
The conference announcement elaborates: “The simple yet powerful and complex question to be explored throughout the conference is: What does a commons-based policy framework look like? What already exists and what do we still need to develop to nurture and protect diverse sorts of commons?”
The conference language will be English, with translations of English to Spanish and Spanish to English provided throughout the conference. For information, contact Silke Helfrich at helfrich@boell.de.
World Commons Day
The World Social Forum has announced plans to organize a World Commons Day on October 15, 2010. The idea is to encourage all sorts of social movements and organizations at different scales — local, regional, national, international — to host events that provoke reflection and visibility about the commons.
The idea had its origins in a manifesto, Reclaim the Commons, that was crafted in Belem, Brazil, by participants of the World Social Forum in January 2009. To help spread the commons concept and show its strategic value, some WSF participants came up with the idea of a designated day to showcase the commons. As announced on the French commons website Biens Communs:
The World Commons Day will be a day of public real or virtual actions, presentations, debates, workshops, shows and meetings taking place around the world to share the visions and the practices of the Commons.
The World Commons Day aims to be a complement to and a mirror of thousands of initiatives worldwide, initiatives that defend our right to public services like water supply and health or the right to share knowledge and education. The World Commons Day will focus on the creativity of people in protecting their environment and the cornucopia of bio-diversity, in securing their food-sovereignty and promoting radical decentralized energy production based on renewables.
The World Commons Day will make clear, that talking about the commons is talking about our quality of life. It’s about the freedom to take our lives in our own hands and to reproduce our livelihoods in a self-determined way.
The World Day of Commons will strengthen the diversity and the wisdom of traditional knowledge systems. It will show peoples needs for shared public space and urban commons. It will show the numerous initiatives for making the commons work for people if people work in common.
The Day will be “an auto-managed and decentralized initiative,” according to Biens Communs. “Each person, organization, social or citizen movements can organize something and link its activity to the World Commons Day. All suggestions and activities scheduled for that day will be announced on the website of the manifesto, Reclaim the Commons.
Many Manifestos.
The “Reclaim the Commons” manifesto is one of many such statements that have emerged over the past year. Other important ones include:
• The Barcelona Charter on Creativity, Innovation and Access to Knowledge, was adopted by participants from around the world at the Free Culture Forum in November 2009. The Barcelona Charter is now being used to challenge EU policymaking that would give large media corporations greater rights to expand copyright law, control the Internet and limit user freedoms.
• Strategists and activists associated with Germany’s Heinrich Boll Foundation in December 2009 issued a call to “Strengthen the Commons. Now!” The broad political manifesto appears not only in German but English and Spanish as well. (More information here.)
• COMMUNIA, the European “thematic network” on the digital public domain, issued a major manifesto explaining the importance of the public domain to democratic culture in February 2010. The manifesto has been endorsed by thousands of people and dozens of organizations, and has been translated into seventeen different languages. This powerful show of support is helping to mobilize the many constituencies that depend upon the public domain. It also puts the corporate armies of copyright maximalists on notice that their attempts to enclose the public domain will be actively resisted. (OTC blog post on the manifesto here.)
Other Pathbreaking Convenings
• A number of global commons organizations in the U.S. are exploring new ways to bring a commons agenda to the attention of the United Nations, especially the UN Development Programme. A group of two dozen commons advocates met in New York City during December to develop plans and coordinate future strategies to engage the United Nations.
• A strong message that water is a commons to be shared by all was voiced at the World Water Forum in Istanbul in March 2009 and at the People’s Water Forum going on at the same time. Daniel Moss of OTC’s Our Water Commons program was among the many justice advocates helping draft a pro-commons/pro-human rights declaration that was issued.
• In June 2009, twenty leading commons thinkers and activists from ten countries Brazil, South Africa, India, Austria, Germany and others converged on Crottorf Castle, near Cologne, Germany, to take stock of the emerging international movement to create a commons-based society. The meeting broadened international understanding about commons-based work. See David Bollier’s report here.