COMMONS MAGAZINE
We believe it is critical to bring equity to the forefront of the commons conversation. As the commons gains popularity and the movement grows, so does the need to hold equity as a central and defining precept of a commons-based society.
Here is some of our thinking about equity and the commons, and how we can more fully advance equity in commons work:
When I first understood that experiences were becoming extinct I was floored—this was a new idea—not extinction of course, but the extinguishing of the concomitant sense experience. I became absorbed in the idea, wanting to make it manifest and decided to “catalog” them.
“[The] water crisis is largely our own making. It has resulted not from the natural limitations of the water supply or lack of financing and appropriate technologies, even though these are important factors, but rather from profound failures in water governance.”
– United Nations Development Program report on water governance
“What we do to water, we do to ourselves and the ones we love.”
– From Popol Vuh , an ancient Mayan text , from: Future Generations at the Table: Governing and Managing Our Water Commons
Revolutionizing Water Management and Governance
Jay Walljasper, author of the Great Neighborhood Book, spells out what people can do to make a difference in their own communities. “See it here”:http://blip.tv/mtnps/mtn-update-jay-walljasper-2227633
Every community needs a commons where people can gather as friends, neighbors and citizens. This can be a grand public square, a humble Main Street or a vacant lot with a few handmade benches where locals sit down for conversation. Or even a bridge, beach or bus station, as the examples below show.
What’s important are the connections made among people, which can lead to wonderful things: friendships, love affairs, partnerships that flower into new ideas for businesses or community projects.
Don’t miss this video, an exploration of Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge and the importance of the natural commons in the Portland metro area with Urban Naturalist Mike Houck and Educator and Herbalist Judy BlueHorse Skelton.
Nowhere is the phrase American Exceptionalism more appropriately used than when describing our debate over health care. Outside the bubble that is the United States health care is viewed as a right, recognition that sickness and injury can strike anyone and an acknowledgement of a basic obligation civilized societies have to its members.
If members of those societies were to tune in to the American debate I suspect they’d be baffled to watch grown men and women come up with ingenious ways to complicate a very simple moral issue.
The Sublime
Seventy percent of Ghanaian homes don’t have a WC or a pit latrine. Piped water, if you have it at all, is intermittent, so water in your tap depends on whether you can afford a domestic reservoir. In 2005, the World Bank secured a private sector solution to the water crisis in Ghana – the first independent sub-Saharan African country, and one of the first to be economically adjusted for corporate benefit. But Ghanaian campaigners had different ideas for their taps and toilets.
If chutzpah can be defined as “killing your parents then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you’re an orphan” then Peter Orszag is the poster child for chutzpah. In his recent article in Bloomberg News he insists the best fix for the post office is to take it private.
Where does the chutzpah come from? Orszag was Director of the Office of Management Budget (OMB), an agency that played a key role in crippling the USPS with a manufactured financial crisis.
Down the road only a few generations, the millennium of Magna Carta [2215], one of the great events in the establishment of civil and human rights, will arrive. Whether it will be celebrated, mourned, or ignored is not at all clear.
That should be a matter of serious immediate concern. What we do right now, or fail to do, will determine what kind of world will greet that event. It is not an attractive prospect if present tendencies persist — not least, because the Great Charter is being shredded before our eyes.
“Texas judge rules atmosphere, air is a public trust”, reads the headline in the Boston Globe. A tiny breakthrough but with big potential consequences.
And as we continue to suffer from one of the most extended heat waves in US history, as major crops have withered and fires raged in a dozen states, we need all the tiny breakthroughs we can get.
At a time when the Rio+20 UN Sustainable Development conference left many people discouraged about forging a more equitable and green future, it’s helpful to remember that local changes are as important as global ones. The dedicated work people across the globe do in their own communities adds up to something mighty. OTC Fellow Jay Walljasper tells a few stories of people who are changing the world in their own backyards. “See the video”:http://blip.tv/mtnps/jay-walljasper-speech-2008-neighborhood-sustainablility-conference-733348
Commons is a Middle English word. People called commons that part of the environment which lay beyond their own thresholds and outside of their own possessions, to which, however, they had recognized claims of usage, not to produce commodities but to provide for the subsistence of their households. The law of the commons regulates the right of way, the right to fish and to hunt, and the right to collect wood or medicinal plants in the forest.
Students at Portland State University taking a class about “Reclaiming the Commons” created an entertaining video exploring what the commons means for their community. Working with the local commons group The Oregon Commons they chose Mt. Hood, the iconic peak that can be seen from many parts of the city, as a symbol of what everyone shares together.
It began with a simple enough thought: “There aren’t nearly enough people here.”
1. Protection from traffic
2. Protection from crime
3. Protection from the elements
4. A place to walk
5. A place to stop and stand
6. A place to sit
7. Things to see
8. Opportunities for conversations
9. Opportunities for play
10. Human-scale
11. Opportunities to enjoy good weather
12. Aesthetic quality
— Jan Gehl & Lars Gemzoe
In many people’s minds, Detroit stands apart from other major American cities as an unredeemable disaster.
It’s a lost cause, they say, and we’d do better investing scarce resources toward revitalizing other cities with better prospects for the future.
So what makes Detroit different in the public imagination than other cities grappling with population loss, budget deficits, unemployment, crime, racial divisions and political corruption?
Through our co-creative fieldwork, On the Commons seeks to transform society’s decisionmaking about water toward participatory, democratic, community-centered systems that value equity and sustainability as core values. Our work is based on the following ten water commons principles.
1.) Affirm water as a commons. It belongs to everyone and to no one exclusively, and must be passed on to future generations in sufficient volume and quality.
2.) Ensure that the earth and all of its ecosystems enjoy rights to water for their survival. Indeed, those ecosystems make human life possible.
Over the course of two years, On the Commons identified the following key elements of commons-based solutions during our workshops in the field. These values informed our workshop conversations and have become an essential guide for the design and implementation of commons-based initiatives.
A commons-based solution, which adds up to a commons-based society, is one:
I. Center of the Circle
Equity—Everyone has a fair and just share of social and natural resources that belong to us together.
Sustainability—Our common wealth must be cared for so that it can sustain all living beings, including future generations.
Interdependence—Cooperation and connection in our communities, around our world, and with our living planet is essential for the future.
II. Second Ring of the Circle