Enabling Co-operative Enterprises To Grow the Green Economy

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= Report: Sharing Prosperity. Enabling co-operative enterprises to grow the green economy. By Mike Lewis and Pat Conaty. Cymru/Wales

URL = https://www.co-operativememberevents.coop/documentControl/20131129155-sharing-prosperity-report.pdf


Summary

Pat Conaty:

"The recommendations grew out of deliberative discussions at a Mid Wales conference that we ran this summer to help community based local food, co-operative energy and community recycling projects to expand their small scale good practice. We asked them in the day long working groups to identify the impediments.

The groups concluded that co-operative methodologies and co-operative consortia are key. As Mike Lewis and I point out in chapter 10 of our book, you only have to look to Emilia Romagna where the Co-op sector accounts for 40% of GDP and to Denmark where public-co-operative energy partnerships have fought to build up 40% of the energy market and to decentralise and go green to see the strategic importance of robust co-op methods for 'common-ing solutions'.

You will note good small project commoning practices in the case studies in the Wales report but a host of bad practice barriers to be tackled and overcome. The recommendations indicate how social-public partnerships could be co-designed and co-developed."


Excerpt

From the introduction, by Pat Conaty:

"Since the economic slump of 2008, there has been an expanding growth of interest in both co-operative and mutual solutions. The Co-operative sector has been growing faster than the conventional economy.1 The Co-operative Cymru/Wales has commissioned a study into opportunities to assist community environmental organisations to expand their provision through the use of co-operative methods. This report has been approved by the democratic structures of The Co-operative Cymru/Wales and provided a set of fi ndings and recommendations for the Welsh Co-operative and Mutual Commission to consider in the preparation of their strategic report to the Minister for Business, Enterprise, Technology and Science."