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= An Overview of The Economics of the Commons Conference (ECC) on May 22 – 24, 2013,


=Context=
=Context=


The Commons:  From Seed Form to Real Provisioning System
ECONOMICS AND THE COMMON(S): FROM SEED FORM TO CORE PARADIGM
An Overview of The Economics of the Commons Conference (ECC) on May 22 – 24, 2013,
and Three Preparatory Workshops


# The [[Asia Commons Deep Dive]] took place in Bangkok, October 12-14, 2012
Exploring New Ideas, Practices and Alliances  ; Berlin, Germany, May 22 – 24 2013
# The [[Latin America Commons Deep Dive]] took place in Mexico, November 12-15, 2012
# The [[Europe Commons Deep Dive]] took place in Paris, 30/11 to 02/12, 2012


=Introduction=
Working Draft of Program, February 6, 2013


One of the most significant impediments to change is the entrenched power of the neoliberal economic and political paradigm.  The prevailing economic dogma is that individual self-interest, expansive private property rights and globalized free trade can solve most social and environmental problems.  Many challenge this view, of course, and continue to decry the dysfunctionalities of the market economy, the inadequacies of the welfare state and threats to the biosphere from climate change and resource depletion.  But despite the important work of many heterodox schools of economic thought in addressing these issues, few political thinkers and players seem interested in or capable of developing a new political/economic philosophy based on practical alternatives.  We are stuck at an impasse.
           
“The Commons:  From Seed Form to Real Provisioning System,” seeks to open up some new vistas in in political and economic discourse by exploring the economics of the commons as an alternative provisioning system, worldview and vision for the future.  Commons-based principles and models have the potential to build a rich array of stable, equitable and ecological alternatives to conventional markets while strengthening communities and networks.  Indeed, the proliferation of commons-based models – for natural resources, digital spaces, civic life and many other arenas – suggests the feasibility of a new Commons Sector.  This conference seeks to expand and empower this work by helping crystallize the economics of the commons as a coherent field of inquiry and action.  The conference will showcase key actors and initiatives, discuss theoretical analyses, identify conflicting schools of thought, and visualize new action-plans for moving forward.
           
Any inquiry into this topic is challenging because the very idea of the commons demands that we expand standard economic definitions of “value” especially at they apply to land and nature, culture and knowledge, labor, money, infrastructure, and everyday human life.  To understand the commons in these areas, we must understand how different types of social exchange and cooperation create different forms of wealth, much of it non-quantifiable social and ecological in nature.  The commons also requires that we address structures of power and control in a political economy, and develop better understandings of how collective governance regimes work.
           
Building on the work of those who criticize the mechanistic models of conventional economics, we must consider the complexities of human agency, collective organization, and human relationships with nature.  We must move beyond the standard definition of economics as the allocation of scarce resources because this category assumes a priori scarcity, and confuses quantitative and qualitative value and meaning.  In a sense, commons-based provisioning implies a profound redefinition of “the economy.”  The commons helps us re-connect with the original meaning of “economy,” which derives from the ancient Greek word, oikos, for “household,” the most basic unit of social, economic and governmental action.
           
This conference will explore the foundations of a commons-based economics:  What makes a commons so generative?  What core principles of commoning can be identified across different resource domains?  In what circumstances can commons-based provisioning models substitute for conventional markets, or interact constructively with markets? 
           
To probe these and other questions, the Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBF) in cooperation with the Commons Strategies Group will organize and host a major international Economics of the Commons Conference (ECC) to be held from May 22 to 24, 2013.  The event will be preceded several months earlier by three two-day workshops supported by the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation (FPH), each held on different continents in the fall and winter of 2012-2013:  for Europe in Paris, in cooperation with FPH and Vecam; for Latin America in Mexico City, in cooperation with the regional office for central America and Mexico of the Heinrich Böll Foundation; and for Asia in Bangkok, Thailand, in cooperation with the Böll Foundation’s South-East Asia office.
=The Organizers=


The [[Commons Strategies Group]] and [[Heinrich Böll Foundation]] are the joint organizers of this conference, which is an outgrowth of the landmark International Commons Conference in Berlin in November 2010.  That event brought together about 180 commons activists, academics and project leaders from 34 countries, and for the first time started a cross-disciplinary political and policy dialogue about the commons in diverse international settings.
=Introduction=
           
Building on the energy from that conference, CSG has just completed a major book anthology of 73 essays on the commons that has been published in German and English.  CSG has also participated in strategic planning for the Rio+20 environmental conference in Brazil in June 2012, and its principals have made dozens of presentations about the commons at various conferences, universities and public events.  This Economics of the Commons Conference (ECC) is a logical next step for the CSG in working with networks of commoners around the world to advance the commons paradigm.
           
The [[Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation]] has supported the attendance of some partners to the International Commons Conference that took place in November 2010 in Berlin and wishes now to continue its support by co-funding the ECC regional consultation process together with Heinrich Böll Foundation. Both FPH and HBF consider the commons a key element for the transition toward commons-based economics and cultures. Both foundations focus their strategic support toward this end, either in cooperation with partners or through their own initiatives.  This “cross-granting” partnership between two European foundations seeks to advance a new culture of collaboration among like-minded political actors and funders. Both foundations believe that a culture of dialogue, sharing and common programmatic approaches among grant makers is a necessity.
==Objectives==
           
We need to formulate a plausible and compelling vision for the future by showing the breadth and feasibility of commons-based provisioning and by forging a coherent public narrative and analysis about it.  This conference aspires to speak to the need by:
*  Convening key researchers, practitioners and advocates from around the world to discuss shared concerns;
*  Consolidating their knowledge into a common field of inquiry;
*  Reconceiving our economy as a constellation of commons-friendly provisioning systems;
*  Developing practical plans for moving a commons provisioning agenda forward; and
*  Deepening and broadening relationships among key individuals and institutions, including after the conference itself.
Substantive discussion at the conference will focus on several key themes:
*  The commons as a way to move beyond economics
*  Alternative economic/provisioning models
*  Macro-economic transformations:  making the transition to a new type of economy
A number of specific sub-themes will also be emphasized:
 
*  Economics of physical commons:  What can we learn from the governance and economics of local physical-resource commons?
*  Economics of digital and cognitive commons:  What can we learn from the economics of digital and knowledge commons?
*  Financial and credit commons: from local credit commons to transnational    monetary reform.
*  Natural resource commons:  How can they help solve the biospheric crisis?
*  Justice and equity in commons:  How does a commons re-conceive the role of          labor    and its entitlements and responsibilities?
*  Spiritual (traditional and religious) commons
*  Issues of governance and power


One of the most significant impediments to positive social change is the entrenched power of market-fundamentalism as an economic and political paradigm.  The prevailing dogma is that only a scheme of individual self-interest, expansive individual property rights, market exchange and globalized free trade can advance human well-being.  This view has increasingly been called into question as the predatory dynamics of the market economy became clear and as its threats to the biosphere have become more acute. 


=The Six Topical Streams=
ECONOMICS AND THE COMMON(S):  FROM SEED FORM TO CORE PARADIGM seeks to open up some new vistas in politics, economics and culture by exploring the commons as an alternative worldview and provisioning system.  A rich array of commons – in nature, cities, civic life, the Internet, and many other realms – are showing that commons can provide stable, equitable and ecologically benign alternatives to conventional markets. 
The Economics and the Commons Conference (ECC) will expand and empower this work by exploring the commons as a coherent field of inquiry and action.  It will convene approximately 240 commoners -- researchers, practitioners and advocates from around the world -- to explore the relationship of conventional economics and the commons, showcase key actors and initiatives, and devise plans for moving the commons paradigm forward.  Special care will be taken to avoid a “sectoralization” of commons discussion because we believe that a coherent “general narrative” of the commons nurtures global social change and applies across many different sectors of commoning.


Among the questions to be asked:  What core principles of commoning can be identified across different resource domains?  What makes a commons so generative? In what circumstances can commons-based provisioning models substitute for conventional markets, or interact constructively with markets?  How can the protection and re-creation of the commons be made an integrated part of productive processes?     
The Economics and the Commons Conference (ECC) will be hosted by the Heinrich Böll Foundation (hbf) in cooperation with the Commons Strategies Group, The Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation and Remix the Commons.  The event will take place at the headquarters of hbf in Berlin from May 22 to 24, 2013.  Optional side-events on topics such as communications strategies for the commons, governance of global commons, and others, will be held on May 21-22 and 25.


=Goals of the Conference=


==Land and Nature==
The ECC seeks to show the breadth and feasibility of commons-based provisioning and forge a coherent narrative and analysis about it and the next steps for action. Substantive discussion at the conference will therefore focus on several key themes:


'''Responsible for stream: [[Saki Bailey]] (Italy)'''
 The commons as a way to move beyond conventional economics;
 Alternative economic and provisioning models;
 The transformations needed to move to a new type of economy.


'''Framework:''' Throughout the world, neoliberal economic policies have had destructive effects on land and natural commons both resulting in the degradation of these natural environments, as well as reduction in equal access to natural resources  and the enjoyment of nature. For example privatization measures have been aggressively applied to water in large metropolitan areas, resulting in an increase in price, decrease in quality, as well as decrease in access in places like Paris, Berlin and Naples. In the heart of the metropolis, where access to natural commons maybe even more scarce and the cost of denying access much higher, the issue has become a potent node of political activism.  The fundamental character of water to human life has made it a symbol and rallying cry against the privatization of crucial natural commons, leading most famously to the Bolivian water wars and reform of the Bolivian constitution.  However the flourishing anti-privatization movement in both Europe and the Global South and newly emerging commons institutions being deployed to protect natural commons are still lacking in the analytical and theoretical tools to produce a true paradigm shift in the way we look at the economy.  Neoliberalism is potent foe precisely because there is a clear vision of the values the economy should serve -competition, commodification, and efficiency- and the legal tools of intervention necessary to producing this type of economy. In order to resist this model, we must reclaim legal and economic knowledge and tools to create the conditions for the new commons based economy founded on the alternative and opposing values of cooperation, "commonification", and sustainability. As commons property scholar Carol Rose suggests, water may be the ideal natural resource for shedding new light on the ways in which to free natural commons from the prison of commodified property units made available on the market for efficient consumption  into the open space of shared resources and realities. “If water were our chief symbol for property, we might think of property rights-and perhaps other rights-in a quite different way. We might think of rights literally and figuratively as more fluid and less fenced-in; we might think of property as entailing less of the awesome Blackstonian power of exclusion and more of the qualities of flexibility, reasonableness and moderation, attentiveness to others, and cooperative solutions to common problems." (Rose,1996)
   
 
=Conference Streams=
'''Objective:'''
This stream attempts to bring together both legal scholars with ecological economists to produce a new theory and model for designing commons based  institutions capable of propagating the new commons based economy. It also attempts to build a theory from both the "top down" and "bottom up" by involving activists and practitioners fighting on behalf of the protection of natural commons particularly water, in order to articulate an alternative economic policy for governing natural commons informed by both theory and practice. 
 
'''Questions Addressed by the Stream:'''
How can  legal and economic knowledge be integrated to produce a framework for the commons based economy?
What is the role of legal and economic commons institutions in fostering this framework?
How can we learn from the cases of existing institutions particularly in water?
What appropriate and innovative types of regulation can be imagined based on this framework in the context of water? In the context of other "natural commons"?
 
 
Suggested Plenary Debate: Carol Rose or Ugo Mattei (law) & Joshua Farley (ecological economist)
Suggested Additional Participants to lead Break Out Sessions: Ugo Mattei/Carol Rose (if not keynote), Fillipo Valguarnera, (reserving one space for female economist/lawyer from Global South to be names soon).
 
==Money & Value==
 
'''Responsible for stream: Ludwig Schuster (Germany)'''
 
 
==Labor==  
 
'''Responsible for stream: Heike Löschmann (Germany)'''
 
We witness a convergence of production and consumption and an increase of collaborative forms of production that outcompete hierarchical modes of production. As a result, 'the Commons' is slowly entering the official discourse even of the international trade union movement. Yet, unionists tend to focus on the labor market instead of analyzing the changing character of labor in its double function of a) a needs oriented production activity of goods for consumption and as b) a livelihoods reproducing activity. In a commons based context labor is framed in a holistic way and is not oriented toward the market. It therefore grows out of its historical role as being a market product itself. Labor in the commons is based on the principles of sharing and/or reciprocity and implies subsistence and access rights to the commons. It produces different economic, cultural and political modalities, that present an alternative to national-industrial and „developmentalist“ approaches that are reductionist and - above all -based on an increasingly corporate driven growth paradigm that tends to overexploit common pool resources und undermines democratic principles. Re-conceptualizing labor in a commons economy implies a re-assessment of relations: not any longer between the laborers and the employees but between individual participants of an abundant commons network. It also implies a re-consideration of our relationship with nature as well as of the historical origins of the separation between the productive and reproductive sphere as the root cause for structural gendered inequality and exploitation. It is here where this stream is inherently linked to the stream on the life, meaning and spirituality of the commons, an open outcry for a cultural paradigm shift.
 
 
Questions:
 
* What does work, productive activity and labor mean in the context of a commons economy?
 
* What is the relationship between labor and the commons, ie. in a context where production and reproduction are not separated?
 
* Is it possible to de-commodify labor?


* Can unions transform themselves into commons supporting organizations for laborers?
The conference will feature six separate Streams with plenary keynote talks and breakout sessions to probe issues in greater depth.  The ECC and its Streams are designed to foster dialogue, collaboration, creative thinking and follow-up action, and not just “expert” presentations.  The six Streams are:


* Can the discourse of the commons strengthen traditional labor union demands? If so, to what extend? What kind of reform in thinking and perception is necessary?
==1.  Land and Nature==
Throughout the world, neoliberal economic policies have had destructive effects, resulting both in the degradation of natural environments as well as reduction in fair access to shared resources.  A parallel example of this can be well seen in the aggressive privatization of water systems in large metropolitan areas like Paris, Berlin and Naples, which has resulted in price increases, lower quality water, reduced access to water and less democratic control.  Although a flourishing anti-privatization movement in both Europe and the Global South has arisen, much of this advocacy does not have the analytical and theoretical tools to push for a paradigm shift in the economic organization of our natural resources as a commons.  This stream will bring together legal scholars, ecological economists and commons advocates to develop commons-based policies and models for governing shared natural resources, especially water and land. 


==Culture, Science & Knowledge==
Stream Coordinator:  Saki Bailey (Italy).


See also: [[ECC Knowledge Stream]]


'''Responsible for stream: [[Mike Linksvayer]] (US)'''
==2. The Future of Labor in a World of Commons==
Currently, we witness two parallel phenomena: Global development policies cause the loss of use rights to the natural commons as the livelihood support system for an estimated two billion people. At the same time, an ecology of collaborative production is (re)emerging beyond markets, money and organizational hierarchies as we know them. The lines between production and consumption are becoming blurred by social practices, which are based on sharing and (indirect) reciprocity. Such practices indicate innovative answers to the fundamental question how we (re)produce our livelihoods. They aim to solve problems and meet human needs.
These developments do not only provide economic, cultural and political alternatives to both, globalized capital(ism) and “national-developmentalism”, they also point to the transcendence of the conditions that historically forced a division between social reproduction and economic production. This helps us see more clearly the structural causes of gender inequality and externalization of care and nature services.
While most unionists tend to focus on the labor market and a fair distribution of available employment in our world of today, the labor of the future is no longer a “product” that is bought and sold in the market. Labor can be seen and managed as a commons. This is the vision we wish to discuss and develop further.


Science, and recently, free software, are paradigmatic knowledge commons; copyright and patent paradigmatic enclosures. But our vision may be constrained by the power of paradigmatic examples. Re-conceptualization may help us understand what might be achieved by moving most provisioning of knowledge to the commons. We must critically evaluate our commoning and strive to fully realize the salience of knowledge commons as fundamental to all commoners.
Stream coordinator: Heike Löschmann (Germany).


Let us consider what if:
* Copyright and patent are not the first knowledge enclosures, but only "modern" enforcement of inequalities in what may be known and communicated?
* Copyright and patent reform and licensing are merely small parts of a universe of knowledge commoning, including transparency, privacy, collaboration, all of science and culture?
* Our strategy puts commons values first, and views narrow incentives with skepticism?
* The value of commons is difficult to quantify – but ''necessary''. We grapple with that, alongside all commoners.


([[ECC Knowledge Stream|more]])
==3.  Treating Knowledge, Culture and Science as Commons==
Science, and recently, free software, are paradigmatic knowledge commons; copyright and patent are paradigmatic enclosures.  But our focus on paradigmatic examples and the language of “intellectual property” and “openness” may actually limit our imaginations about what might be possible.  If we took the commons seriously, for example, we might begin to see that copyright and patent are not just knowledge enclosures, but “modern” ways of enforcing privileges and inequalities in what may be known and communicated.  Similarly, that open access and use is not necessarily an emancipation, but rather a shift in control to those who own the digital platform.  This Stream will attempt to (re)consider and (re)conceptualize the free/libre/open/commons movements from a strategic and commons-first perspective. 


==Infrastructure==
Stream Coordinator:  Mike Linksvayer (USA).


'''Responsible for stream: Miguel Said Vieira (Brazil)'''


==4.  Money, Markets, Value and the Commons==
The dominant economy is to a huge extent market-fundamentalist and money driven. It is built around unsustainable principles like extraction, competition, profit and exponential growth and fueled by interest bearing credit creation through a profit oriented banking system. A Commons Economy is driven by other motives and proposes a different mindset and different ordering categories than capital, ownership and money.  Some commoners tend to imagine a Commons Economy as a world beyond (artificial) scarcity, rendering money and markets irrelevant, which suggests, that commons can function without money as we know it. Others focus on redefining the role of money or how to design money itself as a commons. But all agree that if a Commons Economy still has credit, money and markets (or at least marketplaces), they will be very different in character than our current economy. 


By Miguel Said Vieira:
The objective of this Stream is to integrate the different “paths of imagination” towards a Commons Economy, and to get a clearer picture of the architecture and underlying design principles of a commons-oriented market places and exchange systems. 


One of the main challenges in advancing commons as a solid alternative
Stream Coordinator: Ludwig Schuster (Germany).
paradigm is the issue of the infrastructures needed for commons-based
projects. How can we, for instance, avoid competition and inequality between
different commons in the use and access to this kind of infrastructure, and
turn this competition into cooperation? In other words, is it possible to
build and manage the infrastructure itself also as commons?
We also have to consider the possibility that, while some aspects of
infrastructure issues might be tackled in P2P fashion or at the local,
community level, others might not: car pooling and distributed power
generation help in dealing with transportation and energy dillemmas, but
they often depend on roads and power grids, which are typically built by
states; 3D printing helps in localizing industrial production, but does not
avoid the need for basic industry -- typically provided by markets (and
sometimes subsidized by states). In which cases this dependence on states
and markets poses problems, and in which cases there are better alternatives
available? In which cases it is possible to forgo states --arguably the
strongest actor in the provisioning of infrastructure during the last
century-- without reinforcing the economic and social inequalities that
underpin our society, and how can it be done?
Finally, what lessons can we learn from already existing instances of
commons-based infrastructure? One case in hand is the logical layer of the
internet (its protocols). On the one hand, it is clearly an example of
infrastructure that has strengthened other commons-based projects (not
necessarily related to the internet); on the other hand, the commons-
character of this layer hasn't stopped the arisal of extreme cases of
private concentration and state abuse (or state dependence) on the internet
itself, in its physical and content layers. How does that translate to other
areas of infrastructure? What commons-based infrastructure solutions
currently emerging around that realm (mesh networking, decentralized
P2P "clouds" etc.) could be adapted to other areas?




==Life, Meaning & Spirituality==
==5.  New Infrastructures for Commoning by Design ==


'''Responsible for stream: Andreas Weber (Germany)'''
One of the main challenges in advancing commons as a stable paradigm is finding ways to develop commons-friendly infrastructures.  We lack infrastructures that “by design” foster and protect new practices of commoning.  Many existing systems, indeed, enable commons-unfriendly practices (e.g. fossil fuel-based individual transportation) or generate negative social and environmental impacts (e.g., nuclear power and even “clean” energy sources).  While some infrastructures have progressive dimensions (using distributed networks, promoting local access), they may be minor parts of larger, regressive infrastructures that still depend upon individual transportation, centralized power grids and concentrated industrial structures.  Yet there are important lessons to be learned from commons-based infrastructures such as Internet protocols, which have fostered the emergence of countless digital information commons.  An urgent need of our time is to ensure that infrastructures will systematically encourage the formation and protection of commons. 
Stream Coordinator: Miguel Said Vieira (Brazil)


"Today’s scientific economical theory vastly stretches beyond economy. Rather, it has to be viewed as a comprehensive theory of reality. The current liberal paradigm builds to a large extent on unquestioned assumptions about the nature of reality. These comprise necessary struggle for fitness, the absolute value of efficiency, the denial of real agency, embodied feeling, and meaning. These ideas stem from a historical stream of thought which might be called „bioeconomics“, because liberal economy and darwinistic evolution co-created one another. To show the flaws in current liberalism, and to argue for a viable alternative, we have to 1) uncover the social construction of our economical and ecological assumptions, and 2) re-evaluate living reality for an alternative set of values and structures that could guide the construction of a generalized theory of commons economy. Biology itself is in full paradigm change, shifting from a Newtonian theory of machine-like objects to a theory of embodied subjects constantly building meaningful relationships to one another. If we follow this new paradigm, we can see that feeling, subjective meaning, value and beauty are not „illusions“ but rather form the centerpiece of a new „poetic ecology“ concerned with subjects, not objects alone. In ecological terms, such lived reality can be no longer alone described as a struggle for resources, but rather as a commons where agents and ressources are indistinguishable, and were the self-realization undergoes an endless process of negotiation between subjects and the whole. The biosphere therefore stands model for the basic rules of commoning."


=The Plan for the Conference=
==6.  Life, Meaning and Spirituality==
           
More than fostering an exchange of information, the conference is intended to help build new working relationships, personal commitments, and a group ethic of listening to each other and caring for each other.  Active participation by everyone and commoning will be vital.  This will be facilitated by an online wiki and listserv, which will include a bibliography of resources, profiles of participants, and other resources to be determined.   
A culture of the commons requires that we do much more than change our economic thinking and economy.  We must challenge the worldview and assumptions that lie at the heart of dominant economics, even in its “Green New Deal” flavors.  The current worldview – a co-creation of liberal economic thought and Darwinistic theory – could be called “bioeconomics” because it understands living exchanges by means of objective laws acting on inanimate ecological or social atoms.  This is a world predicated on an endless struggle for fitness, the absolute value of efficiency, and a subordination of subjectivity and experience to “objective” forces.  Moving towards a culture of the commons means that we have to shift from a world of Newtonian, machine-like objects to one of cooperative agents constantly building meaningful relationships and exchanging gifts.  If we follow some patterns being revealed by biological sciences, we could develop a new paradigm in which feeling, subjective meaning, value and beauty form the centerpiece of a new “existential ecology” focused on subjective relationships, not static objects alone.  We might call this new commons-based perspective “Enlivenment.”
==Day One:== 


What Does the Economics of the Commons Mean?
Stream Coordinator:  Andreas Weber (Germany).


9:00 am – 10:30 am  Keynote remarks + two short talks
           
Special care will be taken to avoid a “sectoralization” of commons discussion.  CSG believes it is important to develop a “general narrative” of the commons that applies cross-sectorally.  Even with differences in the rivalrous/nonrivalrous nature of resources, certain principles and ethics of commoning can be seen in each case.
Rest of day:  details to follow


==Day Two:== 
=Conference Organizers=


From Stocks to Flows, and from Market Assets to Commoning
The [[Commons Strategies Group]] and [[Heinrich Böll Foundation]] are the joint organizers of this conference, which is an outgrowth of the landmark [[International Commons Conference]] (ICC) in Berlin in November 2010.  That event brought together about 180 commons activists, academics and project leaders from 34 countries, and started a cross-disciplinary political and policy dialogue about the commons in diverse international settings. 


9:00 am – 10:00  Recap the principles of commons and core design principles.
The [[Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation]] supported the International Commons Conference in 2010 as well as the regional consultation process that has preceded the ECC.  Both FPH and HBF consider the commons a key element for the transition toward a new, more democratic and participatory political economy and culture. Both foundations focus their strategic support toward this end, either in cooperation with partners or through their own initiatives.  This “cross-granting” partnership between two European foundations seeks to advance a new culture of collaboration among like-minded political actors and funders.  


10:15 am – 1:00  Begin two sets of sectoral discussions focused on these resource domains:
   
[[Remix the Commons]] is another partner in organizing and hosting the ECC.  A Montreal-based project that focuses on multimedia communication about the commons, Remix the Commons is especially focused on how the improve public education and popular communications about the commons.   
* Land & Nature         
* Money & Value
* Labor
* Culture, Science & Knowledge
* Infrastructure
* Life, Meaning & Spirituality
Task force hosts will facilitate breakout groups to discuss specific action steps for synthesizing knowledge, convening key players, publishing strategic documents, organizing institutions and/or the public, etc.  
   
Self-organized  Break
11:45 am – 1:00 pm
         
1:00 – 2:15  Lunch
2:15 – 4:30  Reconsidering Provisioning Systems
 
An un-conference format where participants divide up into specific commons sectors of their own choosing.  A key question for each group:  What does it mean to reconceptualize that domain (labor, knowledge etc.) as commons? How exactly does needs-based production work?
4:30 – 5:15  Groups report back to plenary session with five minute reports.


==Day Three==  
=More Information=


(for task force leaders and participants who choose to stay)
For more information on the Economics and the Commons Conference: http://p2pfoundation.net/Overview_of_the_Economics_of_the_Commons_Conference


How Do We Get There from Here?


9:00 am – 1 pm


[[Category:Commons]]
[[Category:Commons]]

Revision as of 11:13, 7 February 2013

= An Overview of The Economics of the Commons Conference (ECC) on May 22 – 24, 2013,

Context

ECONOMICS AND THE COMMON(S): FROM SEED FORM TO CORE PARADIGM

Exploring New Ideas, Practices and Alliances  ; Berlin, Germany, May 22 – 24 2013

Working Draft of Program, February 6, 2013


Introduction

One of the most significant impediments to positive social change is the entrenched power of market-fundamentalism as an economic and political paradigm. The prevailing dogma is that only a scheme of individual self-interest, expansive individual property rights, market exchange and globalized free trade can advance human well-being. This view has increasingly been called into question as the predatory dynamics of the market economy became clear and as its threats to the biosphere have become more acute.


ECONOMICS AND THE COMMON(S): FROM SEED FORM TO CORE PARADIGM seeks to open up some new vistas in politics, economics and culture by exploring the commons as an alternative worldview and provisioning system. A rich array of commons – in nature, cities, civic life, the Internet, and many other realms – are showing that commons can provide stable, equitable and ecologically benign alternatives to conventional markets. The Economics and the Commons Conference (ECC) will expand and empower this work by exploring the commons as a coherent field of inquiry and action. It will convene approximately 240 commoners -- researchers, practitioners and advocates from around the world -- to explore the relationship of conventional economics and the commons, showcase key actors and initiatives, and devise plans for moving the commons paradigm forward. Special care will be taken to avoid a “sectoralization” of commons discussion because we believe that a coherent “general narrative” of the commons nurtures global social change and applies across many different sectors of commoning.


Among the questions to be asked: What core principles of commoning can be identified across different resource domains? What makes a commons so generative? In what circumstances can commons-based provisioning models substitute for conventional markets, or interact constructively with markets? How can the protection and re-creation of the commons be made an integrated part of productive processes?

The Economics and the Commons Conference (ECC) will be hosted by the Heinrich Böll Foundation (hbf) in cooperation with the Commons Strategies Group, The Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation and Remix the Commons. The event will take place at the headquarters of hbf in Berlin from May 22 to 24, 2013. Optional side-events on topics such as communications strategies for the commons, governance of global commons, and others, will be held on May 21-22 and 25.


Goals of the Conference

The ECC seeks to show the breadth and feasibility of commons-based provisioning and forge a coherent narrative and analysis about it and the next steps for action. Substantive discussion at the conference will therefore focus on several key themes:

 The commons as a way to move beyond conventional economics;  Alternative economic and provisioning models;  The transformations needed to move to a new type of economy.


Conference Streams

The conference will feature six separate Streams with plenary keynote talks and breakout sessions to probe issues in greater depth. The ECC and its Streams are designed to foster dialogue, collaboration, creative thinking and follow-up action, and not just “expert” presentations. The six Streams are:

1. Land and Nature

Throughout the world, neoliberal economic policies have had destructive effects, resulting both in the degradation of natural environments as well as reduction in fair access to shared resources. A parallel example of this can be well seen in the aggressive privatization of water systems in large metropolitan areas like Paris, Berlin and Naples, which has resulted in price increases, lower quality water, reduced access to water and less democratic control. Although a flourishing anti-privatization movement in both Europe and the Global South has arisen, much of this advocacy does not have the analytical and theoretical tools to push for a paradigm shift in the economic organization of our natural resources as a commons. This stream will bring together legal scholars, ecological economists and commons advocates to develop commons-based policies and models for governing shared natural resources, especially water and land.

Stream Coordinator: Saki Bailey (Italy).


2. The Future of Labor in a World of Commons

Currently, we witness two parallel phenomena: Global development policies cause the loss of use rights to the natural commons as the livelihood support system for an estimated two billion people. At the same time, an ecology of collaborative production is (re)emerging beyond markets, money and organizational hierarchies as we know them. The lines between production and consumption are becoming blurred by social practices, which are based on sharing and (indirect) reciprocity. Such practices indicate innovative answers to the fundamental question how we (re)produce our livelihoods. They aim to solve problems and meet human needs. These developments do not only provide economic, cultural and political alternatives to both, globalized capital(ism) and “national-developmentalism”, they also point to the transcendence of the conditions that historically forced a division between social reproduction and economic production. This helps us see more clearly the structural causes of gender inequality and externalization of care and nature services. While most unionists tend to focus on the labor market and a fair distribution of available employment in our world of today, the labor of the future is no longer a “product” that is bought and sold in the market. Labor can be seen and managed as a commons. This is the vision we wish to discuss and develop further.

Stream coordinator: Heike Löschmann (Germany).


3. Treating Knowledge, Culture and Science as Commons

Science, and recently, free software, are paradigmatic knowledge commons; copyright and patent are paradigmatic enclosures. But our focus on paradigmatic examples and the language of “intellectual property” and “openness” may actually limit our imaginations about what might be possible. If we took the commons seriously, for example, we might begin to see that copyright and patent are not just knowledge enclosures, but “modern” ways of enforcing privileges and inequalities in what may be known and communicated. Similarly, that open access and use is not necessarily an emancipation, but rather a shift in control to those who own the digital platform. This Stream will attempt to (re)consider and (re)conceptualize the free/libre/open/commons movements from a strategic and commons-first perspective.

Stream Coordinator: Mike Linksvayer (USA).


4. Money, Markets, Value and the Commons

The dominant economy is to a huge extent market-fundamentalist and money driven. It is built around unsustainable principles like extraction, competition, profit and exponential growth and fueled by interest bearing credit creation through a profit oriented banking system. A Commons Economy is driven by other motives and proposes a different mindset and different ordering categories than capital, ownership and money. Some commoners tend to imagine a Commons Economy as a world beyond (artificial) scarcity, rendering money and markets irrelevant, which suggests, that commons can function without money as we know it. Others focus on redefining the role of money or how to design money itself as a commons. But all agree that if a Commons Economy still has credit, money and markets (or at least marketplaces), they will be very different in character than our current economy.

The objective of this Stream is to integrate the different “paths of imagination” towards a Commons Economy, and to get a clearer picture of the architecture and underlying design principles of a commons-oriented market places and exchange systems.

Stream Coordinator: Ludwig Schuster (Germany).


5. New Infrastructures for Commoning by Design

One of the main challenges in advancing commons as a stable paradigm is finding ways to develop commons-friendly infrastructures. We lack infrastructures that “by design” foster and protect new practices of commoning. Many existing systems, indeed, enable commons-unfriendly practices (e.g. fossil fuel-based individual transportation) or generate negative social and environmental impacts (e.g., nuclear power and even “clean” energy sources). While some infrastructures have progressive dimensions (using distributed networks, promoting local access), they may be minor parts of larger, regressive infrastructures that still depend upon individual transportation, centralized power grids and concentrated industrial structures. Yet there are important lessons to be learned from commons-based infrastructures such as Internet protocols, which have fostered the emergence of countless digital information commons. An urgent need of our time is to ensure that infrastructures will systematically encourage the formation and protection of commons. Stream Coordinator: Miguel Said Vieira (Brazil)


6. Life, Meaning and Spirituality

A culture of the commons requires that we do much more than change our economic thinking and economy. We must challenge the worldview and assumptions that lie at the heart of dominant economics, even in its “Green New Deal” flavors. The current worldview – a co-creation of liberal economic thought and Darwinistic theory – could be called “bioeconomics” because it understands living exchanges by means of objective laws acting on inanimate ecological or social atoms. This is a world predicated on an endless struggle for fitness, the absolute value of efficiency, and a subordination of subjectivity and experience to “objective” forces. Moving towards a culture of the commons means that we have to shift from a world of Newtonian, machine-like objects to one of cooperative agents constantly building meaningful relationships and exchanging gifts. If we follow some patterns being revealed by biological sciences, we could develop a new paradigm in which feeling, subjective meaning, value and beauty form the centerpiece of a new “existential ecology” focused on subjective relationships, not static objects alone. We might call this new commons-based perspective “Enlivenment.”

Stream Coordinator: Andreas Weber (Germany).


Conference Organizers

The Commons Strategies Group and Heinrich Böll Foundation are the joint organizers of this conference, which is an outgrowth of the landmark International Commons Conference (ICC) in Berlin in November 2010. That event brought together about 180 commons activists, academics and project leaders from 34 countries, and started a cross-disciplinary political and policy dialogue about the commons in diverse international settings.


The Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation supported the International Commons Conference in 2010 as well as the regional consultation process that has preceded the ECC. Both FPH and HBF consider the commons a key element for the transition toward a new, more democratic and participatory political economy and culture. Both foundations focus their strategic support toward this end, either in cooperation with partners or through their own initiatives. This “cross-granting” partnership between two European foundations seeks to advance a new culture of collaboration among like-minded political actors and funders.


Remix the Commons is another partner in organizing and hosting the ECC. A Montreal-based project that focuses on multimedia communication about the commons, Remix the Commons is especially focused on how the improve public education and popular communications about the commons.

More Information

For more information on the Economics and the Commons Conference: http://p2pfoundation.net/Overview_of_the_Economics_of_the_Commons_Conference

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