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There are, I believe, four types of commons to distinguish ... The first type is the immaterial commons we inherit, such as language and culture. The second type is the immaterial commons we create. This is where the hugely important knowledge and digital commons come in (since it this digital commons that is currently exploding). The third type is the material commons we inherit, the oceans, the atmosphere, the forests, etc.; and the fourth type is the as yet underappreciated potential for the created material commons, i.e. productively manufactured resources.
"How can we address the high prices of medicines that are straining health budgets? How can openly sharing green knowledge help an agreement at the climate change talks in Paris this year? How could TTIP further privatize knowledge and what can we do about it? What does it mean to say the Internet belongs to everyone?
Status report excerpted from Nicky Ison and Ed Langham: (the original article has many links) “Here in Australia, while the community energy sector is still new, a recent baseline assessment found that there are now 19 operating community energy projects, which have as of the end of 2014 generated 50,000 megawatt-hours of clean energy – …
"This Regulation was drafted by a working group appointed by the City of Bologna within the project “The city as a Commons” supported by Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna (www.fondazionedelmonte.it). The Italian version can be downloaded here. Translation into English was prepared and edited by LabGov - LABoratory for the GOVernance of commons (http://www.labgov.it) at LUISS Guido Carli. Through this acknowledgment note, LabGov would like to express its gratitude to all those who spent time and energies on this translation of what is now known as the Bologna Regulation on Public Collaboration for Urban Commons. Thus we extend our thanks to LabGov interns who translated single parts of this Regulation: Salvatore Borghese, Edoardo De Stefani, Elena de Nictolis, Alessandra Feola, Fabio Fioravanti, Rosaria Gimmelli, Lucia Mosca, Silvia Pianta, Gianluca Purpura, Marco Quaglia, Stefano Speranza, Margherita Sperduti. Also, LabGov expresses sincere gratitude to professors Sheila Foster and Giacinto della Cananea for commenting the regulation and its English version during the workshop on "Urban commons and the Bologna Regulation on public collaboration. An Inter-Atlantic dialogue" held at LUISS Guido Carli on October 31st, 2014." (http://www.labgov.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bologna-Regulation-on-collaboration-between-citizens-and-the-city-for-the-cure-and-regeneration-of-urban-commons1.pdf)
"This Regulation was drafted by a working group appointed by the City of Bologna within the project “The city as a Commons” supported by Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna (www.fondazionedelmonte.it). The Italian version can be downloaded here. Translation into English was prepared and edited by LabGov - LABoratory for the GOVernance of commons (http://www.labgov.it) at LUISS Guido Carli. Through this acknowledgment note, LabGov would like to express its gratitude to all those who spent time and energies on this translation of what is now known as the Bologna Regulation on Public Collaboration for Urban Commons. Thus we extend our thanks to LabGov interns who translated single parts of this Regulation: Salvatore Borghese, Edoardo De Stefani, Elena de Nictolis, Alessandra Feola, Fabio Fioravanti, Rosaria Gimmelli, Lucia Mosca, Silvia Pianta, Gianluca Purpura, Marco Quaglia, Stefano Speranza, Margherita Sperduti. Also, LabGov expresses sincere gratitude to professors Sheila Foster and Giacinto della Cananea for commenting the regulation and its English version during the workshop on "Urban commons and the Bologna Regulation on public collaboration. An Inter-Atlantic dialogue" held at LUISS Guido Carli on October 31st, 2014." (http://www.labgov.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bologna-Regulation-on-collaboration-between-citizens-and-the-city-for-the-cure-and-regeneration-of-urban-commons1.pdf)
= "With regards to biotechnology, society relies mainly on patents as means to enable and secure innovations. In recent years, the limits of this intellectual property regime has become increasingly evident. New approaches to biological knowledge and technology, such as the attempts to establish open access and open-source practices".
Anne Karpf: Despite its dire record, privatisation is rarely questioned. We must push for our shared interests to take precedence
Interesting lecture at the Ouishare Fest on the pioneering efforts in Bologna:
"We should link up social-public partnership and Commons-Public Partnerships. The important point to highlight is that social or commons must precede the state. Our elected representatives need to become again public servants and arrogant masters need to be rapidly recalled." (email, February 2014)
“In the current debate concerning the rise and consequences of “cognitive capitalism”, a new discourse is developing around the concept of a “social knowledge economy”. But what does a social knowledge economy mean and what are its implications for the ways in which a society and an economy are ordered?
see also for consolidated and expanded material: Transition Proposals Towards a Commons-Oriented Economy and Society
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A spectre is haunting the world – the spectre of the Commons. Without a doubt, the world system is in a crisis of such magnitude that the existing state of affairs cannot possibly be maintained for much longer. At the same time, models based on the collective management of common goods and the social economy have sprung up amidst this state of permanent crisis, which suggest that another world is possible. Taking the policy proposals originally developed by the FLOK Society project in Ecuador as a starting point, this JoPP issue explores how the principles of the Commons, of peer production, of free software and of the social economy can constitute the basis for the development of appropriate policies enabling the transition to alternative, post-capitalist social and economic models.
"We, social movements, grassroots organizations and civil society organizations engaged in the defence of the rights to land and water, gathered in October 2014 in Dakar at the African Social Forum. We are fighting and protesting against natural resource grabbing, especially water and land grabbing of our Commons, and against the systematic violations of the associated human rights. Sharing our ideas led to acknowledgement of the essential linkage between our struggles, given the inextricable nature of land and water grabbing. We met again at the World Social Forum in Tunis in March 2015 to continue this dialogue with movements and organizations from all over the world in order to broaden this convergence.
This is the third in a series of blog posts taken from our talk opening the Ciudad Furor film festival, organised by the Latin American Solidarity Centre in November 2014. In previous posts we examine the neoliberalisation of urban services as a process involving both the acceleration and expansion of the ‘market’ in controlling urban services as well as profound transformation of the state as it is penetrated by the market’s logic. In this post, we examine resistance to these processes, focusing on that resistance reshapes and re-imagines the very notion of ‘the public’.
The text is the result of discussions by an informal group of people interested to interconnect the Social Economy and Commons issues at the European level. This informal group includes Benjamin Coriat and Fabienne Orsi (researchers), Perez Roland, Pierre Calame, Gaelle Krikorian (European Green), Nicole ALIX and Philippe Herzog, ... It was co-signed by MEP Marie-Christine Vergiat.
= A social charter is a social and institutional framework providing incentives for the management and protection of commons resources. Creating a social charter requires the support and involvement of people across a region or community of interest who depend on specific common goods for their livelihood and welfare. A social charter can be developed for a single commons or for overlapping commons.
Here’s a very special treat. Originally published on Guerrilla Translation, Movimiento por la Democracia´s “Charter for Democracy” stands out as premier example of citizen-led solution making to the various crises we face. It is a constitution for the commons written by commons.
Firstly, the term ‘social commons’ is meant to be analogous with the protection of the so-called ecological ‘commons’. Defending ‘the commons’ means focusing on that which is shared by all human beings. It is the very foundation of collective life of humanity. It also means resisting the current commodification of everything and a breakaway from the dominant logic. The ‘social commons’ are human-made commons, meant to protect individuals and societies.
"Food as a purely private good prevents millions to get such a basic resource, since the purchasing power determines access and the price of food does not reflect its multiple dimensions and the value to society. With the dominant no money-no food rationality, hunger still prevails in a world of abundance. Hunger is needlessly killing millions of our fellow humans, including 3.1 million young children every year, condemning many others to life-long exposure to illness and social exclusion. This paper argues this narrative has to be re-conceived and a binding Food Treaty, based on a commons approach to food, will create a more appropriate framework to work together towards a fairer and more sustainable world. The eradication of hunger no later than 2025 would be the main objective within a broader framework whereby food and nutrition security shall be understood as a Global Public Good. Within the treaty framework, those governments that are genuinely determined to end hunger (a coalition of the willing) could commit themselves to mutually-agreed binding goals, strategies and predictable funding. The paper presents the rationale to substantiate the treaty, as well as objectives, provisions and a possible route map for the process."
The government shutdown is teaching us a lot about the “public sector” — mainly that it doesn’t exist.
'a commons regime takes steps to protect the "resource" that the commons jointly manages/owns/cares for. More specifically the words "protecting the resource" means setting an absolute scale limit on its use. The commoners will set a scale of use for grazing a commons, or fishing a river, or taking water from an irrigation system. That is to say they set a maximum physically measured use - so many cows over the summer, so many gallons or water, so many fish per season. (NOT, so much $ worth of milk etc)
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