[p2p-research] Fwd: The Commons: Only Fundamental Change Can Save Us, Maude Barlow, AlterNet, 20101016

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Thomas Greco <thg at mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:48 AM
Subject: Fwd: The Commons: Only Fundamental Change Can Save Us, Maude
Barlow, AlterNet, 20101016
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>


Michel,
The article below has some important things to say about the commons.

regards,
Tom

-------- Original Message --------  Subject: The Commons: Only Fundamental
Change Can Save Us, Maude Barlow, AlterNet, 20101016 Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010
09:52:35 -0700 From: dennis bumstead
<dennisbumstead at gmail.com><dennisbumstead at gmail.com> To:
dennis bumstead <dennisbumstead at gmail.com> <dennisbumstead at gmail.com>



  We are Facing the Greatest Threat to Humanity: Only Fundamental Change Can
Save Us
By Maude Barlow, On the Commons
October 16, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/148519/

*Maude Barlow gave this stirring plenary speech, full of hope even in the
face of ecological disasters, to the Environmental Grantmakers Association
annual retreat in Pacific Grove, California. Barlow, a former UN Senior
Water Advisor, is National Chairperson of the **Council of Canadians** and
founder of the Blue Planet Project. Barlow is a contributor to AlterNet's
forth-coming book* Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most
Critical Resource.**

*
*

We all know that the earth and all upon it face a growing crisis. Global
climate change is rapidly advancing, melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing
freak and increasingly wild storms, and displacing untold millions from
rural communities to live in desperate poverty in peri-urban slums. Almost
every human victim lives in the global South, in communities not responsible
for greenhouse gas emissions. The atmosphere has already warmed up almost a
full degree in the last several decades and a new Canadian study reports
that we may be on course to add another 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees
Fahrenheit) by 2100.

Half the tropical forests in the world – the lungs of our ecosystems – are
gone; by 2030, at the current rate of harvest, only 10% will be left
standing. Ninety percent of the big fish in the sea are gone, victim to
wanton predatory fishing practices. Says a prominent scientist studying
their demise “there is no blue frontier left.” Half the world’s wetlands –
the kidneys of our ecosystems – were destroyed in the 20th century. Species
extinction is taking place at a rate one thousand times greater than before
humans existed. According to a Smithsonian scientist, we are headed toward a
“biodiversity deficit” in which species and ecosystems will be destroyed at
a rate faster than Nature can create new ones.

We are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Every day, 2
million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are discharged
into the world’s water, the equivalent of the weight of the entire human
population of 6.8 billion people. The amount of wastewater produced annually
is about six times more water than exists in all the rivers of the world. A
comprehensive new global study recently reported that 80% of the world’s
rivers are now in peril, affecting 5 billion people on the planet. We are
also mining our groundwater far faster than nature can replenish it, sucking
it up to grow water-guzzling chemical-fed crops in deserts or to water
thirsty cities that dump an astounding 200 trillion gallons of land-based
water as waste in the oceans every year. The global mining industry sucks up
another 200 trillion gallons, which it leaves behind as poison. Fully one
third of global water withdrawals are now used to produce biofuels, enough
water to feed the world. A recent global survey of groundwater found that
the rate of depletion more than doubled in the last half century. If water
was drained as rapidly from the Great Lakes, they would be bone dry in
80 years.

The global water crisis is the greatest ecological and human threat humanity
has ever faced. As vast areas of the planet are becoming desert as we suck
the remaining waters out of living ecosystems and drain remaining aquifers
in India, China, Australia, most of Africa, all of the Middle East, Mexico,
Southern Europe, US Southwest and other places. Dirty water is the biggest
killer of children; every day more children die of water borne disease than
HIV/AIDS, malaria and war together. In the global South, dirty water kills a
child every three and a half seconds. And it is getting worse, fast. By
2030, global demand for water will exceed supply by 40%— an astounding
figure foretelling of terrible suffering.

Knowing there will not be enough food and water for all in the near future,
wealthy countries and global investment, pension and hedge funds are buying
up land and water, fields and forests in the global South, creating a new
wave of invasive colonialism that will have huge geo-political
ramifications. Rich investors have already bought up an amount of land
double the size of the United Kingdom in Africa alone.


*We Simply Cannot Continue on the Present Path*

I do not think it possible to exaggerate the threat to our earth and every
living thing upon it. Quite simply we cannot continue on the path that
brought us here. Einstein said that problems cannot be solved by the same
level of thinking that created them. While mouthing platitudes about caring
for the earth, most of our governments are deepening the crisis with new
plans for expanded resource exploitation, unregulated free trade deals, more
invasive investment, the privatization of absolutely everything and
unlimited growth. This model of development is literally killing the planet.

Unlimited growth assumes unlimited resources, and this is the genesis of the
crisis. Quite simply, to feed the increasing demands of our consumer based
system, humans have seen nature as a great resource for our personal
convenience and profit, not as a living ecosystem from which all life
springs. So we have built our economic and development policies based on a
human-centric model and assumed either that nature would never fail to
provide or that, where it does fail, technology will save the day.


*Two Problems that Hinder the Environmental Movement*

>From the perspective of the environmental movement, I see two problems that
hinder us in our work to stop this carnage. The first is that, with notable
exceptions, most environmental groups either have bought into the dominant
model of development or feel incapable of changing it. The main form of
environmental protection in industrialized countries is based on the
regulatory system, legalizing the discharge of large amounts of toxics into
the environment. Environmentalists work to minimize the damage from these
systems, essentially fighting for inadequate laws based on curbing the worst
practices, but leaving intact the system of economic globalization at the
heart of the problem. Trapped inside this paradigm, many environmentalists
essentially prop up a deeply flawed system, not imagining they are capable
of creating another.

Hence, the support of false solutions such as carbon markets, which, in
effect, privatize the atmosphere by creating a new form of property rights
over natural resources. Carbon markets are predicated less on reducing
emissions than on the desire to make carbon cuts as cheap as possible for
large corporations.

Another false solution is the move to turn water into private property,
which can then be hoarded, bought and sold on the open market. The latest
proposals are for a water pollution market, similar to carbon markets, where
companies and countries will buy and sell the right to pollute water. With
this kind of privatization comes a loss of public oversight to manage and
protect watersheds. Commodifying water renders an earth-centred vision for
watersheds and ecosystems unattainable.

Then there is PES, or Payment for Ecological Services, which puts a price
tag on ecological goods – clean air, water, soil etc, – and the services
such as water purification, crop pollination and carbon sequestration that
sustain them. A market model of PES is an agreement between the “holder” and
the “consumer” of an ecosystem service, turning that service into an
environmental property right. Clearly this system privatizes nature, be it a
wetland, lake, forest plot or mountain, and sets the stage for private
accumulation of nature by those wealthy enough to be able to buy, hoard sell
and trade it. Already, northern hemisphere governments and private
corporations are studying public/private/partnerships to set up lucrative
PES projects in the global South. Says Friends of the Earth International,
“Governments need to acknowledge that market-based mechanisms and the
commodification of biodiversity have failed both biodiversity conservation
and poverty alleviation.”

The second problem with our movement is one of silos. For too long
environmentalists have toiled in isolation from those communities and groups
working for human and social justice and for fundamental change to the
system. On one hand are the scientists, scholars, and environmentalists
warning of a looming ecological crisis and monitoring the decline of the
world’s freshwater stocks, energy sources and biodiversity. On the other are
the development experts, anti-poverty advocates, and NGOs working to address
the inequitable access to food, water and health care and campaigning for
these services, particularly in the global South. The assumption is that
these are two different sets of problems, one needing a scientific and
ecological solution, the other needing a financial solution based on pulling
money from wealthy countries, institutions and organizations to find new
resources for the poor.

The clearest example I have is in the area I know best, the freshwater
crisis. It is finally becoming clear to even the most intransigent silo
separatists that the ecological and human water crises are intricately
linked, and that to deal effectively with either means dealing with both.
The notion that inequitable access can be dealt with by finding more money
to pump more groundwater is based on a misunderstanding that assumes
unlimited supply, when in fact humans everywhere are overpumping groundwater
supplies. Similarly, the hope that communities will cooperate in the
restoration of their water systems when they are desperately poor and have
no way of conserving or cleaning the limited sources they use is a cruel
fantasy. The ecological health of the planet is intricately tied to the need
for a just system of water distribution.

The global water justice movement (of which I have the honour of being
deeply involved) is, I believe, successfully incorporating concerns about
the growing ecological water crisis with the promotion of just economic,
food and trade policies to ensure water for all. We strongly believe that
fighting for equitable water in a world running out means taking better care
of the water we have, not just finding supposedly endless new sources.
Through countless gatherings where we took the time to really hear one
another – especially grassroots groups and tribal peoples closest to the
struggle – we developed a set of guiding principles and a vision for an
alternative future that are universally accepted in our movement and have
served us well in times of stress. We are also deeply critical of the trade
and development policies of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and
the World Water Council (whom I call the “Lords of water”), and we openly
challenge their model and authority.

Similarly, a fresh and exciting new movement exploded onto the scene in
Copenhagen and set all the traditional players on their heads. The climate
justice movement whose motto is Change the System, Not the Climate, arrived
to challenge not only the stalemate of the government negotiators but the
stale state of too cosy alliances between major environmental groups,
international institutions and big business – the traditional “players” on
the climate scene. Those climate justice warriors went on to gather at
another meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, producing a powerful alternative
declaration to the weak statement that came out of Copenhagen. The new
document forged in Bolivia put the world on notice that business as usual is
not on the climate agenda.


*How the Commons Fits In*

I deeply believe it is time for us to extend these powerful new movements,
which fuse the analysis and hard work of the environmental community with
the vision and commitment of the justice community, into a whole new form of
governance that not only challenges the current model of unlimited growth
and economic globalization but promotes an alternative that will allow us
and the Earth to survive. Quite simply, human-centred governance systems are
not working and we need new economic, development, and environmental
policies as well as new laws that articulate an entirely different point of
view from that which underpins most governance systems today. At the centre
of this new paradigm is the need to protect natural ecosystems and to ensure
the equitable and just sharing of their bounty. It also means the recovery
of an old concept called the Commons.

The Commons is based on the notion that just by being members of the human
family, we all have rights to certain common heritages, be they the
atmosphere and oceans, freshwater and genetic diversity, or culture,
language and wisdom. In most traditional societies, it was assumed that what
belonged to one belonged to all. Many indigenous societies to this day
cannot conceive of denying a person or a family basic access to food, air,
land, water and livelihood. Many modern societies extended the same concept
of universal access to the notion of a social Commons, creating education,
health care and social security for all members of the community. Since
adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, governments are
obliged to protect the human rights, cultural diversity and food security of
their citizens.

A central characteristic of the Commons is the need for careful
collaborative management of shared resources by those who use them and
allocation of access based on a set of priorities. A Commons is not a
free-for-all. We are not talking about a return to the notion that nature’s
capacity to sustain our ways is unlimited and anyone can use whatever they
want, however they want, whenever they want. It is rooted rather in a sober
and realistic assessment of the true damage that has already been unleashed
on the world’s biological heritage as well as the knowledge that our
ecosystems must be managed and shared in a way that protects them now and
for all time.

Also to be recovered and expanded is the notion of the Public Trust
Doctrine, a longstanding legal principle which holds that certain natural
resources, particularly air, water and the oceans, are central to our very
existence and therefore must be protected for the common good and not
allowed to be appropriated for private gain. Under the Public Trust
Doctrine, governments exercise their fiduciary responsibilities to sustain
the essence of these resources for the long-term use and enjoyment of the
entire populace, not just the privileged who can buy inequitable access.

The Public Trust Doctrine was first codified in 529 A.D. by Emperor
Justinius who declared: “By the laws of nature, these things are common to
all mankind: the air, running water, the sea and consequently the shores of
the sea.” U.S. courts have referred to the Public Trust Doctrine as a “high,
solemn and perpetual duty” and held that the states hold title to the lands
under navigable waters “in trust for the people of the State.” Recently,
Vermont used the Public Trust Doctrine to protect its groundwater from
rampant exploitation, declaring that no one owns this resource but rather,
it belongs to the people of Vermont and future generations. The new law also
places a priority for this water in times of shortages: water for daily
human use, sustainable food production and ecosystem protection takes
precedence over water for industrial and commercial use.

An exciting new network of Canadian, American and First Nations communities
around the Great Lakes is determined to have these lakes names a Commons, a
public trust and a protected bioregion.

Equitable access to natural resources is another key character of the
Commons. These resources are not there for the taking by private interests
who can then deny them to anyone without means. The human right to land,
food, water, health care and biodiversity are being codified as we speak
from nation-state constitutions to the United Nations. Ellen Dorsey and
colleagues have recently called for a human rights approach to development,
where the most vulnerable and marginalized communities take priority in law
and practice. They suggest renaming the United Nation’s Millennium
Development Goals the Millennium Development Rights and putting the voices
of the poor at the centre.

This would require the meaningful involvement of those affected communities,
especially Indigenous groups, in designing and implementing development
strategies. Community-based governance is another basic tenet of
the Commons.

**

*Inspiring Successes Around the Globe*

Another crucial tenet of the new paradigm is the need to put the natural
world back into the centre of our existence. If we listen, nature will teach
us how to live. Again, using the issue I know best, we know exactly what to
do to create a secure water future: protection and restoration of
watersheds; conservation; source protection; rainwater and storm water
harvesting; local, sustainable food production; and meaningful laws to halt
pollution. Martin Luther King Jr. said legislation may not change the heart
but it will restrain the heartless.

Life and livelihoods have been returned to communities in Rajasthan, India,
through a system of rainwater harvesting that has made desertified land
bloom and rivers run again thanks to the collective action of villagers. The
city of Salisbury South Australia, has become an international wonder for
greening desertified land in the wake of historic low flows of the Murray
River. It captures every drop of rain that falls from the sky and collects
storm and wastewater and funnels it all through a series of wetlands, which
clean it, to underground natural aquifers, which store it, until it
is needed.

In a “debt for nature” swap, Canada, the U.S. and The Netherlands cancelled
the debt owed to them by Colombia in exchange for the money being used for
watershed restoration. The most exciting project is the restoration of 16
large wetland areas of the Bogotá River, which is badly contaminated, to
pristine condition. Eventually the plan is to clean up the entire river.
True to principles of the Commons, the indigenous peoples living on the
sites were not removed, but rather, have become caretakers of these
protected and sacred places.

The natural world also needs its own legal framework, what South African
environmental lawyer Cormac Culllinen calls “wild law.” The quest is a body
of law that recognizes the inherent rights of the environment, other species
and water itself outside of their usefulness to humans. A wild law is a law
to regulate human behaviour in order to protect the integrity of the earth
and all species on it. It requires a change in the human relationship with
the natural world from one of exploitation to one of democracy with other
beings. If we are members of the earth’s community, then our rights must be
balanced against those of plants, animals, rivers and ecosystems. In a world
governed by wild law, the destructive, human-centred exploitation of the
natural world would be unlawful. Humans would be prohibited from
deliberately destroying functioning ecosystems or driving other species
to extinction.

This kind of legal framework is already being established. The Indian
Supreme Court has ruled that protection of natural lakes and ponds is akin
to honouring the right to life – the most fundamental right of all according
to the Court. Wild law was the inspiration behind an ordinance in Tamaqua
Borough, Pennsylvania that recognized natural ecosystems and natural
communities within the borough as “legal persons” for the purposes of
stopping the dumping of sewage sludge on wild land. It has been used
throughout New England in a series of local ordinances to prevent bottled
water companies from setting up shop in the area. Residents of Mount Shasta
California have put a wild law ordinance on the November 2010 ballot to
prevent cloud seeding and bulk water extraction within city limits.

In 2008, Ecuador’s citizens voted two thirds in support of a new
constitution, which says, “Natural communities and ecosystems possess the
unalienable right to exist, flourish and evolve within Ecuador. Those rights
shall be self-executing, and it shall be the duty and right of all
Ecuadorian governments, communities, and individuals to enforce those
rights.” Bolivia has recently amended its constitution to enshrine the
philosophy of “living well” as a means of expressing concern with the
current model of development and signifying affinity with nature and the
need for humans to recognize inherent rights of the earth and other living
beings. The government of Argentina recently moved to protect its glaciers
by banning mining and oil drilling in ice zones. The law sets standards for
protecting glaciers and surrounding ecosystems and creates penalties just
for harming the country’s fresh water heritage.

The most far-reaching proposal for the protection of nature itself is the
Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth that was drafted at the
April 2010 World People’s Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba,
Bolivia and endorsed by the 35,000 participants there. We are writing a book
setting out our case for this Declaration to the United Nations and the
world. The intent is for it to become a companion document to the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Every now and then in history, the
human race takes a collective step forward in its evolution. Such a time is
upon us now as we begin to understand the urgent need to protect the earth
and its ecosystems from which all life comes. The Universal Declaration on
the Rights of Mother Earth must become a history-altering covenant toward a
just and sustainable future for all.


*What Can We Do Right Now?*

What might this mean for funders and other who share these values? Well, let
me be clear: the hard work of those fighting environmental destruction and
injustice must continue. I am not suggesting for one moment that his work is
not important or that the funding for this work is not needed. I do think
however, that there are ways to move the agenda I have outlined here forward
if we put our minds to it.

Anything that helps bridge the solitudes and silos is pure gold. Bringing
together environmentalists and justice activists to understand one another’s
work and perspective is crucial. Both sides have to dream into being –
together – the world they know is possible and not settle for small
improvements to the one we have. This means working for a whole different
economic, trade and development model even while fighting the abuses
existing in the current one. Given a choice between funding an environmental
organization that basically supports the status quo with minor changes and
one that promotes a justice agenda as well, I would argue for the latter.

Support that increases capacity at the base is also very important, as is
funding that connects domestic to international struggle, always related
even when not apparent. Funding for those projects and groups fighting to
abolish or fundamentally change global trade and banking institutions that
maintain corporate dominance and promote unlimited and unregulated growth is
still essential.

**

*How Clean Water Became a Human Right*

We all, as well, have to find ways to thank and protect those groups and
governments going out on a limb to promote an agenda for true change. A very
good example is President Evo Morales of Bolivia, who brought the climate
justice movement together in Cochabamba last April and is leading the
campaign at the UN to promote the Rights of Mother Earth.

It was this small, poor, largely indigenous landlocked country, and its
former coca-farmer president, that introduced a resolution to recognize the
human right to water and sanitation this past June to the UN General
Assembly, taking the whole UN community by surprise. The Bolivian UN
Ambassador, Pablo Solon, decided he was fed up with the “commissions” and
“further studies” and “expert consultations” that have managed to put off
the question of the right to water for at least a decade at the UN and that
it was time to put an “up or down” question to every country: do you or do
you not support the human right to drinking water and sanitation?

A mad scramble ensued as a group of Anglo-Western countries, all promoting
to some extent the notion of water as a private commodity, tried to derail
the process and put off the vote. The U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia and
New Zealand even cooked up a “consensus” resolution that was so bland
everyone would likely have handily voted for it at an earlier date. But
sitting beside the real thing, it looked like what it was – an attempt, yet
again, to put off any meaningful commitment at the UN to the billions
suffering from lack of clean water. When that didn’t work, they toiled
behind the scenes to weaken the wording of the Bolivian resolution but to no
avail. On July 28, 2010, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to
adopt a resolution recognizing the human right to water and sanitation. One
hundred and twenty two countries voted for the resolution; 41 abstained; not
one had the courage to vote against.

I share this story with you not only because my team and I were deeply
involved in the lead up to this historic vote and there for it the day it
was presented, but because it was the culmination of work done by a movement
operating on the principles I have outlined above.

We took the time to establish the common principles that water is a Commons
that belongs to the earth, all species, and the future, and is a fundamental
human right not to be appropriated for profit. We advocate for the Public
Trust Doctrine in law at every level of government. We set out to build a
movement that listens first and most to the poorest among us, especially
indigenous and tribal voices. We work with communities and groups in other
movements, especially those working on climate justice and trade justice. We
understand the need for careful collaborative cooperation to restore the
functioning of watersheds and we have come to revere the water that gives
life to all things upon the Earth. While we clearly have much left to do,
these water warriors inspire me and give me hope. They get me out of bed
every morning to fight another day.

I believe I am in a room full of stewards and want, then to leave you with
these words from *Lord of the Rings*. This is Gandalf speaking the night
before he faces a terrible force that threatens all living beings. His words
are for you.

“The rule of no realm is mine, but all worthy things that are in peril, as
the world now stand, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly
fail in my task if anything passes through this night that can still grow
fair, or bear fruit, and flower again in the days to come.

For I too am a steward, did you not know?” —J.R.R. Tolkien

**





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