Adam Parsons: Sharing the Commons: Wealth, Power and Natural Resources. A presentation at the TheIU.org 2013 Conference 'Economics for Conscious Evolution', London, UK, July 2013.

1. Sharing the
commons:
wealth, power and
natural resourcesRajesh Makwana and Adam Parsons
25th
July 2013
International Union Conference: Economics for Conscious Evolution www.stwr.org

2. What is economic sharing?
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
Sharing in terms of ‘giving’ implies
ownership:
•Charity
•Philanthropy
•Gift economies
•Reciprocity
We cannot give away a tangible
resource unless it belongs to us in
the first place.
Sharing in terms of ‘using jointly’ implies
trusteeship:
•The global commons
•Public goods and services
•National trusts
•Community assets
A shared resource is not necessarily
owned, given or received but can be
collectively managed and freely
accessible.

3. • Planet Earth as a self-regulating system
• Natural cycles and elements within the biosphere
• The cells of all living organisms share available nutrients
• Plants and flowers freely share their pollen and seeds
• Evidence of sharing in groups of highly social animals
Sharing in nature
…examples
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

4. Homo-economicus
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
Policymaking is:
•based on assumption that human
beings are selfish, competitive,
acquisitive and individualistic
•driven by the endless pursuit of
economic growth, profit and wealth
accumulation
Creating a world in which:
•market forces rather than human need
dictates the distribution of resources,
goods and services
•commercialisation has infiltrated every
aspect of our lives, encouraging highly
individualistic and unsustainable
consumerist lifestyles
•natural resources are usurped at far
greater rates than they can be
replenished

5. Economic sharing:
Justice and sustainability
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
Economic sharing is about creating
environmentally sustainable systems
that deliver social and economic
justice.
It relates closely to the concepts of:
• Justice
• Equality
• Human rights
• Universalism
• Trusteeship
• Common ownership
• Stewardship

6. Sharing locally
…examples
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
• Agricultural land was traditionally
shared/managed cooperatively
as a ‘commons’
• Saving and sharing seeds has
played an integral role in farming
• Transition towns, cooperatives,
conservation projects, alternative
currencies, and ‘trusts’ that
manage land and other common-
pool resources
• The sharing economy: collaborative
consumption, peer-to-peer
technology, open source software
development, gift economies, time
banking etc.

7. Sharing nationally
…examples
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
• Participative democracy seeks to
share political power more
equitably among citizens
• Land value taxation as a form of
public revenue can share the
value of a country’s land more
fairly with citizens
• Progressive taxation and public
spending is a complex form of
economic sharing whereby a nation
redistributes a portion of its financial
resources (personal income and
assets, as well as company profits)
for the benefit of society as a whole.

8. • Extending the concepts of justice, socio-economic rights and
environmental sustainability to include the entire community of nations
and the planet as a whole.
• Ensuring that people in all countries, including future generations, can
access what they need to survive and prosper without devastating the
planet in the process.
• Recognising that all people are part of an extended human family with
the same basic needs and rights, and establishing policies and
institutions at the global level that embody this understanding.
Global economic sharing
Key principles
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

9. Global sharing
…is still in its infancy
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
Sharing is still not sufficiently
expressed in the governance
systems and economic structures
that underpin the global economy.
For example:
•Global governance bodies such as
the World Trade organisation, World
Bank and International Monetary
Fund are undemocratic and pursue a
purely market-based approach to
international trade, finance and
development
• Official Development Assistance
(ODA) is grossly insufficient,
ineffective and often problematic for
recipient countries
• International trade is riddled with
self-interest and extremely inefficient
from an environmental perspective
• The United Nations is in need of
considerable reform to render it
more democratic, inclusive and
effective

10. The global
emergency
Economic sharing as
a solution to global
crises.
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

11. • In the United States, almost 1 in 4 children grow up in a poor household
and around 50 million people are now going hungry.
• In the EU, over 115 million people – 23% of the entire EU population –
officially live below the poverty line.
• In the UK – the fifth richest country in the world – one in five people are
living in poverty, and food banks are now a lifeline for half a million
people.
Poverty among the ‘richest’ countries
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

12. Poverty in the Global South
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
• 95% of people who live in
developing countries survive on
the equivalent of less than $10 a
day – comparable to what $10
would buy in the United States
(World Bank statistics).
• The majority of the developing
world population still lives on less
than $2.50 a day (World Bank
statistics).
• Globally, 50% of children are living
below the $2-a-day international
poverty line (World Bank statistics).
• Malnutrition is the underlying cause
of death for at least 3.1 million
children each year (The Lancet).
• 15 million people die every year as a
consequence of extreme poverty
and inadequate welfare provision
(WHO statistics).

13. The inadequacy of development targets
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
• Although reports suggest that the
Millennium Development Goal on
halving poverty has been met
ahead of schedule, the actual
number of people living in
extreme poverty in 2015 will
remain unacceptably high at
around a billion.
• At the current rate of poverty
reduction we may never succeed in
consigning poverty to the annals of
history, even 65 years since the
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights was first established.
• The post-2015 development goal:
can we really say that we’ve made
poverty history if millions of people
still live on less than $2.50 a day in
2030?

14. Sharing the planet’s finite resources equitably
and sustainably?
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
• The wealthiest 20% of the world’s
population consume 80% of
global resources and are
responsible for the vast majority
of global warming and
environmental destruction.
• The poorest 20% of the
population lack sufficient access
to essentials such as food, clean
water and energy, and account
for just 1.3% of global resource
consumption.
• The carbon emissions of just 11% of
the global population generate
around 50% of global carbon
emissions, while 50% of people
create only 11%.
• The ecological footprint of high-
income countries is three times that
of middle income countries, and five
times that of low income countries.

15. Sharing and sustainability
Examples of existing policy frameworks
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
• Oxfam: ‘The Doughnut’
concept of social and planetary
boundaries argues that traditional
growth policies have failed to
ensure a safe or just world.
• South Centre: ‘The Equitable
Sharing of Atmospheric and
Development Space’ is a
framework based on the principle
that a global climate change deal
must put fairness and equity at
the centre of its design.
• New Economics Foundation:
Ecological Debt Day is the
calendar date in which the total
resources consumed by humanity
will exceed the capacity for the
Earth to generate those resources
that year.
• WWF: Living Planet Report
demonstrates how our demands on
the planet exceed its capacity to
sustain us.

16. Interstate conflict
…humanity’s failure to share natural
resources
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
Historically
•Between 1965 and 1990, 73 civil
wars over resources occurred in
which more than a thousand people
a year died.
•At least 18 international conflicts
have been triggered by competition
for resources since then, including
the invasion of Iraq since 2003.
Currently
•The ongoing race to control or exploit
oil and gas reserves in the Arctic, in the
East and South China Seas, around the
Falkland Islands and elsewhere.

17. Sharing vs. competing for global resources
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
Unless nations find ways of sharing
rather than competing over scarce
resources, a number of factors all
but guarantee a further escalation of
resource wars in the near future:
• a rising world population
• soaring global consumption rates
• rapidly disappearing energy supplies
• climate change

18. “It seems reasonable to ask whether a resource-acquisition strategy based on
global cooperation rather than recurring conflict might not prove more effective
in guaranteeing access to critical supplies over the long run. Such a strategy
would call for the equitable distribution of the world’s existing resource
stockpiles in times of acute scarcity, as well as an accelerated, global program
of research on alternative energy sources and industrial processes. Coordinated
international efforts would be inaugurated to conserve scarce commodities and
employ material-saving technologies.”
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, p. 223.
Professor Michael T Klare on resource wars:
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

19. 1. If financial resources are redistributed or shared more equitably both within
and between nations, inequality could be reduced and extreme poverty could
be eliminated in a relatively short timeframe.
2. If the international community shared the world’s natural resources more
sustainably and equitably, it would be possible to regulate and equalise
consumption patterns across the world and bring emission levels to within
environmental limits.
3. Sharing rather than competing over the world’s natural resources could help
de-escalate conflict and increase international peace and security.
Sharing as a solution to global crises?
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

20. Sharing as a solution
to global crises
Re-ordering priorities
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

21. • Rapidly rising poverty, food insecurity and social exclusion in OECD
countries
• Extreme poverty and life-threatening deprivation in the poorest countries:
» 40,000 poverty-related deaths each day
» 1 in 8 people go hungry
» A third of all child deaths occur due to under-nutrition
» Around 400,000 people die as a result of climate change each
year
A humanitarian emergency
Should this be our no.1 priority?
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

22. • Lifting 1.4bn people above the $1.25 a day extreme poverty line: $173bn
per year
• Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) shortfall for 2011: $45m
• Financing the Global Climate Fund: $100bn per year
• World Food Program shortfall for 2011: $141m
• Providing vaccines for all infants in poor countries: $3bn
• The total cost of meeting the MDG financing gap for every low-income
country: $143bn in 2010
• Providing basic social protection to all people living in extreme poverty:
$1.26tn (2% of global GDP).
The small cost of saving lives
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

23. Mobilising $2.8 trillion
Policies to finance a global sharing
economy
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
Tax financial speculation
End fossil fuel and biofuel subsidies
Divert military spending
Stop tax avoidance
Increase international aid
End support for agribusiness
Redistribute IMF resources
Tax carbon emissions
Cancel unjust debt
Protect import tariffs
$650bn
$531bn
$434.5bn
$349bn
$297.5bn
$187bn
$115.5bn
$108bn
$81bn
$63.4bn

24. • 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the
Event of Armed Conflict
• 1961 Antarctic treaty system (indirectly)
• 1967 Outer Space Treaty
• 1970 The Declaration of Principles Governing the Seabed and Ocean
Floor
• 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention
• 1982 The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
• 1984 Moon Treaty
Common heritage of humankind
Economic sharing in international law
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

25. • The trust would set a cap on a particular resource to ensure it is used
sustainably and protected for future generations.
• Businesses could rent a proportion of the resource from the trust, rather
than own it.
• The rent paid for the resource could be used to fund social or
environmental needs.
A global commons trust
Basic principles
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

26. Current patterns of global resource
consumption are unsustainable...
…ecologically and socially
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

27. Equitable consumption levels…
…are not necessarily sustainable
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

28. Sharing the world…
…the only way to realise ecologically and
socially sustainable development
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
Source: Sharing
the World, Carley
and Spapens
(1998)

29. • Placing resource management at the forefront of policymaking.
• Moving beyond economic growth and GDP as objectives of economic
policy.
• Internalising the external costs of economic activities.
• Dismantling the culture of consumerism: restricting advertising,
implementing better trading standards, ending planned obsolescence.
• Investment in low carbon infrastructure and energy/resource efficiency
measures.
Curbing consumption
Some well discussed and proposed policies
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

30. Barriers to progress
and the rise of
ordinary people
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

31. Overcoming the barriers to progress
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
Overcoming the vested interests that
block progress on restructuring the
world economy is the most
significant challenge of the 21st
century.
• Current world direction =
centralisation of state/market power.
• The impasse = the world economy
is structurally dependent upon
unsustainable levels of production
and consumption for its continued
success.
• The result = international
negotiations fail, year on year; viable
solutions for the world’s multiple
crises are blocked.

32. Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
A global Tahrir
Square?

33. • Arab Spring: reacting to enormous socio-economic divisions
• Occupy and Indignados: mobilising against inequality, the ‘1%’
• Anti-austerity protests: for a fairer sharing of public revenue / for
corporations to pay their ‘fair share’
• Idle No More: a call to share/conserve Canada’s national resources
• Taksim protests in Turkey: in support of shared public spaces, as
symbolised by Gezi Park
• Brazil protests in 2013: for a fairer sharing of public revenue
Worldwide demonstrations
A growing call for economic sharing
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

34. The big question:
Can people power recognise the need for
sharing on a global level?
• The priorities of the new wave of
protesters still tend to be national
in their focus
• Or else they remain concerned
with social justice and inequality
within the context of rich,
industrialised nations
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org

35. The implications…
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org
Only a collective demand for a fairer
sharing of the world's wealth, power
and resources is likely to unify
citizens of the richest and poorest
nations on a common platform.

36. Campaigning for a
fairer sharing of
wealth, power and
resources within and
between nations
www.stwr.org
Sharing the Commons www.stwr.org