Common Mistakes and Solutions

The latest weekly ZOOM'D Leadership Radio Show (arranged by Avastone Consulting) featured James Quilligan, a distinguished analyst and administrator in the field of international development who sees the need for new methods of solving global problems, outside of the usual governmental and private entities. In particular, he advocates for a stronger governance of the Commons.

Like the other two guests featured in the ZOOM'D series (refer to my previous blog entries here and here), Quilligan is cautious about declaring a bottom to the current global economic crisis too soon and expects continued instability for some time.

Also, he sees the linkages amongst the ongoing monetary crisis, damage to ecological systems and global poverty. Our consumption-driven economy propels these problems, because the demand for constant growth outstrips the ability of natural systems (energy, water, air, etc.) to sustain it.

This, Quilligan argues, has necessitated the ongoing privatization of the Commons: areas of shared space and worth that difficult or impossible for governments and businesses to repesent on a balance sheet. We may easily recall how all the sources of fresh water from rainfall, rivers, lakes and underground aquifers represent a common resource that is increasingly being threatened by privatization efforts, especially in arid locales.

Quilligan explains how the Commons represent water, air, mineral and energy resources but goes beyond natural resources. It also represents consumer purchasing power, indigenous wisdom, community health, intellectual property, public trust, slots in the over-the-air broadcasting spectrum, and so on.

The Commons encompasses most of what we need to function as a human community. The Commons has mental, social and ecological components. As such, some of it can be replenished, some cannot, but much of it is fragile.

The Tragedy of the Commons is a well-known article by Garrett Hardin which explains how the Commons can be unintentionally damaged by those who rely on it through abuse and overuse. Quilligan sees this as a clear reason why the Commons needs to be carefully governed, and current history strongly suggests that we are failing at this. We usually view this question as a matter of economic theory.

Lately, we have seen the shortcomings of this approach, regardless of whether your economics lean in the direction of free markets or that of Keynesian government interventions. The Public Sector, in Quilligan's opinion, cannot deal effectively with the Commons: bureaucrats and politicians lack proper expertise, and they are limited by man made political borders. And, we know what happens when private managers must answer to shareholders above those who depend most on the Commons.

Quilligan sees less of a distinction between public and private sectors than commonly perceived and cites this coziness as a threat to our Democracy. For anyone interested in sussing this out further, I strongly recommend reading Thom Hartmann's excellent history of corporate power, Unequal Protection.

Besides, neither sector appears ready to accept the fact that the Commons may lack the capacity of supporting our economic growth model. Quilligan see a need to synthesize a “third sector” exhibiting properties of the other two.

Civil society/non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are stepping in to protect the Commons, although they sometimes may not recognize it as such. Much of their work is effectively carried out at the community-level, and more needs to be done at the global level. Some NGOs need help recognizing and organizing this.

I wished to have heard more examples of this from Quilligan. He mentioned the need to propagate gift economies, to institute green fees (taxes) on natural resource extraction and also to tax “financial speculation.”

He does not think that cap and trade legislation for controlling greenhouse gas emissions is the way to go, and I wished that he would have explained why.

Now, Quilligan is serving as Policy Development Coordinator of the Coalition for the Global Commons – an international consultation process that is engaging partners across the world in the development of a common global action plan. Recently, he wrote an article for the Kosmos Journal called Global Commons Goods | Civil Society as Global Commons Organizations. Here is my favorite part of it:

While watching markets and states mismanage the world’s cross-boundary problems, it has dawned on many individuals, communities and civil society organizations that the specific objectives we are pursuing—whether they are food, water, clean air, environmental protection, energy, free flow of information, human rights, indigenous people’s rights, or numerous other social concerns—are essentially global commons issues. It is also becoming clear that we would gain considerably more authority and responsibility in meeting these problems by joining together as global commons organizations.