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GLOSSARY

  • Development - on an international scale, the development of livelihoods and greater quality of life for human beings.Human and social development encompasses foreign aid, governance, healthcare, education, gender equality, disaster preparedness, infrastructure, economics, human rights, environment, and other associated issues.
  • Bipolar paradigm - a system where two dominant functional components determine all implementations and solutions. In the case of state capitalism, the public-private dichotomy is actually a monoculture with more similarities than differences
  • Public Sector - deals with the delivery of goods and services by and for the government, whether national, regional or local/municipal. Mainly funded through taxation.
  • Private Sector - the economy run for private profit and not controlled by the state. For example: private banks and corporations
  • G-8, G-20 & G-192 - groups of nations that meet periodically for determination of interests that pertain to the nations within the group. The lower the number, the greater the tendency for concentrated self-interest in relationship to other nations outside of the group. G-192 represents all member states of the United Nations.
  • Multilateral System - system of governance in which all nation-states work together to solve global problems.
  • Commons - people sharing resources (both depletable and replenishable) including: air, water, fossil fuels, forests, fisheries, food resources, biodiversity, genetics, internet, open source info/ mass collaboration, human rights/ health/ culture, pollution, security, climate, communications.
  • "Commoning" is the ability to organize, express the will of, and meet the needs of people without harm to systems on which we depend.
  • Resources: International Association for the Study of the Commons, www.iascp.org, also www.onthecommons.org
  • Commons Trusts - co-governance and co-production of a commons asset by a local community of producers and users with the primary goal of preserving the resource for future generations. Local trusts must coordinate regionally and cooperate across regions creating Global Trusts to effectively safeguard global commons.
  • Co-Governance - process of participatory management in which decisions are made at the lowest levels possible (ie. subsidiarity and decentralization), thereby recognizing the decision of each member equitably.
  • Co-Production - the outcome of synergistic cooperation; productivity, creative output and social capital created through a group working under a transparent process of co-governance.
  • 1. Sheth and Uslay, From Exchange to Value Creation,
    2. Bauwens, The Political Economy of Peer Production,
    3. Bollier, The Commons as a New Sector of Value-Creation,

  • Full Cost Accounting - transparent reflection of true costs of resource development, production and distribution, as well as long-term advantages for projects or proposals. ‘Triple bottom line’ (People, Planet, Profit) is an example, where financial considerations and also ecological and social performance are included in the equation for a model’s success.
  • Carbon Tax - an environmental tax on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases for the purpose of protecting the environment and slowing climate change by reducing greenhouse emissions.
  • Cap and Trade - proposal to set a cap on carbon emissions and issue pollution credits. Emissions cap can be reduced over time. Some see this as a public-private sector system with its own market, which could lead to manipulation of the credits and a tendency toward privatization of the air.
  • Cap and Dividend - a system where carbon credits are issued to limit carbon emissions. The revenues resulting from the credits and penalties are returned to the taxpayers as dividends, thereby increasing common wealth while suppressing the tendency for the private sector to manipulate credits and enclose (privatize) air resources

    1. USA: Peter Barnes testifies to the US Ways and Means Committee on the benefits of paying carbon dividends to every American via a Sky Trust,
    2. International: A worldwide agreement to secure drastic cuts, negotiate benefits to be shared equitably. Global Cap and Share proposal from FEASTA.

  • Contraction & Convergence [C&C] - conceived in the 1990’s by the Global Commons Institute to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas [ghg] concentration. To this end, global ghg emissions are decreased each year [contraction], while the international quota shares of this are predistributed by moving to equal per capita shares globally by an agreed date [convergence].
  • Equity-Based Money System - system where creation and usage of money is based on, and determined by, existing commons assets (reserves), rather than assumed future assets (fractional reserves) based on debt and interest rates. Thomas H. Greco, Jr., "The End of Money and the Future of Civilization", 2009, or download an overview of his work.
  • Debt-Based Money System - the dominant economic paradigm, pervasive across the planet. Richard Greaves, The Negative Consequences Of The Debt-Based Money System.
  • Declaration of Respect for Life and Human Security across the Global Commons - Respect for the entire Sacred Web of Life: All human beings, all species, all flora and fauna, and the Earth, its elements and minerals, are required for survival and prosperity. The laws of cause and effect, energy, biodiversity and interspecies ethics have taught us to recognize and legitimate the essential rights of all of Earth’s life forms. To this end, we declare our rights to the sustainability and security of this Global Commons, encompassing local, national, regional and global stability and the environmental and economic threats to our survival as societies, groups, and individuals. We have no need to petition government for entitlements or businesses for permissions to these rights – we claim them in partnership as our legal and moral birthrights and our responsibilities as Sovereign Beings on Earth.

Mary Beth Steisslinger, MS Integral Systems Biologist
Urban Ecology Collaborative and Global Commons