The Commons: a first stop shop for concerned citizens, researchers, students, policy makers, entrepreneurs, investors or social activists interested in quickly getting a feel for world sustainability issues, views and developments from an unbiased critical perspective. We invite complex thinking about these complex issues which are loaded with internal contradictions and major divergences of views and priorities. Starting from here you will find many tools that will help you access many of the programs that are currently going on in many corners of the world, each of which are working hard to make their much-needed contribution.

The Commons: An independent Open Society Initiative dedicated to encouraging and supporting wide open public discussions of the issues and choices of governance and decision making that impact on sustainability and social justice, in both the private as well as in the public sector. These issues concern all of us, and it is only by putting our minds and hearts together in open energetic partnerships that we will be able to advance the sustainability agenda. (While unrelated to the Soros Foundation, we share many of the values and concerns of their programs.)

The Commons: "Sustainability starts today." A common thread in all our work and investigations is the potential for using technology positively to break the sustainability impasse that is currently the state of play in most places. The emphasis throughout is in laying the groundwork for near term action in terms of concrete polices and practices that can advance the sustainability and social justice agenda in your company, city, country, region . .  . or in your own life and that of your family. Which after all is where sustainability must start.

Mission Statement

"Two cheers for the market, but not three!" The Commons is today a shared space on the Internet, that was first placed there in a then state-of-the-art version in the late eighties (a basic Listserv) with the intention of providing a wide open, world-wide, non-government forum which could serve as a working tool and assembly area for people and groups concerned with improving our understanding and control of technology as it impacts on people in their daily lives. The three central themes of all our exchanges and work here: the much needed move to sustainability, social justice, and the critical role of individual responsibility in the making of both. One of the distinguishing features of our work under The Commons is that in all our projects and programs we have decided to concentrate our energies wholly on identifying short term measures (which we define as anything that can be achieved within a two-to-four year or less time span) -- and specifically (a) actions and measures which give promise of being able to achieve openly targeted and verifiable impacts within this narrow time window and (b) in the process also hopefully alter perceptions of how yet further progress on the sustainability agenda can be achieved. Moreover, we believe that these short term actions should in all cases be accompanied by public announcements about the specific near term improvement targets and that these results should be open and publicly verifiable. Virtually all of the work of The Commons has thus far been carried out 'off the economy', with the support of the founders and a growing band of volunteers and users. We saw the whole venture then, and continue to see it now, as a modest step in the direction of creating new forms of citizen information, debate, consensus, action and, eventually, governance. The Commons is of course not alone in this ambitious struggle to find and put to work new forms of democracy and citizen action which make sense in this age of educated citizenry and an ever more knowledgeable society. That said, please note that The Commons is not an "anti-market forum". To the contrary we retain the words of wisdom of Arthur Okun when he wrote some years ago: "Two cheers for the market, but not three!" You will see that theme time and again in these pages and programs. The market and its handmaiden technology are terrific, even indispensable tools for achieving our ambitious objectives for 21st century society. It's just that neither is not equipped to set these objectives. Which is where community, governance and citizen participation and action come in. Back to top How we go about our work The Commons has two principal functions: the first being to serve as an efficient gateway to the dozen or so focused programs/web sites that make it up. The second: to supply an independent, free forum for world news about and the open, critical discussion of the issues of sustainable development and social justice, and of the ongoing efforts to do something about it. As one critique recently put it of our topic: "We are a generation of great talkers". Good, but far from enough. The Commons, as we put it with only half a grin, has been created to go beyond talk and is dedicated to: "Increasing the uncomfort zone for hesitant administrators, industrialists, and politicians; pioneering new concepts for activists, community groups, entrepreneurs and business; and through our joint efforts, energy and personal choices, placing them and ourselves firmly on the path to a more sustainable and more just society." Working together with the hundreds of informed and highly diversified people and groups around the world who check in regularly to use the sites and contribute to the discussions, we are in a distinctly privileged position at a time of tightly held agendas and interests: Our only constituency, our only objective is to open up the discussions and let in the enormous diversity of opinion and views that need to be brought together and understood in order to hammer out a sustainability agenda worthy of the name. One aspect of our approach that leaves some people a bit uncomfortable with what comes out of all this is our consistent encouragement of diversity of views and hearty "creative dissonance" - which in our view is what is needed to make sure that we are indeed looking at the full range of issues and interests in this ever more diversified, heteroclite, vocal and inevitably contentious society in which we all increasingly live. Or as the expression goes: "if you can't stand the heat, what are you doing in the kitchen". Back to top What sets us apart from the rest? There are plenty of fine programs and sites out there in various corners working on issues of sustainability, and for a pretty fair overview identifying literally hundreds each of which sawing away at the own corner of the greater challenges, we invite you to click the World Resources link on the menu. That's the context where we try to fit in and do our bit here at The Commons. The Commons, as we put it with only half a grin, has been created to go beyond talk and is dedicated to: "Increasing the uncomfort zone for hesitant administrators, industrialists, and politicians; pioneering and supporting new concepts for activists, community groups, entrepreneurs and business; and through our joint efforts, energy and personal choices, placing them and ourselves firmly on the path to a more sustainable and more just society." In other words, a thorn in the side of the inertia and entrenched intersts that are locking us into unsustainability and its pretty rotten concomitants. Here are some of the kinds of approaches which we feel are called for in what we regard as a very high emergency situation. A little history Unconstrained by bureaucracy, economic interests or schedules, The Commons offers a wide open, world-wide, non-government, non-aligned, fully independent public forum concerned with making a modest contribution to improving our understanding and control of technology as it impacts on people in their daily lives. Created in 1973 as an "invisible college" bringing together a gradually growing group of thinkers, researchers, activists, and policy makers and advisors, in the early days the medium of preference was mail, phone and the occasional physical get together. We first staked out The Commons in a very simple alpha version on the internet in 1988 as a collaborative working space to deal with our selected range of sustainability themes, ready to make creative use of an ever-expanding array of communications technologies and sharing arrangements for international group work and knowledge building purposes . Think of it as distributed problem solving, with a strong thrust to open tools and new approaches, all in the good and great cause of sustainability and social justice. We think of The Commons as a public library of our time (taking our model from Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues in setting up the first Public Subscription Library in Philadelphia in 1730) -- an open door and a set of shelves in which the thoughtful citizens of a place (in this case our planet) agree to put their "books" together for common use, and also where they come together regularly to consider issues and hammer out a consensus position on the common challenges confronting their community. And like any good library, a place created with children and future generations in mind -- and a time frame and the quiet of mind to match. Back to top Who are we trying to engage The people and groups that can make a difference. Among them: Public interest groups, activist groups and associations working to define and advance local projects that related to The Commons agenda(including those who are concerned with poverty and exclusion) Mayors, town councils, local and regional government - who, in our book, are among the most likely to emerge as champions of new concept projects and implementations... including not least in distressed areas that really have no alternative but to innovate radically or slowly and fatally decline (particularly important in New Work and New Mobility Agenda initiatives). The unemployed and poor themselves, who, if only they can find ways to group their forces, can do a great deal to bring into being the new Renaissance in work that is now so desperately required. Downtown business organizations and others interested in restoring the central economic and social functions of traditional town and communities Small businesses, though from their perspective this is a much harder row to hoe, as much as anything because of a paucity of resources and limited support for anything other than economic survival according to all the old formulas, at best, or gradual aging and decline, in all too many cases. Organized labor, who are here and there gradually pushing ahead in new thinking in many of these areas, often against considerable internal opposition. Still, they are emerging as among the major players in the rethinking process that is now going on (in altogether insufficient intensity and quality, however). The cooperative and volunteer movement, who now have an opportunity to come out of the wings and on to center stage. The research and academic community in all its many parts, which thus far has by and large been securely niched within the ranks of respectable thinking and policy, rather than making a vigorous contribution to the new thinking that is required and which many of them are so well equipped to support. The Media - Sustainability does not have to be boring, abstract, academic, and, worse of all, unlikely and far-fetched. It is not (only) the stuff of specialists and experts. Sustainable development is news, it's a story, it is full of human interest. We need the media to participate in the move to sustainability, but this is going to require new approaches on all sides. Foundations, as sources of financial support, counsel, contacts and guidance to make sure that we are putting our energies into directions which are going to be concretely useful to real people and places. Large corporations, and especially those who are shedding labor and who, instead of just casting aside this important human infrastructure should be working with all these people and resources to find new directions and new kinds of organization to increase wealth and well being within their communities. This of course is a huge challenge, not because it would be so hard for them to do some very interesting and creative things when it comes to reconcatenating and energizing these "excess" resources, but rather what has to happen first in the minds and hearts of the senior managers and the stockholders behind them. but there too, perhaps the greatest challenge is to break the mold and provide models of success in these alternative approaches. Ministries and government departments with a variety of mandates (work, social affairs, technology, education, quality of life, economic and regional development, etc. at different levels of government, seeking new approaches for defining their mandates and translating them into meaningful action The European Commission, and in particular the new Office of the President of the Commission, the Forward Studies Unit, and the many related programs and activities of the various DG's -- all of whom we think are exceptionally well placed to put some fire to the debate and to lay the base for far more experimentation and better exchanges across Europe of information on successful, alternative experiences and approaches in the world of work. They have the resources and the mandate, but need, however, to make a major pattern break first. The European Parliament, whose approach thus far has been one of rather sleepy periodic interest and debate, with little concrete accomplishment. But whose potential to emerge as a major force not only at the Europe level but on the world stage is very great indeed. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris -- despite the fact that they have consistently and insistently remained within the box on the work issues which, by definition, require out-of-box thinking. The OECD could develop into an important carrier of the new messages, but it must first of course come to understand them (and to practice them, themselves). The World Bank and UN Family - whose main job it is to find new ways to deal with the challenges of sustainable development, but who are going to need radically transformed working habits and values if they are finally to get to the core of the challenges. And, of course and above, you! You, the concerned and often baffled citizen who knows that if we do not join forces and minds to do far better, that the best we can hope for is a miserable, flat, passive existence in an ever more dangerous and divided world. Back to top Who May Be Interested in the Commons... Not to try to make up your mind for you, but here are the sorts of people and groups with whom we know from experience that we can collaborate successfully in these matters: Private sector groups who are beginning to understand that perhaps sustainability (real sustainability, not just rhetoric) can be a good business strategy Schools or universities seeking to extend the educational experience into daily life issues of importance, as well as to redefine and refocus their relationships with their local communities Media and Internet groups seeking content… and a more meaningful social role Other programs with Web site who share our interests and our agenda and might be interested in exploring how collaboration and interaction might help everybody concerned Conference organizers seeking both content and better ways of making their chosen topic stick and succeed Existing institutions and agencies who would like to consider some sort of redefinition of their missions and working procedures that might benefit from our experience Foundations wishing to make an impact with a multiplier effect on their hard-earned money Individuals and groups with capabilities and resources who wish to support, enhance and extend these activities The idea behind all this is to plug in to the two dominant characteristics of the Commons as it exists today, namely: The firm belief that the market (economics) is an enormously powerful form of organization for production and distribution of goods and services, but that it does not function at all well as a method for governing people and bringing out the best in our post-industrial societies The hardly less firm belief that we are sitting on the cusp of a major technology and organizational revolution that are fast transforming the economy -- and which can be turned into a powerful instrument for crating a more just, convivial and sustainable society That's what we say at least. For yourself, you will have not difficulty in cutting through all this to find your own truth, starting with a critical tour of this site and then, if you wish, by taking direct contact with us. Amazing how much you can learn when you look someone in the eye. Both ways. Back to top The Bridge: Connect Technologies Technology is not going to solve all our problems and dilemmas of sustainable development. But one thing that we have learned over the last decade of awfully slow 'progress' in these matters from a global perspective, is that we are not going to get very far with the challenges if we do not learn to make imaginative uses of the full range of which are at our disposal. Which brings us right up in front of information and communications technologies, an area where there is a huge amount going on and where the tools available to support the international sustainability movement are advancing with great strides. This section of the site will share with the readers leads that have come out of our own hands-on work with these challenges and technologies over a number of years now. A rapidly expanding portfolio of approaches and means which need to be monitored closely not only for careful use in the interests of sustainability and social justice -- but also since they are subject to laws such as Moore's and the like, which means that the process of change in on-going and unrelenting. Technology is a very sharp two-edged sword, so let's make sure that we are making best use of it. Click here to go to Connect Technologies. Back to top International peer support of sustainailbty innovoation On 6 June 2000 Eric Britton and The Commons were awarded the prestigious Stockholm Challenge Prize for the Environmentt , jointly with Enrique Peñalosa, mayor of the City of Bogota, for our successful collaboration on the first Car Free Day project ever to be organized on a Third World mega-city, and which has subsequently led to the Sustainable Bogota program which is now in full swing. (You can also see the prize-giving ceremony by clicking here.) This, by the way, is exactly the sort of thing that we think we should be doing a lot more of in the future. As an example, we would invite you to have a look at the on-going effort to develop a board base of international support to back the nomination of the Mayor of London Ken Livingston for his leading role in creating Europe's first major congestion pricing project, which incidentally is the subject of lively debate and diversity of opinion even among the experts. But that too is what The Commons is all about.     Home   About Site map   Latest Translate   Contact   Top Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara 75006 Paris, France, Europe. T: +331 4326 1323 Copyright © 1994-2005 The Commons ® All rights reserved. Last updated on 8 July 2005