Here are some existing examples of the kind of projects we’re talking about:

Land
http://ecologicalland.coop/
http://openfarmtech.org/
http://www.energyfarms.net/
http://cityrepair.org/
http://thevillage.ie
http://lammas.org.uk/
http://www.gloucestershirelandforpeople.coop/
http://www.tlio.org.uk/
http://www.landroots.co.uk/
http://www.landforpeople.co.uk/
http://www.communitylandtrust.org.uk/
http://www.iceclt.org/
http://www.pathtofreedom.com/

Money
http://opencoin.org
https://ripplepay.com/
http://rootstock.org.uk/
http://labase.org/
http://openmoney.info/
http://www.damanhur.info/en/html/ArcMagazine.asp?IDCat=1&IDSottoCat=5
http://www.ekopia.findhorn.com/eko.html
http://www.saltspringdollars.com/welcome.htm
http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org/totnespound/home
http://www.berkshares.org/
http://www.themoneyfix.org/index.php
http://www.targetedcurrencies.net/
http://www.complementarycurrency.org/

Media
http://submedia.tv
http://peakmoment.tv
http://energybulletin.net/
http://worldchanging.com/
http://makeinternettv.org/
http://indymedia.org
http://english.ohmynews.com/
http://www.yesmagazine.org/
http://www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk/
http://globalpublicmedia.com/
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/
http://www.undercurrents.org/index.htm
http://www.getmiro.com/
http://plumi.org
http://alpha.green.tv
http://www.bigpicture.tv/
http://showinabox.tv/
http://transmission.cc
http://wiki.koumbit.net/FilmForge
http://aswarmofangels.com/
http://democracynow.org/
http://www.projectcensored.org/
http://www.zmag.org/znet
http://www.mediaventure.org/
http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/
http://www.ourvideo.org/toolkit/index.htm
http://www.alternet.org/

Enjoy!

Josef.

I went ‘undercover’ to a 2 days summit last year in Paris,
This event was meant for all the oil companies of the world to network,
share about how to improve oil sales and what they should in the future.

Here is what I understood
(I must underline that this is my very personal point of view and engages
only me):

First it was very clear to me that big oil companies are very aware that the
shortage of oil is going to happen soon,
And that they should prepare for the future to maintain good profits.

From what I understood, their plan is:

1- to buy a maximum of land all over the world: big oil companies seem to be
in a rush to buy whatever land they can find at the moment: competition
between oil companies seems to be strong there.

2- To begin to grow the plants necessary to produce biofuel
=> this means the parallel development of hybrid cars they (of course)
advertised for in the conference

But this is not over, because big oil companies already forecast the
shortage of land that will occur due to competition with food land,
So they have 2 plans to deal with that:

a- improve soil productivity by massive use of pesticides and GMOs
What shocked me, and that I really would like to share with you,
Is that they felt that there didn’t see any problem to do so,
because no one was going to EAT these plants.

But to me it represents a potential MASSIVE danger for the future: as you
know, pesticides are huge pollutants and ruin the soil (and water underneath
and all around) for years; but most of all GMOs don’t stop at the end of a
field and spread easily throughout the globe:
This means a potential uncontrolled dispersion of genetically modified
organisms all around the planet, with results that I think can be completely
disastrous.
Also: would you like to grow the food you will eat on a soil where GM were
grown for ages? This means that a very strange ’sentencing to death’ of
biofuel soils that might be already happening without us really noticing.

You will say: there is legislation for that not to happen.
What I think is: only in the ‘developed’ countries you can find this type of
legislation, unluckily.
So about other countries:
when they grow food, ‘developed’ countries’s legislation is enforced because
food can only be bought uder certain conditions, but what happens when it is
not food?

b- then, when all possible land is bought and the need for energy is still
increasing (due to the increase of population, mostly), they will go to the
3rd stage, which is biomass.
Biomass can be obtained by plants or by algae.
So it will first start with plants and then will go to algae.
I recently read that experiments with algae were starting in the US.
The advantage of algae is that it can potentially be grown in the sea, so
not on land, so it could be a solution to land shortage and the food
problem.
But again, the big danger is there is no real economical reasons for the big
oil companies not to use GM, which means potential biological catastrophies
whenever an algae farm will accidently leak in the ocean.
Think about this green algae in the Mediterranean sea.

So to summarize, my take on this problem is three fold:
1 a soil shortage problem/ competition with food
2 soil ’sentenced to death’by massive use of pesticides and GM
3 potential biological catastrophy with the uncontrolled use of GM all
around the globe to produce biofuel and then biomass algae.
And this really worries me, that is why I shared this with you.

My hope is that every person that read this e-mail will have this in mind as
well when thinking about biofuel.

This is really only my own point of view from what I understood, but I
thought you would be interested to read it.

Scary news indeed.

I’ve a few (ok, a lot) quick thoughts/ points to share…

The Future of Food is a good documentary about GM if anyone isn’t concerned about that yet.

An intro is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNezTsrCY0Q

I’ve got the full thing if anyone wants it.

A more positive film is:

How to save the world: One Man, One Cow, One Planet
http://howtosavetheworld.co.nz/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l84laB4JPdw

I’ve got that too
Using waste veg oil for fuel makes sense, clear cutting forests to grow it certainly doesn’t.

In case anyone has missed it in the news, the price of food has already sky rocketed for many of the worlds poorest people and there are riots around the globe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMZ6zt3OHK8

If you are going to grow fuel, Dale Sorghum is considered a good plant to grow by many permaculturalists, because of its “Stacked Functions” (basically, it can be used for lots of different things):
http://www.energyfarms.net/node/1434

As for biomass, here are some good trees for fuel:
http://permaculturetokyo.blogspot.com/2006/05/top-10-fuel-trees-for-zone-5-and-above.html

And http://solaroof.org/wiki has lots of potential for growing algae (and more).

As for generating our own energy, I’m getting more and more into concentrated solar power (CSP).

Check out:
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=164
http://www.concentratingsolarpower.info/
http://trec-uk.org.uk/

Polly Higgins (an organiser of the upcoming WISE Women Peak Oil event at The Hub) is a CSP expert:
http://thelazyenvironmentalist.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

Josef.

This chap Stan Rhodes has a vision that is very familiar to me…

http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Narrative_on_Discovering_the_Peer_Trust_Network_System
http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Peer_Trust_Network_Project

And if you haven’t caught up with Open Source Ecology lately, you’ve got to check this out:

CEB (Compressed Earth Block) Phase 1 – Done
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=91

Open Engineering: Better Than Sliced Bread
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=155

How it all (could) work
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=156

Here comes the p2p economy…
as the Harvard Business Review’s Breakthough Ideas for 2008 report put it:

http://tinyurl.com/3bc3eg

with an almost identical article here:
http://www.internationalistmagazine.com/2007-earlyfall/2007-earlyfall_commentary.html

Enjoy!

Josef.

INTRO
As some of you know already, I’m out in Spain acquiring land for the Commons!

I came out here with 4 main tasks:

1. to see and help my Dad
2. to get my Dad’s land transferred into my name so we can invest it in the Commons!
3. to send out this long overdue Commons Creation update!
4. and to come up with a clear strategy for United Diversity.

Most of these overlap in some way. Since Commons Creation is a project co-ordinated by United Diversity I couldn’t really do 3 without doing a lot of thinking about 4 first (all whilst trying to deal with 1 and 2).

Therefore what follows is a bit of a rambling mix, part overdue Commons Creation update, and part United Diversity strategy.

BACKGROUND
I gave my first Commons Creation presentation on Sunday January 21st. At the meeting Peter Brownell said he’d give me 6 months to come up with a full legal model.

Well, 6 months is up! In fact, its over 8 months!

My last update was on Feb 16th and a lot has happened since then.

Only x (about 10 – need to check current status) people have actually set-up their standing orders and we only have £xxx (about 500 – got to call bank) in the bank.

But we now have land! And a plan!

LEGAL MODEL
Over the last 8 months I’ve done heaps of research into suitable legal model for the Commons Creation project. I’ve put the word out for legal models and documents and have collected a selection of rules for numerous Community Land Trusts and similar projects (such as Findhorn’s Ekopia project and Eko currency) across the UK.

Almost universally similar projects in the UK are registered as Industrial Provident Societies for the Benefit of the Community (IPS BenCom for short).

These guarantee a democratic co-operative structure whilst providing both a legal asset lock (ensuring assets brought in common are not sold off for private profit) and a simple way to raise money (i.e. it is possible to sell “shares” called “loan stock” that are basically fixed low-rate loans to the co-op).

Individuals can only invest up to £20k in an IPS, but there is no such limit on other IPSs investing in each other (which is significant considering how many similar projects are IPSs).

The IPS legal structure has a lot going for it and is currently under review and so could improve further (e.g. Credit Unions and similar might be allowed to perform more banking functions, limits on investment may change and registration costs may come down).

A handful of like minded projects in the UK are also registered as Community Interest Companies, or CICs, a new legal structure that requires a Community Interest Audit to guarantee community interest (an IPS BenCom also has to show how it will benefit the community but the rules aren’t quite the same), provides a legal asset lock, and can either be a Company registered be Guarantee or Shares (which could also be sold to raise funds).

Then there are Limited Liability Partnerships, or LLPs (what United Diversity is already). This is also a relatively new legal structure and is very tax efficient and flexible (its what all accounting firms are).

Unlike other legal structures that have fixed legal formats and rules that have to be followed, LLPs are simply governed by their Member Agreement, and this Member Agreement can be whatever format the Member’s agree (at present United Diversity doesn’t even formally have one, which means we default to standard partnership law).

I originally described the Commons Creation collective as “a network of individuals and groups raising funds for and awareness about world changing land, money and media projects”. This is actually a much better description of what I’ve always dreamt United Diversity will become.

Commons Creation is just part of that dream. The land investment part.

More specifically Commons Creation is a co-operative long-term investment fund whose purpose is to acquire and develop land and property into order to provide food, housing and energy that doesn’t cost the earth (economically or ecologically), and to provide a fair income return to investors (of time, money, or “monies worth”).

The proposed long-term plan for the Commons Creation legal model is to create something like a Community Land Partnership (CLP) described at http://www.opencapital.net/co-ownership.htm

The examples given are of an LLP with four Members:

1. a Trustee Member – which holds the freehold of the Land in perpetuity on behalf of the Community;

   For any land acquired in the UK this is will either be an IPS or a CIC. Its hard to make a decision on details while IPS laws and regulations are being reviewed, so its best to wait and see what happens (in part simply because its expensive to register an IPS with customised rules and these fees may fall).

   With land outside the UK, e.g. Spain (or wherever else we happen acquire it) is probably better to entrust it to some local body incorporated under Spanish law than to either an IPS or CIC registered in the UK. This requires further investigation.

2. an Occupier Member – which consists of the community of individuals and/or enterprises which occupy the Land and the property on it;

   In Spain this will be my Dad and whoever else ends up living or working on the land. Again, probably some kind of local association will probably be best and we need to research the options (although I think what they call an Association is likely to be the best bet)

3. an Investor Member – which consists of the consortium of individuals and enterprises who invest money and/or money’s worth (such as the value of the land) in the CLP;

   By creating and signing a Member Agreement that stipulates minimum levels of member investment in the commons, Members of United Diversity will effectively be forming this consortium. An important first step.

   With our banked fivers and my Dad’s land already in the pot we’ll be able to convince more and more people to join the fun. Eventually people will begin to wonder Can I afford not to?”

4. a Developer/ Operator Member, which provides development expertise and manages the CLP once the development is complete.

   This could be an existing or new local association, co-op or business, United Diversity, or whoever really. The point is that all stakeholders can become members of the Community Land Partnership and earn/invest proportional shares in the rental revenues collected on the land.

If we wait for such a complex structure to be in place before we do anything, we’ll never start. Trying to set-up such a partnership now would also be premature. We need to build capacity before attempting to manage such a complex partnership.

So lets just formalise (with a Member Agreement for United Diversity) and expand (via our events and existing social networks) what we’re already doing (banking our fivers in the United Diversity saving account).

Proposal: continue to use United Diversity LLP, but get legal help to write up a legal Member Agreement that formalises a minimum level of member investment in the Commons (and what that means, i.e. how investment decisions will be made and how returns on investment will be distributed).

Assuming everyone likes this plan, existing members of Commons Creation will then legally become members of United Diversity LLP and existing members of United Diversity LLP will need to sign the new agreement and start investing their minimum amount in the Commons too (if they haven’t already done so!).

DEFINING SCOPE OF PROJECTS
United Diversity is transforming, from a small social enterprise with big ideas, into an exciting social action network implementing big projects.

Commons Creation is the land project. It is a co-operative long-term investment fund whose purpose is to acquire and develop land and property into order to provide food, housing and energy that doesn’t the earth (economically or ecologically), and to provide a fair income return to investors (of time, money, or “monies worth”).

The long-term plan is to set-up a Community Land Partnership (CLP) as described and outlined at http://www.opencapital.net/co-ownership.htm and above. For now we’re just pooling our funds in the United Diversity saving account, but first bit of land – 5 acres in Spain – has already been acquired!

OpenCoin is the money project. And the first 30k of funding for that has been obtained too! See http://opencoin.org and http://uniteddiversity.com/ideas/ for more info.

MUST.tv is the media project. A MUST Report promo is nearly finished and we’ve got a regular slot on BBC World next spring! Check out the MUST.tv invite on http://uniteddiversity.com/ideas/ for more info and see http://biovoyager.wordpress.com

There are other exciting ICT projects too (notably Hub+, Dissconnected, CopyCan, and The Merton Rule – plus Dialstation once Dymitri is officially a member). Everyone needs to communicate, and money and media are both subsets of information really, so we end up doing a lot of information and communication technology!

MARKETING THE COMMONS AND THE UNITED DIVERSITY NETWORK
Everyone loves the name “United Diversity”.

Coupled with our “Together We Have Everything” strap line people seem to instantly understand the essence of the whole thing.

Conversely, very few people understand immediately what “Commons Creation” is all about and nearly everyone (including me!) confuses “Commons Creation” with “Creative Commons”.

Commons Creation is a fitting name for a long-term investment project that seeks to create and develop parcels of common land, but it will be much easier to get people to join a collective called United Diversity.

Therefore rather than member groups saying “join Commons Creation!” and linking to http://commonscreation.org we’ll say “join United Diversity!” and link to http://uniteddiversity.com.

The “Commons Creation Flyer” becomes the “United Diversity Guide” (something I’ve wanted to do properly since the early days, eg. http://tinyurl.com/3azozo from back in 2002).

PLAN
Here is a brief outline of the plan (i.e. the beginning of the United Diversity Strategic Plan).

1. Open a United Diversity Triodos saving account and put all Commons money into there for then on.

   Due: ASAP.

2. Get legal help to create United Diversity Member Agreement and formally sign up existing Commons Creation and United Diversity members.

   Due: Before Feb 8th, 2008 (Synergy Project @ SeOne and United Diversity’s birthday).

3. Hold regular (monthly-ish) United Diversity Gatherings (at Passing Clouds and other venues). These will be all day events with food, film, dotmocracy, stalls, music and dancing.

   I’ll need help organising them from members but any time contributed will be counted as an investment in the commons and will earn shares proportionate to the “monies worth” invested.

   Due: at least one before Feb 8th, 2008. Ideally every month starting in November 2007 up until late spring/ early summer 2008 (and throughout the year if we’ve got enough capacity in London)

4. Publish a regular United Diversity Guide – a weekly round-up of member news and projects (OpenCoin, MUST.tv, IdSpiral’s Ekopia Cafe project etc.), inspiring links, videos and events. Member groups will re-post/share the Guide with their MySpace friends, mailing lists etc.

   The wide distribution of the Guide will not only inform and inspire, but will help recruit further members and potentially provide a additional revenue stream (we could sell advertising in the Guide to approved ethical businesses – much like we intend to do with MUST.tv/BioVoyager) generating further funds for the Commons.

   To begin with, I’ll compile and edit the Guide each Monday (for publication on Tuesday) using information gathered from all the lists and feeds I subscribe to and all the social networking sites I’m on.

   For good measure members will also be able to submit news and links on the website or via e-mail. Eventually (once more elaborate systems are in place) the Guide will be edited collaboratively by members.

   The whole thing will be good practice (and will pave the way) for the MUST Report (a 6 monthly video round-up of all the most significant positive changes happening in our world, made up from BioVoyager footage and film submitted and shared on MUST.tv)

   Due: I’ll attempt to do a first edition on Monday 8th October, 2008 for publication on Tuesday 9th, 2008. I shouldn’t have any problems pulling together the content, but will need help creating a nice template for future editions.

5. Organise an annual United Diversity Tour, initially to our land in Spain – a vegoil/biodiesel tour and/or cycle tour. Visit and document inspiring projects and throw parties along the way.

   Due: First small Tour (hopefully more than just me on my bike!) Spring/Summer 2008. Plans need to begin being made immediately. I’m going to make it happen in some shape or form, event if it is just me cycling there on my own! Proper ideas can be discussed online and planning meetings can be help at gatherings.

6. Organise an annual “Building Man” Festival, initially very small, on and around our land in Spain – a cross between all the green festivals in the UK, Burning Man and a Village Building Convergence (see http://vbc.cityrepair.org )

   Due: First small Festival in Summer 2008. Probably Aug 1st – 16th, 2008 for the main event although hopefully we’ll magically manage to get a load of stuff done before then too (because it’ll be a bit too hot to work too hard by August). Aug 1st – 16th are nice dates because a) Aug first if a New Moon b) Aug 8th is my Dad’s birthday and it will be 08/08/08 c) Aug 11th – 15th is Buenache Festival d) Aug 16th is a Full Moon. All seems fitting

That’s it!

I could go on and on with more details, but I think this document is both long enough and good enough to go.

I hope I’ve made myself clear, that existing members of Commons Creation and United Diversity are happy with my proposals, and everyone get as excited about all this as me!

Whatever your thoughts and feelings, please please give send some feedback – I’d love to know what you think!

I leave you with a toast…

“to United Diversity – Together We Have Everything!”

Big smiles,

Josef.

See also The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Watch it now!

UPDATE: watch it here.

On google video

As a youtube playlist

I’ve not managed to keep the one post a day pace at all, so to make up for it I’m going to link to all my favourite land, money and media project on this page… (but its now gone 3am so I’m hitting the sack and will actually finish this page at a later date! Typical!)

Land
Some of my favourite land projects:

• Community Land Trust website from Community Finance Solutions
• Land for People – a network of welsh Community Land Trust who have also developed model rules for CLTs.
• The Village – a very inspiring Ecovillage project in Ireland.
• Lammas – an equally inspiring Ecovillage project in Pembrokeshire, Wales.
• Institute for Community Economics – a national US community development organization promoting economic justice through community land trusts (CLTs) and community investment.
• The Land is Ours – campaigns peacefully for access to the land, its resources, and the decision-making processes affecting them, for everyone, irrespective of race, gender or age.
• Art for Land’s sake – Land Roots cooperative land network’s project to raise funds for land by selling art and music.
• See my land links for more inspiration.

Money
I’ve covered most of my favourite money links over at Money as Debt, but repeat a selection of them here too…

• Bartercard
• The Totnes Pound
• Berkshares
• Toronto Dollar
• Salt Spring Dollars
• Ithaca Hours
• WIR Bank – Economic Circle Co-operative that has been running in Switzerland since 1934
• Damanhur’s Credito
• Findhorn’s Eko
• Timebanks.org
• Time Banks UK
• LETS Link UK
• Interra Project
• Lots more good stuff is listed in the Money as Debt post, also check out my money links.
• Also check out the inspirational article A Tale of Two Ecovillages by Jonathan Dawson, that looks at Damanhur’s Credito currency and Findhorn’s Eko

Media
It is time for everyone to stop watching TV, stop reading the paper and Be The Media!

• Indymedia (UK) – the original open publishing site.
• Undercurrents – an inspirational award winning media charity based in Swansea. I reckon their forthcoming Ecovillage Pioneers DVD is gonna be essential viewing and their Vision on TV project looks set to rock the world
• Make Internet TV – a fantastic site that has step-by-step instructions for shooting, editing, and publishing online videos that can be watched and subscribed to by millions of people. Brought to you by the wonderful people at The Participatory Culture Foundation who also make the excellent Democracy Player
• Project Censored – all the important news that didn’t quite make the news.
• Z Communications – best known for Znet “a community of people committed to social change”.
• Popping out to lunch now, will have to finish this post later this afternoon…

Each day Gloria will a post about an inspirational person, and I’ll highlight an inspirational project. Her first person is Maya Angelou, and my first project is…

Transition Towns
The Transition Towns project was initiated by permaculture teacher of 10 years, Rob Hopkins.

Focussing on the central issues of peak oil and climate change, Transition Towns are “towns that are participating in the transition to a more localised post-peak-oil future”.

This process normally involves going through the following 10 steps (now 12 steps, see here):

1. Raise awareness of peak oil and climate change (often by showing films like The End of Suburbia and An Inconvenient Truth)
2. Lay the Foundations. This is about networking with existing groups and activists and stressing that this Transition Town initiative is not a process of duplicating their work but of requesting their input in a new way of looking at the future.
3. The Official Unleashing. The aim of this event is to generate a momentum which will propel your initiative forward for the next period of its work.
4. Form Groups. You can’t do this on your own. Part of the process of developing an Energy Descent Action Plan is that of tapping into the collective genius of the community. One of the most effective ways to do this is to set up a number of smaller groups to focus on specific aspects of the process.
5. Use Open Space. Open Space Technology is an extraordinary tool. It has been described as ‘a simple way to run productive meetings, for five to 2000+ people, and a powerful way to lead any kind of organization, in everyday practice and ongoing change’.
6. Develop Visible Practical Manifestations of the Project. It is easy to come up with ideas, harder to get practical things happening on the ground. It is essential that you avoid any sense that your project is just a talking shop where people sit around and draw up wish lists. Your project needs, from an early stage, to begin to create practical manifestations in the town, high visibility signals that it means business.
7. Facilitate The Great Reskilling. Very few people still have the skills a more resilient society needs. This is where your Transition Town initiative comes in.
8. Build a Bridge to Local Government. Whatever the degree of groundswell your Transition Town initiative manages to generate, however many practical projects you manage to get going on the ground and however wonderful your Energy Descent Plan is, you will not progress too far unless you have cultivated a positive and productive relationship with your local authority.
9. Honour the Elders. There is a great deal that we can learn from those who directly remember the transition to the age of cheap oil, especially the period between 1930 and 1960.
10. Let it Go Where It Wants to Go and Reflections….In essence, although you may start out developing your Transition Town process with a clear idea of where it will go, it will inevitably go elsewhere. You need to be open to it going where the energy of those who get involved want to take it. If you try and hold onto the idea that it will be a certain way it will, after a while, begin to sap the energy that is building to do certain things. It is what is so exciting about the whole thing, seeing what emerges.

So there you have it. Transition Towns (of which there are now many) are very inspiring projects.

For more info check out Rob Hopkin’s blog Transition Culture, these excellent articles on Treehugger, and have a read through the Transition Initiatives Primer (pdf) and the Kinsale Energy Decent Action Plan (pdf)

Also, check out this short video from Transition Town Lewes:

A man called Ray called me from Cornwall, 2km from where Oli was already but totally randomly literally on his way to (thanks to Katharine), and basically said that he wants to entrust his land to a community very much like the commons creation collective – i.e. one with shared values (create a whole new economic system based on new land ownership and monetary systems etc.) he can grow to trust and love.

He’s got an 1.5 acre and is about to buy another acre. He wants to build sustainable housing and stuff. His partner runs a theatre company and they are both really into open space technology (self-organised meeting/conferences) and new forms of organisation.

I’ve just had another long conversation with him (we spoke for 2 hours before, and about another hour or so just now) and its seems that we may well try to have a what I call a “Building Man” festival on the land this summer (open space, build, celebrate)

Oli is going to make contact and hopefully go visit the land. It sounds very beautiful, near the sea and relatively high up with sea views and access to a lake (that they share with the quarry on the other side).

They’ve already got a load of waste materials from the quarry, enough to build a few cob/straw type structures.

Looks very like we could be off to a flying start!

To the Commons!