How might membership of cooperatives and CIC's provide the support structures we need for regenerative economies to emerge.

Are communities making the most out of the existing cooperative and CIC legal structures?

James Gardiner

Last edited 63 days ago by James Gardiner.

Introduction:

Establishing how it is possible to develop mutual support networks, enabling a transition towards regenerative practices and processes, is the aim of this research. We are in a time where the pressures of day to day life, focusing upon the individual to provide everything they require, is becoming increasingly distressing and destructive for the individual, our organisations, our communities, our biomes, our ecosystem and the environment. In the midst of this meta crises, every area of life is impacted.

The injustice of this crisis is one that will be felt hardest by those who have had the least impact upon this collapse. Within households, this is the youngest members, within communities it is those who have the least disposable income, within organisations, it is those with the least power, within the community it is those who have been unrecognised, unheard or disenfranchised, within our biomes it is the non human species, within our ecosystem it is our waterways and within the environment it is the antarctic that will see the most dramatic transformations, with ice water melt contributing to rise in sea levels that will impact entire ecosystems, particularly those near to current sea levels.

Within the UK we often feel powerless to make the changes that are needed at the speed in which they are required. We have a global economic system that is so powerful, it is impossible for any political intervention without individual sacrifice. So, what can we do to transform, adapting and mitigating against our environmental collapse?

We often consider each area as separate from one another but the question of how the breakdown in community support structures is related to our entire environmental decline is one that has not yet widely questioned within the mainstream, furthermore it would seem a deliberate attempt to separate the two issues.

If we wish to tackle the issues presented, how do we consider building support structures and systems that look to regenerate at both micro and macro levels. It is clear that our dominant economic system, leveraging individualism for perpetual growth, must be abandoned, and at the same time, new ways of living, of becoming must be transitioned into.

This research proposal aims to explore how we, as a species, reorganize around the system that is embedded into evolution and life itself, the design codes to which Gaia lives by. Organisations must now operate dramatically and dynamically, implementing everything within their powers to develop these frameworks for their members, employees, and stakeholders, not just for their wellbeing, but for that of our communities, Biomes and ecosystems. Supporting each other within these new operational structures, these new organisums, must positively impact our time, time to breathe, to think, to make our decisions based upon choice not just cost. Re-organising around systems that do not promote individualism or ownership can help to create this time, it is through scale economies and self-organising systems that we will begin to move into more fluid life affirmative practices. Below are three areas to be explored within this research:

Community-Centered Conservation;

Community-centered conservation has been framed as a crucial pathway for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. This approach recognises the interconnectedness of environmental and social issues, emphasizing the need for inclusive, community-driven solutions. This can take examples of building our community connections through mutual support, buyers networks and communal practices that tackle both a social and financial benefit for all involved.

Transformative Community Strategies;

An increasing variety of grassroots community initiatives are emerging, responding to climate risks and sustainability challenges. These bottom-up processes require agents' capacities to implement place-based transformative solutions aligned with climate goals in different contexts. Leadership plays a key role in developing place-based transformations to climate change and sustainability problems, supporting capacity building, 'inner' transformation, and scaling of successful practices. Interconnecting and interweaving these existing practices is the mycelial network that supports our ecosystems, it is here that we can begin to bio-mimic, understanding how natural systems flow resources to where they are needed, when they are required.

Community Action Networks

Community Networks are everywhere, they bind our societies, they create the hidden support structures that are beneath the surface. We need to feed these structures, nurture them so that when we require them, we find that they are still operating, still driven to continue with the positive changes that are required to bring people together in play, with joy, for community. 21q

Governance and Implementation

Successful implementation of community sustainability plans requires:

1. Building on a shared understanding of vulnerabilities among different stakeholders and how these can be overcome. 2. Empowering and shifting agency towards communities. 3. Supporting a sustained process of collaborative, life-long learning that positions transformation as a communal competency.

An ambitious and clear local agenda facilitating a system change of our economic system is needed, including necessary financial investments and regulatory frameworks, and taking into account issues of social justice, wellbeing, and solidarity.

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