EDA News September 2022

REVALUING OUR COMMONS

The commons are our shared wealth without which people cannot survive and thrive. Besides social, cultural and intellectual commons, there are material, natural and genetic commons. All of this wealth is comprised of common goods which we have inherited or created, are entitled to use, and are obliged to protect and pass on to our children.

Some examples of the natural commons include wind energy, oceans, lakes, springs, streams, beaches, fisheries, agriculture, forests, wetlands, watersheds, aquifers, land, pastures, parks, gardens, plants, seeds, algae, topsoil, food crops, photosynthesis, pollination, all life forms and species.

During the last few centuries, the physical space of Earth has been increasingly quantified and commercialized, while our common goods were marginalized through:

The revaluation of our commons requires a new system for the measurement for the governance and exchange of resources to ensure their equitability and sustainability. This means tracking the carrying capacity of the resources available in a region to determine whether they are sufficient to provide for the needs of people living in that region. These measurements could be used for social planning.

Join us on October 22 as EDA explores how and why to revalue our commons. Here’s some information on two of our four guest speakers:

DR. WILLIAM REES is an ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. He is the originator and co-developer (with his former student, Dr. Mathis Wackernagel) of ‘ecological footprint’ analyses and author of 150 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, and numerous popular articles, on humanity’s (un)sustainability conundrum. Dr Rees’ work is recognized worldwide.

DAVID BOLLIER is an author, activist, blogger and consultant, and spends his time exploring the commons as a new paradigm of economics, politics and culture. For over 20 years, he has worked with a variety of international and domestic partners. In 2010, he co-founded the Commons Strategies Group, a consulting project that works to promote the commons internationally. He is Director of Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, based in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

EDA and the Commons

The concept of the commons is foundational to EDA. The term commons is used 30 times in our Cooperative Charter and Section 2 of the Charter is entirely devoted to the subject. Most people today understand that the commons are resources that everyone shares and uses.

Long ago the Indigenous people understood what the commons meant. They knew that the earth and its resources belonged to everyone. It was unthinkable that the waters, the land and the animals would be owned or controlled by an individual or group. The commons were their shared wealth. And when everyone took only what they needed to survive, there was usually enough for all.

Today, we do not have a commons-based society. Our planet’s resources are not shared equitably nor sustainably, and it’s a fact of modern life that our basic human resources no longer belong to everyone. Page four of the Charter states:

The challenge we face now is how to adequately govern our commons—not only our natural resources, but our social, cultural and intellectual commons as well. EDA will be exploring the commons in more detail on October 22 at our Annual Conference. We’ll be joined by some of the world's most renowned speakers on the topic of the commons and carrying capacity. When you consider what kind of future we face, creating a commons-based society just makes plain common sense.

Join us on October 22 to learn more about how we can better manage our commons.

These disasters can be measured in monetary ways, but what is most devastating are the physical and emotional damages to individuals. For most other damages, replacement costs can be estimated and financed. Governments used to call these “million dollar” events, but now with our dramatically escalating weather patterns, they have become billion-dollar events and their frequency is growing.

During the first six months of 2022, there have been nine separate billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events. These include two tornado outbreaks, three general severe weather events resulting in massive flooding, two hailstorms, a derecho event and a regional drought.

An interactive database that tracks disasters

The National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has published an extensive, interactive online database for tracking what they term Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters. It tracks occurrences like floods, wildfires, tropical storms, drought and freezes with historical and current information dating back to 1980. Information is localized for each State by county or census tract. This type of database has never been available before.

The NCEI acts as a scorekeeper for severe weather and climate events in the US and globally by measuring their economic and social impact. For this reason, the NCEI is frequently asked to provide summaries of global and US temperature and precipitation trends, extremes and comparisons, and put them into historical perspective.

Each geographic region in the US has a unique combination of weather and climate hazards. The South, Central and Southeast regions have the highest frequency and, unfortunately, the highest costs from these billion-dollar disasters. It’s also predicted that these regions will have the most negative future impacts across several socioeconomic metrics.

Whenever these weather and climate events occur, the NCEI estimates the total cost of the incident using public and private data sources to capture the total direct costs, such as:

Diane: I’m not talking about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. I’m talking about the fundamental building blocks that any organization, and in particular EDA needs to be successful and sustainable.

Michael: Ok…but I don’t get it.

Diane: It’s all about the four necessary factors for any successful organization.

Michael: Really? C. O. P. D?

Diane: Yes, let me explain. Every organization starts with an idea—something that no one else has looked at in a particular way. It might be something that contributes to the community, like delivering food or medicines faster, researching new ways to combat diseases, fighting world hunger, or educating young children. Just think about the founders of Facebook, or the Ford Motor Company. Maybe they’re not the most community-minded organizations, but how about the Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders? Their ideas help create a better world. A good creative idea makes a real impression on people and starts a movement that people will want to support.

Michael: So, what are EDA’s ideas?

Diane: Well, we have a quite a few creative ideas. To make any progress in addressing what our global future will look like, people’s basic needs should be met. But to do that, we have to know what those needs are before we can ensure sustainability and equitability in food supplies, water and energy. There also needs to be a plan and a method for getting our world from where we are today to where we want to be. So, the creative idea needs to help us figure out how to get from here to there.

Michael: Wait a minute…are you saying that our current system is not meeting everyone’s needs?

Diane: Exactly! Just look at your news feed on any given day. If we were meeting everyone’s needs, then we wouldn’t have starving or malnourished people. Water systems wouldn’t be so polluted that people in those communities get sick. People wouldn’t die from the heat because our summers are getting hotter, and they don’t have access to energy to cool their homes. And people wouldn’t suffer or die from the cold in the winter because they can’t afford proper heating.

Michael: OK, I’m starting to get it. So “C” is creativity and creative ideas. So does EDA have this?

Diane: Precisely! And EDA has quite a few creative ideas. We focus on the sustainability and equality of food supplies, and clean drinking water—water for farmers to irrigate their crops and for industries to make the products we all need to survive. We must all be thinking globally and acting locally. Communities need to be supported so they don’t suffer from distribution bottlenecks, supply-chain disruptions, or having their community hijacked by big money interests. EDA can also help local and regional communities regain their decision-making power in our economic system.

Michael: So ‘C’ is cool, too.

Diane: Another creative idea is measuring the carrying-capacity of a bioregion. We help people understand where their community’s food, water and energy come from, and define how much people need to have their basic needs met. Carrying capacity also examines whether there’s proper distribution of that food so that no one goes without.

So that’s the “C” in EDA’s COPD!

Michael: Very interesting! I never thought about it that way.

In our next newsletter, we’ll talk about “O”.

Resource Usage

I first became aware of resource waste when I was in college. I was driving a small British-made car that achieved about 50 mpg without trying. Several cars after that got around the same gas mileage, including a Volkswagen, but at $0.50 - $1.00 per gallon, but nobody was impressed (except me, of course). At the same time, muscle cars and big pickup trucks were getting less than 15 mpg.

Fast forward to the late 90’s when gas prices soared to the $4 per gallon mark, and suddenly Americans wanted cars that were more fuel efficient. For a while, fuel efficient vehicles were a hot ticket and a very efficient 4-wheel drive sedan that I owned got an easy 40 mpg. I sold that in 1995 to buy an SUV that barely managed 20 mpg and very quickly ditched that vehicle to go back to sedans that got much better mileage.

But what currently holds the greatest percentage of the vehicle market? SUV’s. Although consumers defend this choice as the most practical for their family, most SUV’s that I see on the road have a single inhabitant — the driver. Hopefully, the move to electric vehicles will help reduce that waste.

Vehicles are one place where the overuse of energy resources is evident. Our homes are another. You may think you are conserving, but there are many ways a household can reduce its waste that you may not know. As a residential building designer specializing in passive solar for over 30 years, I have learned a lot of ways to cut waste as well as save money. In the next two issues of this newsletter, I'll discuss more ways you can become an efficient user of water and energy in your home.

Next month: Water Usage

IDAHO

Kootenai County is in the upper north-west panhandle. It ranks as the third fastest growing county in the state and most of the growth happens over the Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. The use of septic systems is prevalent for all new building development in this unincorporated county. This has created a potential health problem. Discharge from septic systems has a high concentration of minerals such as chloride, and nutrients such as nitrates, which increase the risk for contamination.

The Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer is the sole source of drinking water for over 600,000 people in Kootenai County, Idaho, and Spokane County, Washington. In 1977, the Panhandle Health District (PHD) adopted the Idaho Administrative Procedure Act (IDAPA), which restricts septic density to one dwelling per five acres.

However, this rule protecting the aquifer was due to expire at the end of Idaho’s legislative session. So, the Kootenai County Board of County Commissioners, with input from the public, enacted an emergency ordinance in March of this year to maintain the same five-acre septic density. This is how a group of concerned citizens worked together to prevent a potential disaster.

If you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the world — and we hope you are — you’ve probably made one or more of these statements, if only to yourself. The problems we’re facing today are enormous and complex. There’s no argument about that.

But what would happen if we all just sat back and let the experts take care of things? There’s no guarantee your concerns would be heard or that those in positions of legislative influence or power would even know or care about the things you care about. And they won’t, unless they hear directly from you.

You can do more

A healthy Democracy requires its citizens to do more than just vote every couple years. Active, concerned and informed voters are the lifeblood of a well-functioning society. If you want to be a part of moving our communities and governments away from serving primarily monied interests to taking care of all its citizens and the environment we live within, then climbing aboard the citizen advocacy train is for you.

What does it mean to be a citizen advocate? How can you become an effective advocate to ensure the equitable and sustainable management and use of basic resources where you live? It takes more than rallying in the town square and shouting your demands, hoping you’ll be heard. It means educating yourself about the issues that concern you and learning some basics about the legislative system in your state. It means joining others who share your concerns and who will support your efforts.

EDA is here to help you from start to finish, no matter where you live. Email any one of the groups listed below to learn what we do, to see which team is the best fit for you. Dip your toe in the water, or dive in.

Check back next month for some practical first steps on how to get started.