Today we are spending some time with cooperators from Radical Routes, Rootstock, Trapese Popular Education Collective and hopefully the Permaculture Association of Britain. The aim is to better understand how a UK permaculture worker cooperative group might form and operate, and act in a kind of cooperative federation with other geographical based permaculture worker cooperative groups.
At the moment we are on wifi on the train from Edinburg to Leeds. Google has decided we are in Sweden, which gives you an idea of geolocation.
Some (most or all?) of the cooperators in Leeds are vegans, and have advanced views about ecological and animal rights. Which made me think “could the concept of worker-cooperative be expanded to include all living (and non-living? machines, minerals, etc?) beings in an ecosystem?”.
This idea happened while having lunch with Mondragon cooperators we where told and interesting story. Within the Mondragon Coop there is a only one primary-industry agricultural worker cooperative. A dairy cooperative. As with most Mondragon cooperative stories, themes where efficiency, excellence, etc… but one statement stood-out.
Paraphrasing “a dairy farm is just like any other factory, except the milk making machines are cows.” This reinforced the obvious industrial paradigm of Mondragon culture. But it also made me think ask “What if the cows where given the same labor rights as the people worker ? or in otherwords, what if the the cows where made members of the worker-cooperatives?”.
Certainly there is precedent to the concept of Nature’s Rights or Rights of Nature. Embedded in the new Constitution of Ecuador (again under attack by the Obama neoliberal counter-revolution) are environmental laws giving nature and ecosystems rights: Ecuadors Rights of Nature
“When Ecuador began the process of writing a new constitution, they received help from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund to draft environmental laws giving nature and ecosystems rights.[1] [2][3] [4] On September 28, 2008, the people of Ecuador voted for a new constitution that is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights. It was approved by a large margin. [5]
Chapter: Rights for Nature
Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.
Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before public institutions. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.
Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation of natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.
In case of severe or permanent environmental impact, including that caused by the exploitation of non renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for restoration, and will adopt adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.
Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.
Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.
The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter the national genetic heritage in a definitive way is prohibited.
Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and from natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.
The environmental services cannot be appropriated; their production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State.”HD Odum’s (which inspired David Holmgren when writing Permaculture One) scientific work on systems ecology, especially his ecological Maximum Power Principle (one of the principles of energetics) could work well within a framework of the Rights of Nature.
I am also thinking about the arguments made by Kevin Carson in his organisational theory (and other worker cooperative literarture) about the agency problem of alienated labor: Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective. If an ecosystem is “designed” so that all the ecology is empowered, extending the Catholic social doctrine that created Mondragon’s worker-cooperative culture to all life (and life supporting systems). We have some very important threads for developing a course and body of knowledge, a culture embedded in various events, media, industry of permaculture worker cooperatives.
Also, at the World Soclal Forum 2009, the Amazon as an ecosystem or ecology, including its indigenous inhabitants, where made a political actor: Pan-Amazonic movements manifesto. Again, enabling the idea of Rights of Nature, with the Rights of Humans embedded within, not the the way around.
The permaculture principles of perennial polyculture, guilds and zones also compliments the ecosystem worker cooperative.
Lastly, its important to note, that these patterns of ecological worker cooperatives, or permaculture worker cooperatives (with a richer meaning) need to be global. The International Biochar Initiative makes it plain that organic farming and soil carbon are going to become a dangerous big business.
The Rights of Nature are an important foil to the UN and BIG BUSINESS sponsored “sustainable development” and ecosystems services financialisation, starting with soil carbon being included in the so-called CDM (Clean Development Mechanism ) of casino capitalism cap-and-trade
Also, its a paradigm shift from Environmental Economics (environment being a part of economics) to Ecological Economics (economics being a part of ecology)
Local solutions, local organisation is not enough. It is required, but global action cannot be left to centralised governments or corporations. With all the talk of BIG GREEN, geo-engineering sustainment projects, its time for Gaia Permaculture.
