P2P Foundation

A non-profit organization and global network dedicated to advocacy and research of commons-oriented peer to peer dynamics in society.

The P2P Foundation was conceived to help people, organizations and governments transition towards commons-based approaches to society through co-creating an open knowledge commons and a resilient, sustainable human network.

Between the paradigms of the network and the organization, the P2P Foundation exists as an ‘organized network’ which can facilitate the creation of networks, yet without directing them. Our primary aim is to be an incubator and catalyst for the emerging ecosystem, focusing on the ‘missing pieces’, and the interconnectedness that can lead to a wider movement.

P2P, in practice, is often invisible to those involved, for a variety of cultural reasons. We want to reveal its presence in discrete movements in order to unite them in their common ethos. To do this, a common initiative is required which:

  • gathers information
  • connects and mutually informs people
  • strives for integrative insights contributed by many sub-fields
  • organizes events for reflection and action
  • educates people about critical and creative tools for “world-making”

The P2P Foundation monitors the emergence of P2P dynamics in every field of human activity. We document these projects on our open access wiki and report and critique current events on our daily blog. Our Commons Transition website combines a platform for policy proposals with a web magazine featuring specially curated stories and interviews, with and for commoners worldwide. Our research network, led by the P2P Lab, empirically explores and expands the theoretical work produced on commons-oriented peer production, governance and property to ascertain its viability in real-world applications. Our focus on the productive potential of communities and networks inspires us to nurture partnerships with prefigurative collectives and more established players to extend our policy recommendations to those in the position to effect change.

P2P Foundation members are active all over the world, with representatives in Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, South America, and North America.

We are always looking to expand our coverage and welcome new members to our community.

The Love School Project

A co-creative process between students of product design at UdK and pupils from Love School in the Slum Kangemi in Nairobi

In a co-creation process between students of product design at University of Arts Berlin and pupils from Love School in the Slum Kangemi in Nairobi, Kenya, designs have been created that focus on craft, material understanding and form development. Both cultural environments served as sources of knowledge and inspiration. A variety of multifaceted object with hybrid aesthetics have come into being that evince an autarchic identity both as high end products as well as DIY variation. Experiments and developments were done with porcelain, clay, plaster, fine metal, fibre, sisal, veneer, plastic bags, PET bottles, corrugated sheet metal and bulk trash.

Besides the design process the question of value of those materials, the necessity of new products and the relation to a global social context was reflected. The students became teachers of their own by continuously reflecting their own process and to then pass on a simplified version to the children. The children on the other hand participated in the design and problem solving process and thus experienced an increasing awareness of self-efficacy as well as ownership concerning the final sale of the designed objects. The revenue serves the purchase of a piece of land for the continuously displaced Love School Center which will be cleared out once again due to speculation.

So additionally to the financial support of the school in Nairobi the goal of the project was diverse: it was an attempt to test development work as a co-creation process. It sensitized the students to see their work as a creative service in a client relationship and it offered the kids from the Love School Center the opportunity to cooperate with the students and participate in the purchase of new grounds. For all participants this project was and will be an inspiring, mind expanding experience.

Global Ecovillage Network

Envisioning empowered citizens and communities, implementing pathways to a regenerative future, while building bridges of international solidarity.

Who is the Global Ecovillage Network?

The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) catalyzes communities for a regenerative world. GEN is a growing network of regenerative communities and initiatives that bridge cultures, countries, and continents.

GEN builds bridges between policy-makers, governments, NGOs, academics, entrepreneurs, activists, community networks and ecologically-minded individuals across the globe in order to develop strategies for a global transition to resilient communities and cultures.

What is an Ecovillage?

An ecovillage is an intentional, traditional or urban community that is consciously designing its pathway through locally owned, participatory processes, and aiming to address the Ecovillage Principles in the 4 Areas of Regeneration (social, culture, ecology, economy into a whole systems design).

Ecovillages are living laboratories pioneering beautiful alternatives and innovative solutions. They are rural or urban settlements with vibrant social structures, vastly diverse, yet united in their actions towards low-impact, high-quality lifestyles. Read more about ecovillage definitions in our Glossary.

Who is in the GEN Network?

About GEN 2GEN is composed of 5 regional networks, and the youth arm, NextGEN, spanning the globe. The network is made up of approximately 10,000 communities and related projects where people are living together in greater ecological harmony.

Some network members include large networks like Sarvodaya (2,000 active sustainable villages in Sri Lanka); the Federation of Damanhur in Italy and REDES in Senegal; as well as small rural ecovillages like Gaia Asociación in Argentina and Huehuecoyotl in Mexico.

It also includes urban rejuvenation projects like Los Angeles EcoVillage and Christiania in Copenhagen; permaculture design sites such as Crystal Waters, Australia, Cochabamba, Bolivia and Barus, Brazil; and educational centres such as Findhorn in Scotland, Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, Earthlands in Massachusetts, and many more.

Disruption Network Lab

An ongoing programme of events and research focused on the intersection of politics, technology and society

Examining the intersection of politics, technology, and society, Disruption Network Lab exposes the misconduct and wrongdoing of the powerful.

Disruption Network Lab is an ongoing platform of events and research focused on the intersection of politics, technology and society. We are a Berlin-based nonprofit organisation in Germany (Disruption Network Lab e. V.) that has since 2014 organised participatory, interdisciplinary, international events at the intersection of human rights and technology with the objective of strengthening freedom of speech, and exposing the misconduct and wrongdoing of the powerful. We develop work that advocates for the globally marginalised.

Disruption Network Lab organises inter-disciplinary conferences at the interface of scholarship and politics and local meetups throughout the year.

SEEDS

A payment platform and financial ecosystem to empower humanity and heal our planet.

Seeds: A New Currency

SEEDS’ unique protocols maintain a more stable value for Seeds. This addresses the intense volatility of many alternative currencies.

This happens by tracking demand changes and creating new Seeds to meet new demand. For example, with Bitcoin new demand is represented by an increase in the price of BTC, leading to wildly appreciating price.

Imagine borrowing BTC a few years ago. You’d have a 1000+% interest rate to pay back that 1 BTC. Seeds fixes this problem. Bitcoin, and many alternative currencies are designed like gold and stocks while Seeds are designed like national currencies.

Bitcoin = Digital Gold;

Most Other Cryptocurrencies = Better Stocks;

Seeds = Better Money

Unlike national currencies, Seeds are not created from impossible debt and exploitative interest. Instead, Seeds are created to replace destroyed currency and to meet new demand as our society grows.

Destroying Seeds

Seeds are also routinely destroyed to account for any decreases in demand.

Many services provided today could be replaced with code providing “zero marginal cost” services. Examples include, digital advertising, banking services, insurance services, escrow services, etc). SEEDS will provide these services and users pay for them by burning Seeds. These services will become more valuable as SEEDS grows, balancing growth and destroying currency to fuel the harvest.

Where the money comes from

Growth comes from transitioning away from our current financial systems – not from converting our natural and social world into money. We repurpose the incredible growth designs of our present systems to transition into new ones. Once we’ve transitioned into this new system we can evolve it however we need using a clear and direct governance process.

New Seeds go directly to reward a variety of beneficial behaviours in our society.

Designing Regenerative Cultures

A holistic view on how to build a better system. By Daniel Christian Wahl

At the invitation of Susanne Stauch, Daniel Christian Wahl spoke on the topic “Designing Regenerative Cultures” as part of the lecture series “On Gestaltung”, initiated by Jörg Petruschat and Patricia Ribault at weißensee kunsthochschule berlin.

 

 

About Daniel’s book: Designing Regenerative Cultures,
2016, Triarchy Press, Axminster.

Cultures are not designed from the top down as much as they grow organically from the bottom up. We try to understand the various happenings through the lenses of history, sociology, anthropology and, after the passage of enough time, archaeology. Even if cultures cannot be designed as whole and coherent things, we have acquired a knack for designing parts like the banking system, the educational system or the next high-rise development. The things so created, however, are mostly tailored to the convenience of the existing structures of power and wealth without regard for the other parts or the long term. The resulting incoherence is a source of much befuddlement to scholars.

So, after several millennia of trial, error and happenstance, our future is in jeopardy. We are trending to a world of maybe eleven billion people, divided by ethnicity, religion, income and nationality. We don’t much like each other and the prospects for lethal conflicts are many. We are coming apart at the seams as nation-states appear powerless when challenged by drug cartels, cyber criminals and terrorist organizations. We are increasingly networked, interlinked and mutually dependent but often unable to find common purpose and act for the common good.

We are caught between the centripetal and centrifugal forces of post-modernity. And the pace of technological change is accelerating, giving us little time — or even inclination — for reflection. Not the least, we are rapidly changing the climate, extinguishing species, acidifying oceans and destroying entire ecologies.

Against this backdrop, Daniel Wahl proposes “designing regenerative cultures”. The vision of a designed future is easy to dismiss as yet another utopian scheme with roughly the same chance of success as Marxism or 19th-century Fourierism. The differences, however, are many.

First, in contrast to all previous eras, we know for certain that business as usual will be suicidal. That has been said so often and for so long as to appear trite with the effect of inducing mass narcosis. Unfortunately, it is true and we should pay attention. Second, the scale of our predicament is global; there are no safe places left anywhere on Earth.

Third, as Wahl describes, the ecological design arts broadly are flourishing. They are transforming farming, building, transportation, manufacturing and planning in ways congenial to ecologies and Earth systems. Their common characteristics are the use of nature as a model for design, maximal use of solar energy, preservation of biological and cultural diversity, and full-cost accounting.

Ecological design is no longer a distant prospect, it is happening all over the world. It is practical, not theoretical. It has very large political consequences, but is itself non-ideological and neither liberal nor conservative — simply forward. It is also affecting economics, accounting and the behaviour of investors and corporations. But ecological design has yet to change politics and calibrate governance with ecological processes and systems.

Fourth, ecological design transcends the Western experience. It is not synonymous with engineering or science. Rather, it is a compendium of the entire human experience of farming, building, engineering, planning and making. The ancient Javanese farm or the Balinese water system, for example, demonstrated remarkable design skills, which in some ways exceed our own. That is true partly because the design of resource flows of water and materials coincided with cultural and religious norms in ways that we, in our more compartmentalized world, find incomprehensible. Vernacular design, at its best, included humans, animals, land and waters as whole systems ordained by complex religious systems. The flaws were many, but the results were often durable over centuries. The fact is that there is much to learn about whole-systems design from other cultures and in other times.

Fifth, design is a systems revolution which is the art of seeing things whole and regarding our actions together with their likely consequences. Given the complexity of all systems and our inescapable ignorance, a systems perspective requires humility and pre- caution. It means working at a smaller scale, say, the neighbourhood, the farm, the factory, before generalizing to systems at a larger scale. Changing the scale also changes the system and so on.

Thinking in systems over longer periods of time is the revolution of our time. All of our new gadgetry and inventions pale in comparison. We are, as Wahl ably describes, parts of larger wholes, no one and no organization can be an island complete in itself. The upshot is that systems thinking moves us toward enlightened self-interest by which we understand that our wellbeing and human flourishing is collective, not individual; long-term, not short-term.

Sixth, whether acknowledged or not, systems thinking is kin to the core meaning of religion — ‘to bind together’ in Latin. We, living in a secular culture, tend not to see the connection, but it is nonetheless inescapable. Aldo Leopold’s ‘land ethic’ and the rules of decent behaviour prescribed in each of the Axial religions bear more than a coincidental similarity to the rules of enlightened design. We are our brother’s keeper and also that of the bears, whales, birds, soils, trees, lands and waters; and they ours. The entire system is mindful, shot through with consideration.

The word ‘regenerative’ in the title of this book signifies a commitment to the life processes inherent in ecological design. That, too, is reciprocal, mutual and inescapable. It also carries the command of the writer of Deuteronomy to “choose life” [30:19] Whether from self-interest or duty, the command requires that we comprehend and value life and life processes, become ecologically competent stewards of land, wildlife, soils, waters, and that we care.

Daniel Wahl has compiled a great deal of useful information in a masterful synthesis. That alone is a significant accomplishment, but he’s given us more than that. Designing Regenerative Cultures describes the doorway to a possible, indeed, necessary future. We are not fated to the dystopia in prospect. We have, as he writes, the capacity to design and to organize our societies to protect, enhance and celebrate life. The blueprint was there all along. The awareness of our possibilities is growing. The art and sciences of ecological design are flourishing. The choice, as always, is ours and that of those who will follow.

Doughnut Economics

An inspiring lecture about a 21. century approach towards economics. By Kate Raworth

Kate Raworth explains the ‘doughnut’ economy is based on the premise that “Humanity’s 21st century challenge is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet. In other words, to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essentials (from food and housing to healthcare and political voice), while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, on which we fundamentally depend – such as a stable climate, fertile soils, and a protective ozone layer. The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a new framing of that challenge, and it acts as a compass for human progress this century.”

Food Plant Solution

A database of over 30.000 edible plants to end malnutrition in the world.

” A SOLUTION THAT ENDS MALNUTRITION
We create educational materials that explain what nutritional food is, why our bodies need it and how to grow and use it. We focus on what are often neglected and underutilized plants, plants that are growing in and adapted to their environment, and are high in the most beneficial nutrients. Our materials are designed to empower people, but particularly women, so that they can make informed choices on what plants to grow and eat that will nutritiously feed themselves and their families. This project is cost effective, proven to work, sustainable and enables self-sufficiency.

We can end malnutrition – it’s as simple as growing the right plant in the right place.”

Communities of Hope

A beautiful inspiration for another way of living in community.

COMMUNITIES OF HOPE is a film born from a quest to discover a regenerative culture.

It is an invitation to discover a new way of life. A way of life measured by the rhythms of nature, the depth of human  connection, the vast horizon of human potential. It’s the way of life in ecovillages; the intentional communities that Diego and Lou of  The Great Relation Films have spent the last two years documenting.

Filmed largely at the European Ecovillage Network’s annual European Ecovillage Gathering, and drawing on two years of travel and exploration in communities in Europe, the film takes us on a journey around the mandala of regeneration: how ecovillages relate to the social, economic, ecological and cultural dimensions of sustainability. It offers pathways towards a new way of seeing the world, and a new way of living together.

The filmmakers and GEN Europe wish to extend a special thanks to all those who participated, and especially to Damanhur, Amalurra and Tamera for providing footage for use in the documentary. 

Living Gaia

Wonderful initiative collecting donations for the Huni Kuin indiginous people of Acre, Brazil to buy back their land in the Amazon rainforest.

Amazon landpurchase project

Protecting and strengthening indigenous groups also protects the rainforest. Satellite images clearly show that only the areas inhabited by indigenous people in Brazil have experienced little deforestation.

To protect the forest and its inhabitants, we plan to enable the Huni Kuin to buy 16,800 hectares of land in the Jordão community.

The land is located between the Huni Kuin’s land and uncontacted groups being pushed back into Brazil by Peru. We want both groups to benefit from this purchase. About one third of the land to be bought has been cleared and is to be reforested. The farmland is surrounded by intact forests. We hope that the reforestation will also help the wildlife in this region to recover. A centre for dialogue and exchange is also to be established.

The Huni Kuin live in 32 villages along the rivers Jordão and Tarauacá near the village of Jordão in the state of Acre, Brazil.

Uncontacted Indigenous Groups
There are groups of the Huni Kuin people who fled across the border to Peru after first contact with rubber collectors and have been living in isolation ever since. Over the past ten years, they have been pushed back to Brazil due to the activities of large corporations on the Peruvian side.

The land to be purchased will serve as a buffer zone between the contacted and uncontacted Huni Kuin, who are relatives and friends.

 

What can I do?
Donate to our association account!
A donation receipt will be sent via e-mail (on request also by postal service) to you at the beginning of the next quarter. Please send your name, address, transfer date and amount by e-mail to contact@living-gaia.org.

Living Gaia e.V.
IBAN: DE48 4306 0967 1150 1986 00
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Keyword: Amazon land purchase

or by SEPA direct debit mandate (single or recurring payment)

We need a transformation of consciousness on a global scale

Interview with Dennis McKenna

Dennis McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, thinker, lecturer, author and the founder of the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy. For more than forty years, his professional research, interests and activities have focused on hallucinogenic plants as well as the quest for synergy between Western science and ancient indigenous knowledge, between science and mysticism. McKenna is convinced that the future of humanity is only possible in symbiosis with nature.

Sacred Economics

A revolutionary approach towards money and economics. By Charles Eisenstein

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth.

Today, these trends have reached their extreme – but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.