Climate Co-ops
- What is a climate co-op?
We have named the specific model of co-op we would like to see thriving the “Climate Co-ops”.
In addition to the design guidelines already enshrined in the Co-operative model by the traditional ICA co-op ethics, values and principles, Climate Co-ops build 3 more core elements:
- Needs based: They provide for our basic needs
- Towards a healthy Habitat: their operations produce positive results for climate and / or the other crises we face. Humanity needs a functional, healthy habitat too!
- A regenerative culture: The organisational design avoids the key institutional roots of these crises.
- These elements can be viewed as design principles:
- 1 – Needs based:
- Their primary function will concentrate on provision of our core physical needs.
- These must all be addressed before moving on to wants, considering the climate wrecked future which now awaits us.
- Definition of a need: If a need is not met, that will cause your death.
- 2 – Towards a healthy habitiat:
- As a fundamental part of how Climate Co-ops achieve their primary function, their activity will either reduce carbon emissions or draw down carbon from the atmosphere – preferably both. They can also aim to address the parallel crises of peak oil, the extinction crisis, other forms of pollution, etc.
- Climate Co-ops follow recurring natural patterns in their design and behaviour
- 3 – Regenerative culture
- Learning from and avoiding past mistakes
- Create a living: Local employment with involvement of workers in management decisions (usually as one party in a multi stakeholder co-op environment
- Universal Basic Assets:
- Divestment opportunities
- Re-commoning the enclosures
- Organised using non-authoritarian, participatory, democratic models.
- A “not for profit” model
- A “For community profit” model
We are currently building an interconnected system of these co-ops and communities to cover all of the basic human needs in any neighborhood.
As our neighborhoods develop these systems, they can combine their strengths, and a co-operative commonwealth can be formed, from the bottom up.