At the frontpage of the undersigned’s website, the listed values forms a moral compass. They are used to promote economic, social and environmental stewardship, based on principles of economic democracy, a real circular economy and a relocation of the economy.

All this may seem distant because our understanding of reality is so dominated by mainstream economic and political thinking. As the ‘Paradigms’ section of the website shows, however, several alternative frameworks are possible. Let’s start by summing up four paragraphs from ‘Paradigm Shifts‘ (note that though the below may appear dominated by environmental themes, it’s all framed by the concept of Economic Democracy, elaborated upon in its own section on the website).

 

1.       A World of Abundance

“The dominant economic theory (..) says we live in a world of scarcity.. The truth is we live in a world of abundance, not scarcity -an abundance of sunlight, soil, microbiota, carbon, human ingenuity, and many other resources.”

Dorn Cox with Courtney White (2023: 101-102): The Great Regeneration. Ecological Agriculture, Open-Source Technology, and a Radical Vision of Hope [emphasise added]

Here, Cox delivers a mental paradigm shift:

“We only have to change our context, our point of view, our perspective to see it. This change means changing incentives, and recognizing scarcity that is generated by the political economy versus real scarcity”.

(Cox, ibid: 103, emphasize added)

Cox also uses another framework, ‘Regenerativity’, to illustrate this perspective of abundance. See ‘Regenerativity vs Sustainability‘), further expressed in terms of ‘Regenerative Agriculture‘ and to agriculture as ‘the other half of the circular economy’ [scroll down to the paragraph titled Increasing Soil Carbon Sequestration in A Real Circular Economy).

The circular economy is discussed in a separate section. Nevertheless, further down on this website we have added a section entitled ‘Alternative interpretive frameworks for a real circular economy’. Here we focus on concepts such as ‘responsibility’, ‘design‘ and ‘nutrition management‘. Along with a few thought-provoking examples, this will further illustrate different frameworks and perspectives.

 

  2.        Regenerative economic growth

If we are to have abundance, we need growth, but not as a general economic growth, nor as a ‘green tech’- growth that does not set limits for consumption, extraction of raw materials and destruction of nature. In other words, one which rules out the possibility of a ‘real circular economy’.

What if economic growth could turn more towards carbon sequestration? (See also the reference to the carbon cycle in the next paragraph). Schwartz (2013) cite the ecologist John Todd:

“

What if we used carbon as a universal currency? What if people around the world were paid to capture and sequester carbon, particularly in soils?” [not through so-called carbon credits (‘carbon offsets’) or high-tech carbon storage in reservoirs]

[But Schwartz also adds:]

The problem has been that we’ve been looking at the soil only from the perspective of increasing productivity. If we look again at this with the goal of increasing ecological function we can employ millions in actively fighting against drought and flooding and simultaneously increase productivity.

“

Judith D. Schwartz (2013:200,203): Cows Save The Planet and Other Improbable ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth [egen oversettelse, utheving og tekst i klammer lagt til]

We need a different, selective growth. Altogether, this enables a more offensive and positive approach than through ‘degrowth’.

 

3.     To work for vs against

Regenerativity is about building up – proactively, instead of only reactively trying to repair or  minimize negative effects of something harmful. Two examples from the section can be mentioned:

1. to deal with disease (work against) instead of dealing with health’ (work for, acknowledging that ‘prevention is better than cure’) and
2. to work (only) towards more carbon emissions instead of working to maximize the potential of the carbon cycle.

Working for something, especially when going against the ‘mainstream’, will, not only require new  political approaches. It will also require alternative frameworks for independent, collective action. Such a framework is represented by the worldwide movement for ‘the Commons’.

It is defined by David Bollier as ‘a social system for the long-term stewardship of resources that preserves shared values and community identity.’  

See the website ‘Introduction to the Commons‘: Under the last section (‘The Commons’ as an alternative interpretive framework), there is talk of a ‘relational understanding of the world that will lead to new ways of thinking about value’ (see Bollier’s 2024 video [4 min]: ‘Commons as Social Systems‘ ). Here we also see that by critically analysing apparently obvious terms, we get ‘another language’ that can embrace new paradigms.

 

4.          Climate science’s lost leg

Degradation of nature, species extinction and loss of biodiversity have come into greater focus. Nevertheless, the link to climate has not been recognized as the meteorologist Millan M. Millan believes it should be. According to Milan, we have abandoned what was previously the scientific ‘two-legged view of climate’:

1. with a leg for atmospheric carbon and the greenhouse effect,
2. and a leg for land disturbance and hydrologic effects (water cycles.)

Remember that framing or interpretive frameworks are about what is perceived as reality. If Millan is right, we actually have a big hole in our understanding of reality. If he is not right or only partially right, there are still VERY many other reasons to work for the restoration of nature.

The subsection reproduces the scientist Millan’s poetic description of how soil, water and plants all work together to recycle water and regulate the climate – summed up in the rule:

“water begets water, the soil is the womb and the vegetation is the midwife”

“..the separation of power and responsibility is the fundamental problem of our current economic system (..) We need to reunite power and responsibility, and make sure they can never be separated again-not even temporarily.”

                                                           Rau og Oberhuber (2023:179, 103): Material Matters. Developing for a Circular Economy.

In the climate context, Ole-Jacob Christensen writes that:

“both the question of why the policy produces opposite results to what is promised, and the question of responsibility arises (..) Because if someone has responsibility, someone must be able to be held accountable..”

                                 Ole-Jacob Christensen (Klassekampen 5. August 2024): Klima­kampens syndebukk mangler ansikt [emphasize added]

How to reunite power and responsibility? R&O argues that:

“We need to reunite the possibility to act with the responsibility for the consequences of those actions. Those who decide about production-processes have also the duty to manage their long-term consequences, and must be prevented from selling and reselling their responsibility throughout the linear production chain-all the way to the end of the line.”

                                                                                                                                         Rau og Oberhuber ibid.: 52

The good news is that it is now possible to ID-mark all materials with infrared signatures and other techniques:

“Techniques exist right now to enable marking of a chemical so you can find it later. Some companies doing careful chemistry might want to mark their chemicals so they can prove, for example, that their processed fluids are not the ones that escape and poison the groundwater. Some companies may not wish to have their chemicals known. This will be a very interesting area for society’s consideration, because information is power. Insightful businesspeople will want to participate in and benefit from this new information age as it relates to materials and to society’s desire and need for transparency.”

                                                                                                                                  McDonough and Braungart 2013 ibid.: 168

 A business model that can help answer the liability issue is ‘Products as a Service’, i.e. an industrial model where consumers receive services instead of buying goods directly. The aim is to sell results rather than equipment. The business model is central to Stahel’s industrial circular economy, see Walter Stahel’s Performance Economy, and is further built on by R&O, both in theory and practice:

“

[In 2010, we (RAU Architects)] decided to restyle our office in East Amsterdam. We asked Philips to design a plan regarding the lighting... “Look,” I explained. “I want first-rate lighting..but I’ve decided that I don’t want to own your lamps. I just want to use their light.” The man [the Philips sales manager] stared at me with a blank look on his face. I tried again:

 Your usual plan boils down to installing all kinds of splendid lamps..[which] become my property…- but I want something different. I’m not interested in the product itself, I’m interested in what it produces: 300 lux, about 2,000 hours a year. Just how Philips makes that happen isn’t really my concern. 

.. the salesman..came back a few weeks later.. [and]..listing all the lamps we would need for the amount of illumination we had requested.. “Just one more thing,” I said. 

The electricity bill is, of course, yours. Your lamp doesn’t work without electricity.. All I have ordered is light, though. If you need electricity for that, that is your concern..If you can produce lamps that run on red or white wine, I’ll happily take those.  

The sales manager was visibly taken aback. … The designers would have to go through the lighting plan again, he explained..When finished, the plan was unrecognizable. Apparently, the same kind of lighting could actually be achieved with far fewer lamps – and that wasn’t the only thing that had changed: the designers had come up with all kinds of technical solutions that reduced the power consumption to an absolute minimum. After all, Philips would have to pay that bill.

That is how RAU Architects became the first-ever user of light as a service – which decreased our energy consumption by 44%.. Today, Philips Lighting now called Signify promotes it all over the world, rebranded as Circular Lighting.

                                                                                                                                                                               “

                                                   Thomas Rau and Sabine Oberhuber (2023:97-98): Material Matters. Developing for a Circular Economy

 

Nutrient Management & Upcycling 

McDonough and Braungart [D&B]’s cradle to cradle principle requires that products be designed and managed through biological and technical nutrient cycles. Here, ‘upcycling‘ is a central concept. It differs from recycling; ‘Recycling’ means that a product/material in its ‘second life’ can not only be continued, but upgraded, i.e. added value.

Again, we see that a change in perspective makes it easier to connect to other principles and interpretive frameworks, e.g. ‘abundance‘ (‘abundance’). Abundance can not be maintained, however, if products and/or its materials cannot be passed on as pure nutrients (either technical or biological):

“

.. As modern engineers and designers commonly create a product now, the item is designed only for its first use, not its potential next use this after it breaks, or grows threadbare, or goes out of fashion, or crumbles.

[For D&B, the basic question for business management, after the item’s first use (and possibly re-use of the original product), is]:

Can.. [this product] return safely to the technosphere or biosphere without contaminating either, while being rejuvenated as materials for new cycles?

                                                                                                                             ”

                                                                                                                                McDonough and Braungart 2013 ibid.: 8, 53

 Sewage as example of upcycling and Optimized Nutrient Management

 D&B refers to a company in Canada showing how we can upcycle sewage. An engineer at the sewerage company had studied the problem of drainage pipes being blocked due to crystallization of minerals in the pipe. The solution the engineer came up with made the minerals come out as pearls – of phosphate: 

“These pellets of magnesium and ammonium phosphate are known as struvite, and for farmers they’re ideal because they release their nutrients slowly, taking about eight to nine months to fully dissolve. They feed into soil at a pace that plants can digest. And the farmers don’t have to keep laboring to add phosphate since, for eight to nine months, they know the fields have their fill.” 

                                                                                                                            McDonough and Braungart 2013 ibid.: 132-133

 How does all the above comply with the concept of ‘sustainability’? Not very well. The reason why is summarized below (see the internal links for elaboration): 

 

The term of sustainability is not sustainable. Looking for one that is.

 From weak to Strong levels of Ambition. Compare these two statements:

• “Sustainability generally strives to reduce impacts on people and the planet as compared to the status quo — say a baseline of previous operations or the industry standard..”

                                                                        Kori Goldberg  (February 10, 2023) Back to basics: A systems thinker’s view on circularity

• A healthy, fair and environmentally sound economy where cities and communities take responsibility for own supply chains and for reduced inequality, all embodied by the principle of economic democracy. [Stewardship as defined at the frontpage].

Looking at the first statement, we shall see that McDonough and Braungart 2013 radically raise the level of ambition- from striving to be ‘ more good’, not ‘less bad’ and even more than that: “Good design would allow for abundance, endless reuse and pressure”

William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2013: 35, 7): The Upcycle. Beyond Sustainability-Designing for Abundance [emphasize added]

 

Countering pulverisation of Responsibility

This has already been commented on under the heading ‘Alternative interpretation frameworks for a real circular economy’ above. It must be added that the ability to take responsibility has been reduced through globalisation:

With globalisation, values ​​are extracted from local communities who are deprived of control over their own development. If we are to regain this control, we need a Relocation of the Economy, and agenda closely linked to the Principles for a Democratic Economy.

 

Result-focused Stewardship

To a greater extent, we must move from the Market (alone) to economic, social and environmental stewardship, see our definition on the frontpage). This carries with it more offensive terms, such as working for abundance, for something, for regenerative, selective economic growth, maximizing the carbon cycle, and more.

An important tool for such goal-directed management that this stewardship entails, is ethical and democratic ownership design. This represents corporate forms of democratic ownership where social and environmental management obligations are built into the company’s constitution. We have pointed to the following forms: Cooperatives, the FairShares model, Platform cooperatives and ‘Commons-based’ designs (locally rooted and group-based ownership). The rationale is summarized as follows:

• Ethical and democratic ownership design facilitates accountability and (Re-) Localization of the Economy.
• It accommodates the Principles of a Democratic Economy, especially No. 5 (Creating Ownership Design for a New Age: The Principle of Democratized Ownership) and No. 6 (Protecting the Ecosystem as the Foundation of Life: The Principle of [Ecological] Sustainability).
• It directly tackles the Elephant in the Room – ‘fiduciary duty’ (board members’ duty of loyalty to shareholders). Countless examples have shown that this has serious negative social, economic and environmental consequences, being why we have called this duty ‘The Elephant in the Room’ (See also Economic democracy).

 

Operationalizing the said stewardship: Community Wealth Building (CWB)

Inspired by UK and USA’s experiences with the Community Wealth Building-model, the CWB webpage illustrates how the defined stewardship may be operationalized.

The potential for a better distribution of the actual sources of value creation is highlighted. For municipalities, it could represent a ‘solution multiplier’ – a coherent agenda that saves money and strengthen the local economy.