By Mike Lewis
The 2010 National Summit is right around the corner. May 30-June 1, 300plus people will gather in Ottawa to put in place the cornerstones for rendering more coherent our efforts to strengthen a movement that holds great promise.
Ranging from neighbourhood development organizations and individual social enterprises to associations representing hundreds of thousands of people, from researchers and students in the academy to people involved in labour, women’s, and environmental movements, the diversity and breadth is inspiring. (You can still register on-line until midnight Friday, May 21.)
Whether together we can craft a vision and an agenda that will reinforce our efforts to secure public recognition and public policy that leverages and builds on our contribution to Canadian society is the challenge we have.
The six Issue Papers leading up to the Summit contain excellent work that will stimulate a dynamic discussion. What are our collective priorities? At this conjuncture, what things can we do that will strengthen the movement for a People-Centered Economy? Certainly the excellent research and related papers identify key dimensions of what we have to advance. Concrete propositions will shape Summit debate. Moreover, we have important findings from elsewhere in the world that can help us perceive strategic pathways forward.
Combine all this with some of the incredible speakers addressing Summit plenary sessions and the 3.5 hour theme workshops, and I expect a rich and productive debate.
Yep, I am excited. But I am also just a wee bit nervous. As I read the Issue Papers I failed to see two key issues missing, issues that I do not think any of us can duck, issues that are hugely challenging to get our minds around. Both point to trends which radically challenge dominant assumptions in our society, trends which many of us are ambivalent about. Indeed, careful reading of the papers indicates, not surprisingly, that we too are struggling to embrace their implications.
Of course, the two issues I now want to bring to your attention are also assumptions, based on a reading of the signs. They are shared by increasing numbers of people around the globe. They are vigorously criticized by many more.
So let me set them out, followed by a third issue that has more to do with the peculiar challenges of holding a “National” Summit in this place we call Canada.
First, given the challenges the planet faces, the dominant assumption that economic growth is the road out of our global predicaments is “akin to driving towards a cliff and then stepping on the accelerator.”
Second, Peak Oil (Energy) and Climate Change will become increasingly disruptive to the global economy. These overarching trends will drive us to reinvent our economies on a much more local and regional basis. Lengthy global supply chains will unravel as oil prices escalate. Local economies dependent on global markets will suffer. Financial systems, backed by debt, will remain vulnerable. The broad implication: we must intentionally focus on meeting our basic needs much closer to home – food, energy, finance, shelter. Increasing the measure of self-reliance locally and regionally is not an answer to all our challenges, but it is essential to navigating the difficulties ahead.
The third subject I want to raise in this article is one we all know well. Living as we do in a highly decentralized federation, how we focus our sector organizing and political and advocacy efforts is a key issue. Québec, Manitoba and Nova Scotia have all made progress in strengthening CED and the Social Economy through organizations and networks that have given priority to provincial and municipal levels of organizing. National efforts have been and continue to be important. However, in many of the domains in which we work, the power is at the provincial level. We also have limited resources. How do we understand this issue and what are the implications for our strategy?
The Economic Growth Assumption
I am not going to cite the mountains of evidence here. Let it suffice to say that the current and projected implications of peak oil and climate change (my second point) render meaningless worn assumptions that economic growth should be our guiding mantra. Economic growth is completely dependent on flows of energy. Our institutions, markets, attitudes are adapted to the paradigm of economic growth based on cheap, accessible energy.
This is not our future, though all of us have a difficult time imagining a non-growth economy, or as the 19th Century economist John Stuart Mill put it, a “steady state” economy. Indeed, we are faced with central conundrum – culturally, economically and socially. On the one hand, economic growth is destroying the environment we all depend on. On the other, there remain great economic inequities.
Can we take hold of the steering wheel and veer away from the cliff? This is the central question to which there is a wide range of responses from, on the one hand, “of course we can, we are resilient, inventive and will manage somehow,” and on the other hand, “civilization will collapse and there will be a major die-off of human population.” I accept neither, although as the evidence continues to pour in it is clear we are in serious and unprecedented do-do.
Several of the Issue Papers talk of sustainable development. However, none of them elevate with any clarity the issue of economic growth. Indeed, there are several instances where we argue the importance of the social economy sector in terms of its contribution to economic growth.
This is understandable. Our history reveals a movement focussed on creating economic improvement through the growth of enterprises, democratic ways of creating wealth etc. This is the social justice foundation we draw from. We want to make things better for those at the bottom, for those who are excluded and more generally, to foster healthy, vibrant communities. And so we should. However, the context for pursing these goals is changing rapidly.
Given the realities we face, I would argue that our passion for social justice needs to be radically reframed within an analysis that clearly faces the bankruptcy of economic growth as a paradigm. Navigating the volatile times ahead challenges us move into strategic retreat from the life-damaging consequences of the growth paradigm and energetically forging pathways to a steady state economy.
How we define our assumptions shapes how we see the world. How we see the world at this conjuncture in human history shapes our choices and our strategies, with whom we seek to ally, and what we choose to resist. These are considerations that will shape our movement-building efforts.
Peak Oil, Finance and Climate Change: Trends that are Shaping our Context – Whether We Like it or Not
Five out of the last six recessions have been associated with a peak in oil prices. The latest crash of the financial system is often linked to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. There is no doubt this was a key factor. However, the evidence is persuasive that oil prices were an even more fundamental contributor.
One pillar critical to keeping the current system functioning is confidence in money and the ability of banks to keep it flowing. As energy flows decline money, backed by little more than debt, will also unravel; money has no intrinsic value.
In a growing economy debt and interest can be repaid; in a declining economy not even the principle can be paid back. In other words, reduced energy flows cannot maintain the level of economic production necessary to service debt. Real debt outstanding in the world will not be repayable. New credit will almost vanish.
Our communities are highly vulnerable. We have few indigenous, locally owned production, distribution or financial systems in place; in other words, our economic resilience is low.
There are no simple answers or quick fixes. Oil prices in July 2008 hit $147 per barrel. By Christmas it was $34. By March it was over $70. It is now over $80. Jeff Rubin, former Chief economist for CIBC World Markets, who predicted the last July 2008 rise, predicts over $200 by 2012. Whether this is the case or not, there is a large body of evidence which argues that prices will be volatile. One increasingly common scenario is prices hitting new peaks, which will drive an economic contraction or recession, each one settling at higher ‘new low’ oil price levels. This cyclic pattern will cause significant impacts in jobs and business viability. Similar to what we have seen in the last two years, credit will be squeezed and bank stability threatened. Thus the provocative but perfectly reasonable title of Rubin’s book, Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller.
When one faces up to the fact that 90% of the world’s transportation (and 40% of all energy produced) is dependent on oil, it helps us understand why global supply chains are so vulnerable. Given how they are tied into these chains as producers and consumers, local communities too are extremely vulnerable. The cost of living related to food, heating our homes, generating electricity, transport, shelter affordability and the provision of financial services will rise, significantly. Moreover, meeting these needs securely cannot be assured as supply chains break down.
So what does this mean for building a people-centered economy? What strategies and models are in play that might represent signposts to navigate such an unprecedented set of circumstances?
Well, there are some – reconstructing local food systems hollowed out by global commodity markets; integrated, community-based approaches to energy conservation; land tenure reform aimed at farm succession and agriculture transition and increased affordability of housing; fee-based solidarity financing rather than credit provision based on compound interest; models that increase local ownership and control of renewable energy production, etc. Best practice models are emerging in each of these areas, the elaboration of which is beyond the scope of this memo. (U.K. based Patrick Conaty and I are endeavouring to write a book on these themes at the moment.)
When it comes to “Strengthening the Movement” (see Issue Paper 5, by my friend Rupert Downing), contending with these issues cannot be neglected. Opening ourselves to thinking about and actively discussing their implications is an important first step in our movement-building efforts. It is hard, no doubt. Are we able to face up to our fears about these prospects, however reluctantly, and start thinking outside of the box? Are we able to SEE the context differently, or not? Perhaps we significantly disagree and if we do, on what basis? Our answers will shape our strategies to strengthen the movement.
The second step is to seek the most strategic pathways and models relevant to strengthening local and regional economies, particularly those that focus on addressing basic needs and ways of weaving together social, economic, and ecologically-framed strategies and partnerships. There are models directly relevant to each of the basic needs sectors. Should we not be considering them as centrally important to how we think through building a people centered economy? Is this not actually one of the strategic contributions a revitalized movement could make? We come from this struggle and our exemplary practice is part of the solution. I cannot help but think that the Issue Papers all point to parts of the puzzle, but are silent or vague on the issues that may well become, strategically speaking, the main drivers of change.
The third step, intimately linked to the first two, and of course not nice, neat, and linearly tidy as implied in this 1-2-3 step language, is how to federate our efforts to secure a much more powerful, effective, and sustainable platform from which to try and steer away from the cliff. Clearly, we must become even more capable of inspiring, equipping, and shaping changes where we live; but if we are not organized to connect the dots more broadly we will not be well placed to influence the discourse, the policy, or to secure the kinds of resources that scaling up innovation always requires.
Strengthening the Movement in the Most Decentralized Federation on the Planet
Thus far I have suggested, firstly, elevating the issue of economic growth for debate. What are our assumptions? Where do we agree or disagree? We cannot paper over this debate and expect we will be effective in strengthening the movement. Secondly, I have argued that we must face the reality of Peak Oil (Energy) and the implications of accelerating climate change (though much more could be said about the latter). They will drive us to reweave our economies into a more local and regional framework and focus our priorities on meeting basic needs.
My third point has to do with how we understand where to put our priorities for organizing. Recommendations #1 and #2 at the end of Issue Paper 5 assume a federal focus. I am not against these but, as said earlier, much of the progress made in several areas of our work has come from provincially- and municipally-based organizing of the sector and subsequent influence over policy. Rupert makes this point very well in his fifth recommendation under government outreach, saying that we should go forward with “a particular focus on supporting momentum in provinces and territories” and (Recommendation #1) with the creation of “networks … in provinces and territories.”
I guess I just want to add a point here.
In Manitoba some 10 years ago the then draft CCEDNet National Policy framework played a key role in influencing the new NDP government. However, the subsequent strengthening of the work there has been due to provincially-focussed organizing. In Nova Scotia the focus has been very provincial as it has been in Québec, though the latter has expertly leveraged federal support as well.
Given the extent to which mandates and governmental power have devolved even further to provincial jurisdictions over the last decade, should we not explicitly examine where we put our organizing and advocacy efforts in the next several years? True, this is a National Summit and we will focus on how we unite our efforts at the Pan-Canadian Level more effectively. However, as Nancy Neamtan has so often said, in this country, if we do not have strong regional bases, the influence of the national level work will be muted. She is right I think, even though the presence of national networks was of strategic importance in leveraging the federal government’s Social Economy Initiative in 2004.
I think we have to move on all levels as Issue Paper 5 suggests. But what is the balance? Given capacity and resource challenges, I believe it is very important that we come to terms with what the respective priorities are between each level and explore the implications for how we deploy what movement building resources we have.
That is it for now. Thanks Rupert. I look forward to the discussion in at the National Summit in Ottawa.
Mike Lewis Canadian Centre for Community Renewal B.C. – Alberta Social Economy Research Alliance May 19, 2010
This announcement is provided by CEDworks!, an e-news service for resources of interest and importance to practitioners of community economic development and social enterprise.
Click here to start receiving CEDWorks!
Click here to stop receiving CEDWorks!





