A note from me

Hi Folks,

I’m struggling a bit at the moment.  

I’m undergoing treatment for something called Actinic Keratosis which is, basically, damage to skin cells that, if untreated, could eventually lead to skin cancer. It’s due to accumulated damage from exposure to the sun over a long period. I’ve never been a sun worshipper but I am fair-skinned and getting older and was often sunburned when younger. I grew up in the era before there was broad cultural recognition of the importance of using sunscreen. With what is happening to me now, I can only direct all of you to the broader advice in the excellent Baz Luhrmann recording  “Everybody's free to wear sunscreen”.

I know all will be well before long. I’m halfway through 4 weeks of treatment with a cream that burns away the damaged cells leaving red and sore patches of skin that will heal in the following couple of months. It’s tiring and unpleasant but there are far worse things that people face and endure. However, I’m sure you will understand why I’m not including a video with this particular edition of the Newsletter! And remember – Use Sunscreen!

Of course, there are upsides in life as well as downsides like these, and here are a couple of examples from me.  

This being the beginning of a new year, I’ve looked back over the past 12 months and thought about the five new films I most remember enjoying. You might like to check out any of these you haven’t seen.

• All of Us Strangers (warning, some sexual content)

• Emelia Perez

• Conclave

• Wicked

• Small Things Like These

Also, I’ve looked back at how developments have been progressing with the sharing of insights and experience under the Dodo Club umbrella. This is encouraging and I would like to thank you for contributing to that encouragement. In the past 12 months, the LinkedIn content has been read by over 1 million people. Newsletter subscriptions are also creeping towards 1000 with an exceptionally high open/read rate per subscriber. Particularly at a time when I’m struggling, that encouragement, and that sense of the Dodo providing something that you value, are rewarding. Thanks.

In recent Newsletters, we have been exploring the Common Good and this edition continues that theme. I hope you continue to find these materials enjoyable and that they help you enrich your own personal or organisational perspectives on building The Common Good!

My Bi-Weekly Guide

The Common Good (Part 3)… and Art

In the last Newsletter, we considered the US constitution as a successful (though threatened) written template for organising a society that combines individual rights with the generation of collective and individual prosperity. This is a challenge, which different societies have evolved different ways of trying to address at different times and with different degrees of success.  

I’m rather fond of the following painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which dates from 1565 and was commissioned by a merchant in Antwerp but is now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It has been given the title “The Harvesters”.  

This is a scene painted in the early part of the early modern period by an artist who essentially developed landscape painting as a genre with value in itself and not just as a backdrop for a religious or mythological scene in the foreground. It is a snapshot of life and landscape at a time when the bulk of people in Europe worked in agriculture. It is a hot summer’s day with people in the foreground hard at backbreaking work, but also resting and eating. In the background, some people appear to playing games on common land and others (monks?) are skinny-dipping.  

To me, this is a scene representative of the later days of Feudalism. There is evidence of the fields being divided into strips which would be held by different families of tenants working for themselves but with obligations to the local feudal lord or abbot who held the land formally granted by the king. As well as people being able to grow the crops to feed themselves, there is a sense that surplus harvest is being gathered in a well-loaded cart and taken to the town and ships in the distance for trade. This is a fully functioning rural economy.

In this economy, as depicted, the open-field system was in place, so-called because there were no barriers between the strips of fields belonging to different farmers. The landscape was one of long and uncluttered views which appealed to the artist and his clients. This appeal continued and, for example, many decades later, Bruegel’s son, Pieter Bruegel the Younger, would be painting similar scenes for his clients.  

As well as the fields under cultivation, there would be common land and pasture where everyone could graze their animals or collect wood. However, to prevent, for example, over-grazing that ultimately degraded pasture there would need to be some agreement on how many animals could use the common land. This would be enforced by the lord.

This is the challenge of so-called “common pool resources”.  Individuals are motivated to overuse these resources because of the immediate benefits to them, with downsides ultimately being shared by everybody. This was the subject of a very influential 1968 essay by ecologist Garrett Hardin entitled “The Tragedy of the Commons”.  He asserted that “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all”, implying that an external authority, such as the lord of the manor in feudalism, was needed to restrict freedom and coerce individuals to prevent collective ruin.  

This is a depressing assertion, however, given the lack of an authority that can enforce restrictions in many important areas of common life, e.g. in the case of global warming. However, Nobel prize-winner Elinor Ostrom has researched many cases of success (and failure) of individual agents to self-organise long-enduring management of a common pool resource, such as irrigation in the region of Valencia and high mountain meadows in Switzerland. The principles for success that she has highlighted can give us guidance and hope in these troublesome matters.  

These are summarised in the 5 points below.

1. Generate strong group identity and understanding of purpose: 

   The identity of the stakeholder group, the boundaries of the shared resource, and the need to manage the resource should be clearly defined and understood.  

2. Arrange proportional equivalence between benefits and costs:
   Members of the group must agree on a system that rewards individual members for their contributions. Any disproportionate benefits or high status must be earned and unfair inequalities prevented.
   

3. Institute collective choice arrangements:
   Decision-making should be by consensus or another process members recognise and respect as fair. People detest being told what to do but will work hard for group goals to which they have agreed.
   

4. Monitor, with graduated sanctions and fair conflict-resolution mechanisms:
   A commons is, almost by definition, vulnerable to free-riding and exploitation. Such undermining must be able to be detected at low cost by norm-abiding members of the group. However, transgressions need not be punished harshly initially, although the consequences should escalate for repeated offenses. It must also be possible to resolve conflicts quickly in ways perceived as fair.
   

5. Respect self-organisation with polycentric governance for extended commons: 
   Externally imposed rules are likely to neglect local realities and fail. Any external authorities must recognise and respect the group’s self-management. For groups that are part of larger social systems, there must be appropriate coordination among relevant groups.
   

You may find it useful to look back to the example of the development of the US Constitution considered in Newsletter Edition 34 and recognise how these principles intersect with the experience of the Framers that became embodied in the Constitution. In doing this, I believe you will see the relevance of these principles as well as the nature of some of the current challenges to US governance such as the fragmentation of group identity and the accrual of disproportionate benefits and status. Similarly, I believe these principles help illuminate why the attempt to build an agreement to address climate change at the Copenhagen COP was a failure while the Paris Agreement half a decade later was a relative success because it was built around locally determined contributions (NDCs) rather than imposed targets.

An opportunity for you do some more learning:

If you would like to learn more about the kinds of topics covered in these Newsletters, then please consider signing up to the introductory Dodo Club online Course. This covers scenario/systems thinking for grappling with uncertainty, an introduction to energy transitions, and the development of strategic character in leadership.

A series of follow-up courses that treat the main topics in increasing detail will be provided if there is sufficient interest.

Question of The Fortnight

Every fortnight I’ll be asking a thought-provoking question in hopes of sparking interesting and enlightening discussion.

I’d love to hear your response! You can do so by simply responding to this email.

Today’s question is:

Given the challenges of managing common pool resources and generating common goods, do you believe we are doomed to suffer relentless “tragedies of the commons” or do you believe these principles can guide us to more constructive outcomes?  If so, what can you do to support this? 

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