• for: SONEC, neighborhood circles, downscaled planetary boundaries, earth system boundaries, community governance, neighborocracy, neighbourhood parliament, healthy power, toxic power

• title: SoNeC: Sociocratic Neighbourhood Circles in Europe

• date: 2022
• authors:
  • Barbara Sirauch
  • Rita Mayrhofer

• collaborators

  • Maria-Juliana Byck
  • Orsolya Lelkes
  • Johannes Zimm
  • Pia Haerlinger
  • Naya Tselepi
  • Nathaniel Whitestone

• summary

  • SONEC offers a framework for relocalization of the economy but it will require very careful planning to create the right conditions for the emergence of local wellbeing economies.
  • One of the leverage points is the cosmolocal nature of SONEC, allowing the rapid, global sharing of good and best practices
  • This will be important because if SONEC is to reach its potential to awaken the sleeping giant of citizens to drive the necessary changes to mitigate the worst of the current existential polylcrisis, we will need a global synchronization of collective action at the local level.

for - Town Anywhere - Transition Town - town anywhere - Ruth Ben-Tovim - Deep Humanity BEing journey - TPF - Town Anywhere BEing journey - LCE - Town Anywhere - adjacency - rapid whole system change - futures - town anywhere - SONEC

summary - Town Anywhere provides a simulacrum, as Brian Eno talks about in the forward to Jon Anderson & Arian Conrad's book Citizens - https://hyp.is/m_HuigEvEe--6UdGv2HVDA/www.jonalexander.net/the-foreword

Summary - This is a

• for: TPF, SoNeC, LCE, community hubs, 3rd party

• for: SoNeC - SRG / TPF gamified rapid whole system change, SRG / TPF proposal

• SRG / TPF project proposals for SONEC communities

  • Emerge candidates for a global 3rd political party with no money from special interests
    • education,
    • recruitment
    • training
    • as per
      • James Hansen
        • https://hyp.is/70vs5KWoEe6GbH_T_BlQ_Q/docdrop.org/video/8Ag3UVSrlhE/
        • https://hyp.is/Oz5YqqYBEe6cW7N02P7-Pg/academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889
      • Progressive International
        • https://hyp.is/N0bxsJaaEe6Nmp_cqQcA7Q/docdrop.org/video/3dxLs-zX5xA/
      • this reflects the polycrisis's entangled nature:
        • climate crisis
        • political crisis
  • Cosmolocal production network
  • Bootstrap local WEconomy via community owned cooperatives:
    • bioeconomy
      • concentrated organic produce production
      • agroforestry production
    • renewable energy
    • low cost desalinated water
  • Open citizen science project on local climate departure as proxy for economic impacts of climate change
  • Deep Humanity / BEing journeys
  • Gamified rapid whole system change via:
    • downscaled earth system boundaries and
    • doughnut economics
  • Cascading Social Tipping Point Theory
  • Youth afterschool climate activism clubs
  • Network of sustainable restaurants for meetings, talks and presentations
  • Local community economics to RELOCALIZE the economy
  • Jan 1, 2024 adders
    • Appeal to local north districts of cities
      • Wealth2Wellth program to show High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) living in wealthy local north communities climate change trends that are occurring in realtime to show present and near future sea level rise and forest fire impacts on their expensive beachfront and forest properties respectively
    • sister ward / sister city partnerships
      • create local north / south as well as global north / south partnerships for upliftment and
        • creating more wealth in local south communities as well as wellth
        • creating more wellth in local north communities
    • climate crisis / polycrisis education and motivational speaking from top thought leaders via global audience outreach to the SoNeC global network of youth and communty SoNeC hubs
      • many ordinary people do not realize the urgency of our situation or have become so jaded. Personal interaction with leading authorities can make a difference

• for: types of initiators of community projects, SONEC - initiators of community projects, question - frameworks for community projects, suggestion - collaboration with My Climate Risk, suggestion - collaboration with U of Hawaii, suggestion - collaboration with ICICLE, suggestion - collaboration with earth commission, suggestion - collaboration with DEAL

• question: frameworks for community projects

  • If our interest is to attempt to create a global collective action campaign to address our existential polycrisis, which includes the climate crisis, then how do we mobilize at the community level in a meaningful way?

  • I suggest that this must be a cosmolocal effort. Why? Knowledge sharing across all the communities will accelerate the transition of any participating local community.

  • This means that we cannot rely on citizens living in small communities to construct an effective coordination framework for rapid de-escalation of the polycrisis. The capacity does not exist within small communities to build such a complex system. The system can be more effectively built before the collective action campaign is started by a virtual community of experts and ready for trial with pilot communities.
  • To meet this enormous challenge, it cannot be done in an adhoc way. At this point in time, many people in many communities all around the globe know of the existential crisis we face, but if we look at the annual carbon emissions, none of the existing community efforts has made a difference in their continuing escalation.
  • The knowledge required to synchronize millions of communities to have a unified wartime-scale collective action mobilization to reach decarbonization goals that the mainstream approach has not even made a dent in will be a complex problem.
  • In other words, what is proposed is a partnership.
  • Since we are faced with global commons problems that pose existential threats if not mitigated in 5 to 8 years, the scope of the problem is enormous.
  • Super wicked problems require unprecedented levels of collaboration at every level.
  • The downscaling of global planetary boundaries and doughnut economics seems the most logical way to think global, act local.

  • Building such a collaboration system requires expert knowledge. Once built, however, it requires testing in pilot communities. This is where a partnership can take place

  • 2024, Jan. 1 Adder

    • My Climate Risk Regional Hubs
      • time 29:46 of https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Funfccc.int%2Fevent%2Flater-is-too-late-tipping-the-balance-from-negative-to-positive&group=world
      • https://www.wcrp-climate.org/mcr-hubs
      • Suggestion:
        • SRG has long entertained a collaborative open science project for grassroots polycrisis / climate crisis education - to measure and validate latest climate departure dates
        • This would make climate change far more salient to the average person because of the observable trends in disruption of local economic activity connected to the local ecology due to climate impacts
        • This would be a synergistic project between SRG, LCE, SoNeC, My Climate Risk hubs, ICICLE and U of Hawaii
        • Our community frameworks need to go BEYOND simply adaptation though, which is what "My Climate Risk" focuses exclusively on. We need to also engage equally in climate mitigation.
  • reference
  • I coedited this volume on examples of existing cosmolocal projects
    • https://clreader.net/

• for: John Boik, societal design, whole system change, science-driven societal transformation

• description

  • John Boik presents his theory of science-driven societal transformation that has a large cosmolocal component to it
  • It's an elaboration of his earlier work at his https://principledsocietiesproject.org/ where, like the SRG/TPF and SoNeC project, sees the community as the fundamental buuilding block in society for mobilzing citizen-driven rapid whole system change.

• reference

  • SoNeC
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsonec.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FSoNeC-handbook-english.pdf&group=world

• for: definition - SoNeC-network circle

• definition: SoNeC-network circle

  • Representatives from 20-40 SoNeC form a group called the SoNeC-network group

• recommendation

  • In a city such as Cape Town, there are 3 million inhabitants andthere are 150 wards.
  • SoNeCs would need another layer of groups beyond this

• for: SoNeC first meeting items, SoNeC - first meeting - SRG/TPF additions

• comment

  • add all the SRG / TPF framework and projects
  • polycrisis with specific urgency of climate crisis
  • gamify bend-the-curve
  • indyweb / indranet system
  • First meeting is also a good opportunity to familiarize people with the SRG mapping and cascading tipping point mapping tools

• for: SoNeC - SRG/TPF impact

• comment

  • present the SRG/TPF impact - cosmolocal - so local impact everywhere = global impact

• for SoNeC - implentation roles, neighbourhood organization - SoNeC, community organization - SoNeC

• description: Implementation roles

  • Facilitator
  • Neighbourhood organizer
  • Circle member in charge
  • Neighbours

• for: definition - SoNeC initiators

• definition: SoNeC initiators

  • a stakeholder that takes the risk of starting the SoNeC in their community

  • 3 types:

    • NGOs and existing initiatives
    • Local government
    • Citizens

• for: progress trap, Inner Development Goals, SoNeC, SRG Mapping Tool

• comment

  • nice! (emoji: pleasant surprise) I wonder if Ferial or Joseph gave some inputs here, or was the SoNeC team already familiar with progress traps?
  • SRG mapping tool and Deep Humanity are designed to reveal complexity emerging from multiple, diverse perspectives mapped together so can compliment SoNeC application of Inner Development Goals

• for: recommendation - SONEC - fractal city strategy

• recommendation: SONEC fractal city strategy

  • For everyone in Living Cities Earth group, we can each start SONECs in every ward of our respective city.
  • For my city of Cape Town, there are 150+ wards
  • There are neighboring rich, middle class and disenfranchised communities
  • One of the major projects will be to develop working relationships between the disenfranchised and neighboring middle class or wealthy communities
  • Indyweb / Indranet people-centered, interpersonal open learning system can be employed

• for: question - topics - downscaled earth system boundaries and micro-economies

• question

  • what kinds of questions need to be asked in order to align the communitiy's work to stay within downscaled earth system boundaries?

• for: SONEC - Dunbar number

• comment

  • SONECs are based on Dunbar number of 150 people to maintain group intimacy

• for: good match - SONEC - TPF, good match - SONEC - downscaled earth system boundaries, good match - SONEC - doughnut economics

• for:question - SONEC - is equal voting really equal?, question - SONEC - voter education

• question

  • all may decide as equals with each other, but each human being is unique so each decision will be unique.
  • some may be better suited to make a decision than another, but if all have equal weight, that is also not fair if someone without enough education decides. How to resolve this?
  • Can the Indyweb help with this to map out the unique lifeworld (lebenswelt) of each individual to surface the unique capacities of each person, and their competencies for voting on a particular issue?
  • Voting is an important decision-making position and the voter is either informed, or if not sufficiently informed should ideally be educated to make an informed decision

• for: question - SONEC community governance - participation

• question: SONEC community governance - participation

  • Communities have such diversity, multimeaningverse of lifeworlds converged
  • So many different capacities, limitations and worldviewes - I would recommend the Deep Humanity multi-meaningverse is important as a framework to mitigate misinterpretation

• for: SONEC - building blocks

• building blocks - SONEC

  • Indian neighborhood parliaments - neighbourocracy
  • Sociocratic Circul Organization method (SCN - Sociocracy
    • Operationalizing Elinor Ostro's ideas of managing common resources
  • Design principles of the Commons

• for: question - SONEC alignment to earth system boundaries

• question

  • Stop Reset Go's objective is to find global community partners who can help motivate a local community strategy aligned with the tight timeframe to stay under 1.5 Deg C.
  • Is SONEC open to working on a strategic to empower communities in this way?
  • We can offer it as an optional framework that the community can integrate into their final framework

• for: suggestion - SONEC and commons transition plan

• suggestion

  • Is a synthesis of SONEC and existingCommons Transition plans worthwhile considering?
    • City of Ghent https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/a-commons-transition-plan-for-the-city-of-ghent/2017/09/14
    • City of Sydney, Australia https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Commons_Transition_Plan_for_the_City_of_Sydney

• for: SONEC - expanding globally, Global North South sister city program

• comment

  • For globally expanding SONEC, it is also important to consider other cultural values outside the European lens and to also address the structural inequalities of colonialism
  • For a globalized SONEC, one suggestion is to create a sister city program based on reparation from colonial injustice and integrating a climate justice component

• for SONEC - foundational pillars

• paraphrase: SONEC foundational pillars

  • Neighbourhood parliaments
  • Sociocratic circle organization method
  • Elinor Ostrom's "governing the commons" principles

• for: key insight- polycrisis - climate crisis - political crisis, climate crisis - requires a new political party, money in politics, climate crisis - fossil fuel lobbyists, climate change - politics, climate crisis - politics, James Hansen - key insight - political action - 3rd party

• key insight

  • Both democrats and conservatives are captured by fossil fuel lobbyist interests
  • A new third political party that does not take money from special interests is required
  • The nature of the polycrisis is that crisis are entangled . This is a case in point. The climate crisis cannot be solved unless the political crisis of money influencing politics is resolved
  • The system needs to be rapidly reformed to kick money of special interest groups out of politics.

• question

  • Given the short timescale, the earliest we can achieve this is 2028 in the US Election cycle
  • Meanwhile what can we do in between?
  • How much impact can alternative forms of local governance like https://sonec.org/ have?
  • In particular, could citizens form local alternative forms of governance and implement incentives to drive sustainable behavior?

• for: question - feebates - implement within SONEC?