HISTORY OF THE PCDF
LIVING ECONOMIES PROGRAM
PCDF has been striving since its founding in 1990 to frame a practical
strategy for economic transformation. A breakthrough was reached in the articulation of such a strategy in March of 2001 at an invitational workshop on
economic alternatives hosted by the Esalen
Institute in Big Sur, California. The participants included Janine Benyus (Biomimicry),
Elisabet Sahtouris
(EarthDance and a Walk Through Time), and David Korten. Benyus
and Sahtouris shared insights from biology, ecology, and evolution and discussed
their implications for rethinking economic relationships. Korten explored the
institutional implications. In the course of the ensuing dialogue, a number of
the participants began to converge on "living economies" as a term
that seemed suited to describing healthy, mature, locally rooted economic
systems that
mimic the relationships and processes of healthy, mature natural ecosystems.
A particularly critical insight came from a discussion of the
processes of natural succession by which ecosystems evolve from colonization to maturity
through the displacement of fast growing, competitive, and transient species by
patient, cooperative, and settled species that learn to efficiently conserve and
share the energy and materials on which they mutually depend. Maturation in
natural ecosystem rarely involves a change in the behavior of organisms
genetically prone to aggressive and profligate behavior. More often it occurs
through a process by which species better suited to the needs of a mature,
cooperative system gradually displace the more aggressive and individualistic
species that dominate the colonizing stage. This suggested that perhaps the most
promising path to economic transformation might be through a similar process of
locally owned and rooted values-driven enterprises coming together to create the
relational webs of living economies of sufficient strength to gradually displace
the corporate megaliths.
The following month, in April 2001, Sahtouris and Korten were
invited to present a
joint workshop on "Living Economies" facilitated by Richard Perl at the Social Ventures Network
(SVN) annual membership meeting at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York.
Judy Wicks, the former board chair of SVN, had already been promoting an
initiative that aligned with the living economies framework. A number of SVN's
other leading business practitioners
immediately picked up on the
implications of the concept for their own work. Indeed, the living economies
framework attracted so much interest
that two well-attended follow-on sessions were quickly organized. It
became increasingly evident that many of the elements of a system of living economies are already in
place, but remain to be woven together into the functioning, living web, of a
new economy. The term "suicide
economy" was coined for the existing economy that is rapidly destroying the
foundations of its own existence and the survival of the human species. A
plan emerged to make the living economies theme a centerpiece of SVN's October 11-14, 2001 meeting in San Jose,
California.
In June 2001, Korten began drafting a web essay,
"Living
Economies for a Living Planet," in collaboration with
Victor Bremson, Richard
Perl, Elisabet Sahtouris, John Steiner,
and Judy Wicks
to share the ideas with a
broader constituency. A supporting essay by Sahtouris outlined
lessons
from biology that define critical characteristics of a living economy. Other colleagues, including
Tom
Atlee, Hans-Peter
Duerr, Charlie Kouns,
Ernie Lowe, and
Joanna Macy, soon joined in with supporting essays and/or commentary. The
essay is also inspired by Thomas Berry's The Great Work:
Our Way into the Future and is grounded in the work of four
visionary pioneers of the new biology: Janine Benyus,
Mae-Wan Ho, Lynn
Margulis, and
Elisabet Sahtouris.
Richard Perl later convened an SVN working group comprised of
Larry Brilliant,
Edgar Cahn,
Duane Elgin, Hazel Henderson, David Korten,
Bernard Lietaer,
Amory Lovins, Russell
Means, Richard Perl, John Robbins, Elisabet
Sahtouris, Michael Shuman and Judy Wicks --- all invited speakers at SVN's
October 2001 conference --- to prepare a collaborative working document titled
The
Path to Living Economies as a framing theme paper for the conference. Some
fifty conference participants remained after the formal close of the conference
to spend an afternoon crafting an action plan. With the support of SVN, SVN
leaders Laury Hammel and Judy Wicks immediately began organizing local chapters
of a new Business Alliance for Local
Living Economies (BALLE) around the United States to facilitate the process
of growing living economies into being. The PCDForum Living Economies Program
serves as one of a number of supporting resources.
NEXT: Living
Economies for a Living Planet
Revised March 20, 2002. Originally posted July
24, 2001
