Note: This conclusions article will be used as an input for the discussion to be held in the Global Forum NESI “New Economy and Social Innovation” in 19-22 April 2017 in Málaga (Spain)

During the event “Tenerife Colaborativa” held at the University of La Laguna, in the island of Tenerife (Spain), participants enjoyed an inspiring discussion with international speakers such as, Domenico Di Siena, Diego Isabel La Moneda, Michel Bawens, Jessy Kate Schingler, Khushboo Balwani and Thomas Dönnebrink.

The main goal of Tenerife Colaborativa was to explore how to co-create a Sharing Territory in Tenerife Island as well as in other territories. During the first part of the event, participants achieved a consensus regarding the values that are needed in order to build a “sharing territory”. Those main values are:

- Open
- Collaboration among all the stakeholders
- Distributed
- Local / Glocal balance
- Environmental and financial sustainability
- Resilient

Through different keynotes, panel discussions are workshops, speakers and participants also identified the main strategies to be followed in a sharing territory aimed are transforming the economic model and improving happiness and the common good. Here is a summary of these strategies.

- Food sovereignty. Promotion of local producers and organic food. Bringing together local producers and consumers and raising awareness about the social, environmental and economic benefits of food sovereignty. Fostering collaboration among local movements and associations who are currently working in organic agriculture.

- Financial sovereignty. Enabling mechanisms to bring money to those entrepreneurs and projects with high and positive social and environmental impact. Getting in contact investors and social entrepreneurs. Promoting banking on values and enabling new ways of investment such as crowdfunding or match-funding.

- Distributed energy. Achieving 100% of local and renewable production of energy. Decentralising the production of energy and empowering people through consumers cooperatives such as Som Energy and other similar initiatives.

- Distributed production. Empowering local producers and small businesses of different goods. Getting in touch local producers and consumers as well as promoting recycling and up-cycling.

- Open knowledge. Raising awareness about the importance of local culture and local wisdom and knowledge. Creating spaces to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and the collaboration such as co-working and co-learning spaces.

- Social purpose for businesses and other organisations. Benefiting those organisations who contribute to the common good with public policies such as public procurement, taxation and economic strategies for entrepreneurs and businesses.

- Democratisation of the economy and public institutions. Promoting the distribution of economic power and reflecting on the concepts of ownership and properties. Bringing new ideas such as platform cooperativism and inviting citizens to participate in the decision making processes of the public institutions, starting with local governments.

Speakers and participants agreed that collaboration should be also strengthen among the “new economy models” such as circular economy, collaborative economy, economy for the common good, blue economy, etc.

As a first step, they suggested that when one of these movements prepares a proposal, that proposal could be backed by all of them in order to be more powerful when bringing the proposal to the public institutions. In this way, the different movements will be also able to create a sharing community as a basis to build a sharing territory.

As a specific example, during Tenerife Colaborativa a group of local producers, consumers and other social movements discussed about how to promote food sovereignty in the island. The proposal was that, once this group prepare the proposal of strategy of food sovereignty for Tenerife, the other groups, social movements, etc. should support them in order to get the support of the local public institutions.

By |2016-09-28T20:10:34+00:00September 22nd, 2016|Blog|0 Comments

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