This policy briefing from the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) articulates how commons-based approaches to resource governance can serve collective wellbeing and ecological health rather than perpetuating extractive growth economics. WEAll—a global collaboration of organizations, alliances, and individuals working toward wellbeing economies—synthesizes commons theory, ecological economics, and practical governance examples to show why shared stewardship of resources offers viable alternative to both privatization and state control. The briefing makes accessible complex economic concepts, providing frameworks and case studies that policymakers, community organizers, and practitioners can use to advocate for and implement commons approaches in diverse contexts from local land trusts to digital platform governance.
Key Highlights
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Wellbeing vs. GDP Growth: The briefing challenges growth-at-all-costs economics, showing how commons governance can prioritize collective wellbeing, ecological health, and equitable access rather than maximizing GDP—offering economic frameworks that serve regeneration rather than extraction.
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Commons Governance Models: The work documents diverse commons governance approaches including community land trusts, cooperative management of fisheries and forests, indigenous stewardship systems, and digital commons—demonstrating that shared resource governance works across scales and contexts when properly designed.
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Against False Dichotomy: The briefing explicitly counters the presumed choice between private property (leading to extraction) and state ownership (leading to inefficiency), showing how commons offer third way that combines distributed stewardship with collective accountability.
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Participatory Decision-Making: The work emphasizes how commons require participatory governance where those affected by resource decisions have voice in management—demonstrating that economic democracy and ecological sustainability reinforce rather than conflict with each other.
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Ecological Limits: Drawing on ecological economics, the briefing frames commons as approach for living within planetary boundaries, showing how shared stewardship enables collective self-limitation where market competition drives overconsumption.
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Social Equity: The work addresses how commons can promote equity by ensuring access based on need and participation rather than wealth, challenging systems where money determines who benefits from shared resources.
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Policy Recommendations: Unlike merely theoretical advocacy, the briefing offers concrete policy mechanisms for supporting commons including legal frameworks for community ownership, public funding for commons infrastructure, and regulation that protects shared resources from enclosure.
Practical Applications
This briefing enables commons implementation across scales:
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Local communities can reference the documented commons models when establishing community land trusts, tool libraries, cooperative energy systems, or shared workspace—learning from proven approaches rather than starting from scratch
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Policy makers can adopt the recommended legal and funding frameworks to enable commons governance, creating institutional support for community stewardship rather than assuming all resources must be privately owned or state-managed
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Environmental organizations can use the ecological limits framing to advocate for commons-based resource management that enables collective self-limitation, showing why shared governance serves sustainability better than market competition
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Economic justice advocates can employ the briefing when arguing that wellbeing economics requires commons approaches, not just wealth redistribution within growth-based systems—articulating systemic alternatives to extractive capitalism
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Digital platform developers can apply commons governance principles to platform cooperatives and decentralized systems, ensuring shared resources serve participant wellbeing rather than investor returns
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Indigenous-led initiatives can reference the briefing’s recognition of indigenous commons governance when engaging policymakers, using the WEAll framing to connect traditional stewardship with contemporary economic transformation
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Funders can use the framework to identify and support commons-based projects as infrastructure for wellbeing economies, directing resources toward collective ownership and stewardship rather than only individual enterprises
The policy-oriented framing makes the briefing particularly useful for advocacy and institutional change.
Connection With SuperBenefit
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WEAll’s challenge to growth-at-all-costs economics provides essential framing for SuperBenefit’s regenerative approach, showing why genuinely transformative Web3 systems must optimize for collective wellbeing and ecological health rather than merely decentralizing GDP growth models—the briefing demonstrates that commons governance can prioritize regeneration over extraction when properly structured.
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The documented commons governance models across community land trusts, cooperative fisheries, and indigenous stewardship systems validate SuperBenefit’s emphasis on shared resource management and community stewardship, offering proven precedents that DAO governance can learn from rather than assuming blockchain represents entirely novel coordination challenges.
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The briefing’s articulation of commons as third way beyond private property and state control resonates with SuperBenefit’s exploration of coordination systems that distribute power beyond traditional market/state dichotomies, showing how participatory resource governance can combine distributed stewardship with collective accountability—relevant to how DAOs can serve commons rather than reproducing corporate structures with tokens.
Related Concepts
- Commons - Shared resources and governance approaches
- Governance - Decision-making for collective resources
- Coordination - Mechanisms for managing shared resources
- Sustainability - Long-term resource stewardship
- Community - Groups managing commons together