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© Abundance 2023
Abundance is an organisation that promotes public-common strategies to democratise the economy and realise a just socio-ecological transition for everyone. Democratising the economy means putting more economic power in the hands of organised communities. A just socio-ecological transition is the process of moving to a society in which everyone can live dignified lives within our planet's ecological boundaries.
Abundance is committed to reflective processes of action-research, supporting the design and implementation of public-common strategies, evaluating and learning from the processes, and periodically reviewing our guiding hypothesis.
Societies have always produced more than they need to survive, and have long since passed the point where they produce enough for everyone to live dignified, meaningful and creative lives. Yet whilst societies produce untold levels of wealth for some, the global majority experiences a world of scarcity. This is neither natural nor accidental, but a functional outcome of our economic system.
To focus on abundance is to understand how societies control their social surplus, and what the distribution of that surplus means for how our societies are organised. Through democratic economic decision making and common ownership, an ecologically sustainable life of abundance is possible for everyone.
A public-common strategy is any initiative, policy, commission, or intervention in which a public body and an organised community collaborate to develop institutions of the democratic economy. The core aim of any public-common strategy is to strengthen organised communities and to increase their scope to make decisions over resources. A key example of a public-common strategy is the Public-Common Partnership, an institutional model for the co-ownership and co-governance of assets and resources.
Supporting organised communities to be in control of assets and resources lies at the heart of driving a just social-ecological transition. It’s through common forms of ownership thatorganised communities can be the ones that are driving these changes, and begin to ensure that benefits and costs of this transition are shared equitably.
Abundance is a new organisation with a long history of work on developing public-common strategies. Our team coalesced around our work on Public-Common Partnerships with Common Wealth, drawing in wider experiences and expertise from architectural practice, community organising, grassroots economics, and academic research. Between 2022-2024 we have been funded by Power to Change, supporting the development of Abundance as an organisation with a long-term commitment to promoting public-common strategies.