International Transform Conference in Copenhagen, Saturday, 18 March 2017
Building Red-Green Alternatives:
Can Commons challenge Neo-liberalism from below?
Venue: HK København, Svend Aukens Plads 11, 2300 Copenhagen S
Price: 100 DKK, to be paid at the entrance.
Registration: send email to kontakt@transformdanmark.dk
9:30 Registration and coffee/tea croissants
10:00 Welcome
10:15-11:00 Tom Kucharz, Spain, Ecologistas en Acción
How to use “Commons” in defending public goods and transforming society
The threat of privatisation of public goods and services in Europe and globally. Experiences from concrete struggles against TTIP, CETA, etc. and other so-called “free trade” agreements in Europe and elsewhere.
11:00-11:45 Satoko Kishimoto, Japan, Transnational Institute (TNI), Amsterdam.
A Coordinator of the Public Alternative project in TNI and Reclaiming Public Water Network since 2005. Her latest edited book is Our Public Water Future: The global experience with remunicipalisation (2015).
Presentation overheads: Reclaiming public service as commons
Reclaiming public services as Commons: strategies for Remunicipalisation and Democratisation
In the past 15 years, there have been at least 235 cases of water remunicipalisation in 37 countries, affecting more than 100 million people. Despite growing evidence failure, promotion of privatisation and PPPs has remained strong as a solution for financing public services and infrastructure. Local authorities are facing a major challenge in how to finance public services and infrastructure without entering into PPPs and other neoliberal options.
11:45-12:00 Break
12:00-13:00 Questions and debate
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-16:30 Parallel seminars on 1) The dangers of extraction – keeping raw materials in the ground; 2) Commons and Cooperatives – and the struggle against privatisation.
Seminar 1: The dangers of extraction – keeping raw materials in the ground
Extraction in Mongolia, Sukhgerel Dugersuren, Mongolia
Executive Director of Oyu Tolgoi Watch, human rights and environmental defender
Presentation overheads: DANGERS-OF-EXTRACTIVISM
Since early 2000s there have been heavy extraction in South Gobi Desert to the detriment of environment, human communities and animals in this ecologically sensitive region. Traditionally local communities are nomadic herders roaming with their animals through thin pastures of the Gobi. Large mining corporations have taken away not only pastures but most importantly the life sustaining water resources in this desert environment. The corporation do not recognize traditional rights of indigenous population extracting underground water at 870 m₃ per second rate for their mega mines.
Global Warming and Extraction in Greenland Jens Heinrich of Inuit Ataqatigiit, Greenland
responsible for Nordic cooperation, Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
Presentation paper: Exploitation-of-mineral-resources-in-Greenland
Presentation overheads: Mineral Resources
Greenland is rich in raw materials and some Greenland politicians wish to make the most of this to the benefit of the economy. Plans for extraction include extraction of uranium and fossil oil. What are the consequences of this for the environment, for the climate and for the population?
Seminar 2: Commons and Cooperatives – and the struggle against privatisation?
What can bring the concept of Commons into the Labour Movement? Chantal Delmas, France, co-coordinator of the project of “Commons” in Transform!Europe network, and on social re-appropriation in Espaces Marx (France)
Presentation paper: chantal-intervention-english-copenhague
How can the labour movement fight against “There Is No Alternative”? The question of ownership in the private and public sector. May we rethink institutions and the question of state through the concept of Commons?
Women creating Community Julieta Paredes, Bolivia, poet and author, part of Women Creating Community, co-founder of Mujeres Creando, a Bolivian anarcha-feminist collective.
How to create Community from the perspective of indigenous women. How does the Community relate to society as a whole? How can communities improve the role of indigenous women?
The Commons in the Core Economy? Potential Clues from the Mondragon Cooperative Experience, Fred Freundlich, Basque Country, USA and Spain, a professor of cooperative enterprise and cofounder of a masters’ program on the social economy at the Faculty of Business, Mondragon University in the Basque Country of Spain.
Presentation overheads: FreundlichMondragonCommonsDnmrk
Mondragon is a large, integrated network of over 100 worker cooperatives in many sectors. Over 50 years of experience, Mondragon has developed a perspective on the Commons and the enterprise that many people think is important to social change movements. This perspective is based on broad worker ownership in the core economy within a framework of solidarity and intercooperation among enterprises.
16:30-16:45 Coffee break
16:45-17:30 Panel conclusion and short round-up
Organisers: Transform!Danmark in cooperation with transform!europe, Enhedslisten/the Red-Green Alliance, Afrika Kontakt, Solidaritet, Det Ny Clarté, Grobund, and others.