Commonwealth
A Commonwealth is a local and regional asset base that can be enhanced, preserved, and invested in to create new resources over a long-term horizon.
What is Commonwealth? The local and regional resource base (more basic
than private property or business development) composed of ecological, economic, and social assets that can be tapped to create wealth, either in ways that tend toward vitality and sustainability, or in ways that tend toward depletion and destruction. For more information see the Commonwealth Power Point Presentation
Commonwealth Examples Gifts of the natural world and human society that have monetary and non-monetary value in supporting life and well-being for both human and natural communities. Wealth we inherit or create together…which we desire to pass on, undiminished or regenerative, to our children A sector of the economy that complements the corporate and government sectors Communal assets that increase or decrease depending on management Commonwealth, on its most basic level, belongs to everyone…though we utilize it as private property, corporate property, or as state and federal-managed assets. “Assets are what we want to keep, build upon, and sustain for future generations.” Canadian Rural Partnership
Definitions of 12 Key Assets that form the commonwealth of Ogallala Commons (Present in any community in the Great Plains)
Education: the local resources for learning
Health: the resources for physical, mental, and spiritual wellness and well-being that exist in the community or region
Leisure & Recreation: the social opportunities, abilities, and infrastructure for resting, retreating, re-creating, and savoring life in the community or region
Spirituality: the web of relationships, connections and practices that knit together persons, community, the environment, and the cosmos
History: “It is stories — narratives formal or informal, elaborate and detailed or offhand and telegraphic — of what happened to people in a place, of what they have done with the things that they found there…”
Ryden, Kent C.
Mapping the Invisible Landscape: Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993), p. 46.
a local and regional knowledge of particular experiences lived over generations, as well as a capacity to transfer and preserve these experiences through stories and memories
Sense of Place: “...that complex of meaning that gives a landscape significance in the eyes of the people who inhabit it, marking it off from the surrounding terra incognita...”
Ryden, Kent C.
Arts & Culture: the shapes, colors, and contours of our locality and region, as well as our way of viewing the place, plus our habits, our attitudes, our celebrations, our songs, and our dances
Water Cycle: the combined healthy functioning of water to in all its hydrologic stages…especially the capacity to continually regenerate an abundant community of life in the locality and region
Wildlife & the Natural World: the diversity of flora, fauna, geology, and physical geography that constitute the ecological web of a locality and region
Soil & Mineral Cycle: the healthy functioning of processes: birth, death, and decay, that build local soils, and allow for continual renewal of the life in the region
Foodshed: the ecology and cultures that grow, process, market, and distribute food and food products from the local community and region
Renewable
Energy: the regional availability as well as local harnessing of energy infinitely sourced from sunlight and the solar cycle, instead of finite fossil fuels