Community Economic Development

“We need a new economic paradigm - one that is open, holistic, and human scale,” write the artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs at www.adbusters.org. “The economy of your community is a living thing. Decisions that you and your neighbours make can either help it grow and thrive, or slowly damage it.” (Lovins, 2006, in Hallsmith et. al.)

Community Economic Development builds local economic alternatives, empowering communities while addressing individuals’ economic and social needs.

Marcia Nozick (1993) describes the pressures placed on communities by the forces of global economic development:

• declining local economies, and the draining of wealth out of our communities by large, outside-owned corporations.

• environmental degradation of crisis proportion (as a result of pollution, consumer waste and large-scale development)

• loss of citizen control

• social degradation and neglect of human needs

• erosion of local identity and cultural diversity

Community economic development is a practice that assists us in revisioning and rebuilding local communities. Nozick describes five action areas that provide a framework for this work. Community economic development assists communities in:

• gaining economic self-reliance

• becoming ecologically sustainable

• attaining control of decisions affecting them

• meeting social needs and

• building community culture.

Community Economic Development envisions a larger global system made up of multiple, small, vital local economies engaging in local production for local use. See Slow Food and Slow Islands.

Schultz (2003) speaks of “place-based economics.” She writes: “By investing in one's community, tangible results can be felt and seen because they are directly connected to where that person lives. Place-based economics also serve as a catalyst for community self-sufficiency, rather than relying on non-local employers to provide for the needs of community members. Gandhi called this philosophy swaraj: ‘a genuine attempt to regain control of the self'-- our self-respect, self-responsibility, and capacities for self-realization -- from institutions of dehumanization."

The goal of community economic development suggests a need to redefine accounting procedures and how we gauge wealth. Hallsmith et. al. (2006) write that in addition to attending to financial capital, we need also to consider social capital (as social "glue", cultural cohesion and/or appreciation of diversity), human capital (the creative capacities in each person that are devalued and ignored by global economic trends, as well as a community's capacity for care), built capital (infrastructure - roads, sewers, land use patterns, whose costs corporations will always endeavor to externalize; the historical resources of a community), technological capital (the techniques and technologies through which communities meet their needs), and natural capital (including all the services that the natural world provides). They include a graphic suggesting the relationship between these various forms of wealth:

Vandana Shiva writes: “reductionist economics … assumes only paid labor produces value. Thus man's dependence on the natural world is ignored and women's work in producing sustenance is deprecated, even as that work provides the very basis of survival and well-being. When Third World women provide their families with water, fodder, and wood from the free commons that nature provides, neither their work nor the natural product that sustains their families is assigned economic value.” http://www.pcdf.org/1993/50shiva.htm

To meet its objectives, community economic development needs to challenge conventional (aka neoclassical, or reductionist) economics. Corporations are structured to pursue the externalizing of costs and the enclosure (or “privatization”) of wealth (see Claiming the Commons. “While the environmental, social and health costs of the current economic model mount, economists carry on with business as usual. But we have the means of measuring the true price of the products we consume.” http://adbusters.org/metas/eco/truecosteconomics/true_cost.html

Economists whose work informs the practice of community economic development are introduced at http://adbusters.org/metas/eco/truecosteconomics/economists.html.

A statement of Community Economic Development Principles endorsed by over 30 groups from around BC can be read at http://www.sfu.ca/cscd/gateway/sharing/chap1bx1.htm. This site also has wonderful stories of Community Economic Development from around the province: http://www.sfu.ca/cscd/gateway/sharing/content.htm

For more on Alternative Economic Measures and Economic Rights see http://www.unpac.ca/economy/altmeasures.html

References:

Hallsmith, G., H. Lovins, M. Miller, B. Lietaer, C. Juniper and W. Fawbush. (2006, Test edition). LASER: Local Action for Sustainable Economic Renewal Guide to Community Development. Global Community Initiates, Natural Capitalism Solutions and America’s Development Foundation. Available online at http://www.global-laser.org/cgi/laser/workbook.html

Marcia Nozick. (1993) “Five principles of sustainable community development.” In E. Shragge, Ed. Community Economic Development: In Search of Empowerment. Montreal: Black Rose Books

Shultz, J. (2003) Trend Watching. GreenBiz online at http://www.greenbiz.com/news/columns_third.cfm?NewsID=25340