This short presentation was prepared by Brian Davey for a side event at the recent “Economics and the Commons” conference held in Berlin. It provides practical suggestions for the formation of a global commons partnership of participants and practitioners in existing commons, in order to help defend them and to develop new commons-based projects.

Graham Barnes attended the recent Transforming Finance event in London. Here are some of his recollections.

Small countries without significant vested interests dominating their relationship with others, such as Ireland, have a particular opportunity to contribute positively to the search for a resolution to climate change at an international/global level. In this submission, made on April 30 2013, we therefore urge the Irish government to follow up its recent UNEP study with further consideration of proposals and to explore all possibilities including those proposed in Sharing for Survival. We also urge the government to make use of scenario-based analyses when forming climate change policy.

This talk given by Brian Davey last month in Slovenia describes many of the challenges faced by small peripheral states in the current world economy and provides an overview of solutions put forward by Feasta and its partners.

Basic financial security should be a right for all members of society, yet our present social-welfare system does not adequately support this right and has many other serious flaws. Anne Ryan explains how a universal basic income would increase everybody’s capacity to cope with financial shocks and uncertainties far more effectively than the current system and how it would also improve general quality of life, while supporting many different kinds of work, with or without pay.

In this presentation given at Maynooth last week, John Jopling explains why governments cannot be expected to adequately address the climate crisis and instead proposes a commons-based approach that would involve a wide range of non-governmental organisations in a cooperative and participatory process.

In this talk given to the Cafe Economique in Nottingham on August 30 Brian Davey takes us on a lightning tour of economic thought from the ancient Greeks onwards, describing the increasingly shaky relationship between economics and moral philosophy.