Earth for All — Rethinking prosperity as a shared good
Earth for All asks how we can build societies that enable human wellbeing while respecting the physical limits of our planet — and what this means for the way we measure prosperity, organise economies and share common resources. One inspiring idea is the Citizen Fund and Universal Basic Dividend.
Instead of treating resources such as the atmosphere, oceans or other natural commons as free inputs for private profit, those who use or exploit them would contribute to a common fund. The revenues could then be returned equally to citizens as a dividend. The idea is not simply to redistribute income, but to recognise citizens as co-owners of the commons and to ensure that the value generated from shared resources contributes to the common good. The ocean offers a powerful way to think about this.
What if those who profit from using the ocean — or from its capacity to absorb the consequences of our activities — contributed to a common fund whose benefits were shared among citizens? Within the economic and political systems we live in, a tangible sense of ownership may help people feel that they have a stake in what happens to shared resources — and therefore a reason and a right to participate in decisions about them. The hope is that this common stake would translate not only into economic security, but into greater political agency: more people feeling empowered to have a say, engage in civil society and participate in shaping the future of the commons.
But this idea also has a fundamental limit. Putting a price on the use of a common resource must not become a way of legitimising uses that should not take place in the first place. A payment for exploiting a resource cannot turn ecological destruction into an acceptable transaction. Take deep-sea mining: the fact that companies could pay into a common fund — and that the revenues could be shared among citizens — would not make the destruction of deep-sea ecosystems acceptable. Some activities may need to remain off limits, regardless of how much revenue they could generate. Ecological boundaries therefore have to come before the question of how the resulting value is distributed.
As Blue Citizens, we see the Citizen Fund as one possible way of challenging how our current system distributes the value of the commons — but not as a reason to accept its underlying assumption that nature exists primarily as a resource to be used. We do not understand the ocean as something humans can own, even collectively. We are part of the ocean and of the wider living system that sustains us. The language of co-ownership can nevertheless offer a powerful entry point within our current economic and political reality: if people experience themselves as having a stake in a common resource, this may help foster a stronger sense of responsibility for it and, importantly, a stronger desire and ability to participate in decisions about its future. For us, this ultimately leads to a deeper question: not only who benefits from the ocean, who governs it and who gets to participate? but also what uses of the ocean should be possible at all — and how do we understand our place within the commons? This is where Knowledge, Culture and Governance come together — and where becoming a Blue Citizen means recognising that we are not outside the ocean, but part of it.
For collaborations and inquiries: youthcouncil@beabluecitizen.eu