Washblog

WISER is a "collaboratively written, free content, open source networking platform" designed for the purpose of increasing the collective awareness and connectivity of environmental and social justice organizations.  It is something new in the world -- although so obviously useful that it may be surprising to some that it didn't already exist.  WiserEarth, the first utility built on the platform, will be released to the public in the spring. WiserEarth is a combination relational database and Wiki with a friendly user interface offering multiple innovative ways to mine, view, sort, add to, revise, and analyze detailed information on over 100,000 environmental and social justice organizations from 234 countries. The December, 2006 WISER Project Overview and Progress Report [3] notes that WiserEarth contains "the first detailed taxonomy of the organizations within civil society" and that it will be of use in connecting non-profits and funders.

These 100,000 organizations represent a small percentage of the approximately one million environmental and social justice organizations thought to fit within WiserEarth's scope. WiserEarth's Wiki capability, which will allow registered participants to add and revise data in any language, incorporates a self-organizing element that will make it possible for a truly comprehensive data set on these organizations to exist and be sustained.

One million organizations  -- all working for justice and sustainability.  This is the movement Hawken refers to, that he sees as society's "immune response" to the challenges we face in this era of global warming and globalization. Here is Hawken's description of this phenomenon, from his address to the Bioneers [4] in Seattle:

I have come to believe that there is another superpower here on earth, that is an unnamed movement.   It is far different and bigger and more unique than anything we have ever seen.  It flies under the radar of the media, by and large.  It is nonviolent.  It is grassroots.  It has no cluster bombs, no armies, and no helicopters.  It has no central ideology.  A male vertebrate is not in charge.  This unnamed movement is the most diverse movement the world has ever seen.  The very word, movement, I think, is too small to describe it.  No one started this world view.  No one is in charge of it.  There is no orthodoxy.   It is global, classless, unquenchable, and tireless.  The shared understanding is arising spontaneously from different economic sectors, cultures, regions and cohorts.  It is growing and spreading worldwide with no exception.  It has many roots.   But primarily the origins are indigenous culture, the environment, and social justice movements.  Those three sectors and its subsectors are entwining morphing enlarging.  This is no longer simply about resources, or injustice.  This is, fundamentally a civil rights movement, a human rights movement.  This is a democracy movement.  It is the coming world.  This movement is humanity's immune response to resist and heal political disease, economic infection, and ecological corruption caused by ideologies.

WISER is a well-capitalized endeavor -- with funding, connections, good design, and ideas that carry that feeling of the elegance of the inevitable.   It is likely to be so concretely useful to people and organizations ways that no other resources duplicate -- that it will gain the critical mass it needs to attain its underlying, movement-building goals.  The Natural Capital Institute  (NCI) and the Interra Project developed WISER and sponsored the event.  Interra, a Washington-based organization,  offers consumer payment cards similar to bank cards (and also registration of existing payment cards) that put consumer purchasing power to work for locally owned and sustainable businesses and to automate donations to nonprofits.  It was formed by a group of business and social venture visionaries, including Greg Steltenpohl, the founder of  Odwalla, Dee Hock, the founder of Visa International, and Jon Ramer, who also heads WiserCommons and who spoke at the December first event.

Interra's Jon Ramer addressing the WISER gathering, 12/1/06.  Photo from the Sustainability Commons.

The Natural Capital Institute was founded in 2002 "as an offshoot of Paul Hawken’s work and writings, in particular his books Ecology of Commerce and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. Both books take the environmental and social degradation caused by industry head on." Natural Capitalism, by Hawken and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins, first published in the late 1990s, is a groundbreaking classic with a compelling insight at its core:  The industrial revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, said Hawken and Lovins, arose in an era of abundant natural resources and scarce labor.  That equation has reversed, but business has not adjusted its practices. We operate, still, as if resources are abundant, when they are scarce.  We operate still as if labor is scarce, when it's abundant.  The consequence is immense waste and ecological and social crisis.

WISER Commons gathering at Town Hall Seattle, Dec. 1, 06.  Photo from the Sustainability Commons.

How big is this movement?
In his opening statement Paul Hawken told the story of how WISER was first conceived.  He said that after Natural Captialism was published, he began attending a wide range of events all over the world.  At these events,  people working for indigenous and social and environmental justice organizations often gave him their business cards.   He'd take the cards home and look at them.  He wasn't able to follow through on all the contacts, but he didn't want to throw the cards away.  So he put them in a drawer.  But the drawer soon filled up.

At the time, he was living on a house boat and there was little room for storage.  For lack of a better solution, he emptied the drawer out into a  shopping bag, which he put by his bathroom.  Month after month, he'd pass the shopping bag and toss in new cards, or just note their presence.  Finally, it occurred to him that he was looking at the evidence of something with a larger meaning, that needed to be considered.

Just how many of these organizations exist, he wondered?  Having grown up as a "library rat", he said, the son of a research librarian, he went to the library to find the answer.  He figured there wouuld be a list or database containing the answer.  But he found, to his surprise, that there was no such accounting.  So he began to do the research himself.

In the Bioneers address referenced below [4]  Hawken answers this question "How big?" by reporting that he'd determined that this movement comprises a minimum of 130,000 organizations -- and as many as 500,000.  He has since concluded that there are over a million.  

A movement that is so large and so widespread that it is invisible
We are inside a profound phenomenon, a huge movement.  We are part of it, Hawken said from the stage at Town Hall.  We live inside it and we create it.  So how is it that we don't see something that is so momentous and big and near?  Well, he answered, there are two reasons -- and they show why this movement has such  strength and viability.  

First, the movement is self-organizing.  It is entirely a grassroots, bottom-up phenomenon.  It cannot be controlled or coopted.  It arises in relation and in commensurate response to the challenges that provoke it.  It has no leaders.  It is the most authentic expression possible of the human need and yearning for justice and sanity.  It is precisely because it is so organic and fundamental and present in all places, from large cities to tiny villages, that we haven't seen it yet.

Second, it is a movement, says Hawken, that has ideas, but no ideology.  No factotems are dictating rigid frameworks of belief -- the beliefs arise spontaneously, and they are consistent across the world and across all the issues comprising the movement.  Here's Hawken again, from the Bioneers speech:

This is the first time on earth that a powerful, non-ideological movement has arisen.   During the span of the twentieth century big ideologies were worshipped like religion.   They dominated our beliefs.  Capitalism, socialism, communism.  In the words of Ed Hunt, ideologies stalked the earth, clad in armor.  They fought for the control of our minds and lands and it wasn't pretty.  We were told that salvation would be found in the domination of a single system.  This is where salvation will be found:  We know that as biologists, we know that as organizers, we know that as ecologists.  It is found in diversity, not in domination.

WiserEarth and WiserBusiness, a database on a similar model, will be opened for public access in the Spring.  At that time the Wiki feature can be used by the public -- by any of us --  to add new organizations and otherwise revise the data.  Stay tuned!

From the December 2006 Wiser Project Overview and Progress Report
The more than one million organizations and the one hundred million individuals who actively work towards ecological sustainability, economic justice, human rights, and political accountability work on issues that are systemically interconnected and intertwined. Their effectiveness to prevent harm and institute positive change is undermined by the lack of a collective awareness, duplicative efforts, and poor connectivity.  We are moving from a world that is shaped by privilege to a community created world. This massive change in the loci of power calls for a new system of awareness, support, communication, and collaboration. That is WISER's purpose.

NOTES

1. Fred Morris Consulting
2. This paragraph was slightly edited on 1/3/07.
3. The December 2006 Wiser Project Overview and Progress Report is available on the Sustainability Commons under the category of "Learning Resources".
4. This text is transcribed by the author from Paul Hawken's address to the Bioneers (sometime between 2003 and 2006) entitled "The Other Superpower".  It's viewable under the multimeda section of Hawken's site.)