Sustainable entrepreneurship and the Sustainable Development Goals: Community-led initiatives, the social solidarity economy and commons ecologies

1 INTRODUCTION

Since their ratification by the UN in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 17 in number and covering a wide range of environmental, economic and social concerns, have become the predominant global framework for addressing societal progress towards sustainable prosperity. 1 According to a recent OECD (2019) report, most countries covered are closer to achieving SDGs concerned with ecological sustainability (SDGs 6 [clean water and sanitation]; 7 [affordable and clean energy]; 11 [sustainable cities and communities]; 12 [responsible consumption and production]; 13 [climate action]; and 15 [life on land]) than those related to social justice (SDGs 1 [no poverty]; 2 [zero hunger]; 5 [gender equality]; 10 [reduced inequalities]; and 16 [peace, justice and strong institutions]). This paper examines the scope for balancing the implementation of these differently oriented SDGs through social solidarity economy (henceforth SSE)-based strategies that combine regenerative ecology with the promotion of postgrowth livelihoods based on cooperative approaches to production, commercialisation and consumption (see Ridley-Duff & Bull, 2020). The paper addresses key aspects of this Special Issue involving attention to the substantive rather than definitional qualities of sustainable or regenerative entrepreneurship (Muñoz, Janssen, Nicolopoulou, & Hockerts, 2018) (Roland & Landua, 2013). These issues extend to how to transcend the preoccupation with trade-offs between ecological, social and economic goals that has been typical of research on sustainable entrepreneurship to date (as noted by Muñoz & Cohen, 2018; cf. Schaltegger & Wagner, 2011; Shepherd & Patzelt, 2011; cf. Genus, Iskandarova, & Warburton Brown, 2020).

The empirical focus of the paper is on how particular forms of SSE arising within movements of community-led initiatives (CLIs) for sustainability and social justice facilitate the delivery of SDGs.

The analysis employs the concept of commons ecologies and examines processes of boundary commoning. Both commons ecologies and boundary commoning have received little attention within the research literature to date. The concept of commons ecologies emphasises the self-organised and highly democratic nature of CLIs and the conceptual and practical interdependency among social and ecological outcomes that characterises their work. Commons ecologies are local networks of commons, purposely interconnected so as to promote positive environmental and social outcomes (de Angelis, 2017, p. 22).

The paper employs the concept of commons ecologies to examine the practices, relationships and interactions among actors and organisations in the social and solidarity economy, as well as between them and the mainstream economy, which shape the field and its degree of autonomy in relation to capitalism, through a process defined as boundary commoning. ‘Boundary commoning’ (de Angelis, 2017) is understood as a synergistic relationship among commons-based enterprises, and between commons-based and profit-led enterprises, that maximise their autonomy in relation to capitalism's isomorphic pressures. Fundamentally, such commoning ‘opens up the boundaries [of commons systems], establishes the connections and sustains commons ecologies [and] could reshape existing institutions from the ground up’ (de Angelis, 2017, p. 24).

This paper analyses how the concept of common ecologies brings into focus distinctive features of the ways CLIs mobilise SSE as a vehicle for action both within and between commons. In doing so, the paper advances the argument that CLIs and their SSE activities are not just powerful vehicles for SDG implementation but also offer alternative framings and understandings that can enable improvements in SDG conceptualisation and implementation more widely. Consideration of CLIs and SSE activities based on an appreciation of commons ecologies and boundary commoning can enrich and extend our understanding of sustainable entrepreneurship as collective action and the relevance of local practice to global objectives and initiatives.

The institutionalisation of the SDGs has provided new possibilities for linking the aspirations and activities of CLIs with those of governments and intergovernmental bodies. Based on long-term experience of practical action towards linked environmental and social goals, in some cases over several decades, the actions and achievements of CLIs prefigure, at local and/or regional scales, wider SDG implementation (Penha-Lopes & Henfrey, 2019). Some CLIs have adopted the SDGs as an explicit framework to advance and evaluate preexisting work. However, CLIs often question key structural conditions that are taken for granted in the SDGs as currently articulated and framed. In particular, the pervasive and growing influence of postgrowth thinking (Jackson, 2017; Kallis, 2018; Raworth, 2017) leads many CLIs, and their networks, to problematise the position of economic growth, both as a goal in itself (SDG8) and as a framing condition for achieving other goals (Penha-Lopes & Henfrey, 2019). SSE thus becomes a vehicle through which CLIs seek to explore approaches framed within different social, economic and political assumptions (Asara, Profumi, & Kallis, 2013; Fullerton, 2015). CLIs bring to this great depth of hands-on practical experience developed largely outside of or in isolation from conventional institutions (Penha-Lopes & Henfrey, 2019). Accordingly, the alternative practices, relationships and interactions deployed by CLIs, through SSE, in working towards the SDGs, can be a great source of insights into the relevance of commons ecologies for wider SDG implementation.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

An underexplored aspect of the SDGs concerns the interrelationships among their social, economic and ecological dimensions and the implications for the governance of CLIs, namely, in what regards property regimes, task allocation and cross-scale exchanges between initiatives nested in different scales of the social and solidarity economy (Cox, Arnold, & Villamayor Tomás, 2010; Marshall, 2018; Ostrom, 1990; Peredo, Haugh, & McLean, 2018). The argument here is that integration of social, economic and ecological aspects can be promoted by systemic approaches based on creating synergies among different scales of CLIs.

The basic premises of this approach are twofold. First, that commons provide a necessary alternative to market-based and state-led action towards the SDGs because, by nature, they integrate environmental and social concerns (De Angelis, 2017). Second, that SSE's potential to contribute to delivery of the SDGs arises largely because SSE can help commons to exist and flourish despite the predominance, and favouring by governments, of capitalist organisations with limited potential to deliver beneficial social and environmental outcomes (Gibson-Graham, 2006, 2008; Laville, 2016; Mendell, 2009). This approach stands in contrast with much work within sustainable entrepreneurship, which concerns the problem of trade-offs that individual entrepreneurs are supposed to make among competing social, environmental and economic objectives (op. cit.). In making this argument, the paper employs commons ecologies as a holding concept that captures the essential general features of CLIs, their distinctive approaches to SSE, and the constructive critique of the SDGs these approaches enact.

Commons, a form of socio-economic organisation in which users self-organise for collective management of shared resources, take diverse forms and are an accepted alternative to market, state and their various hybrids (Ostrom, 1990, 2005). Bollier (2016) considers how the concept of the commons has evolved—and been misunderstood—over a roughly 50-year period. Beginning in 1968, with Hardin's work on the ‘tragedy of the commons’, commons has been treated as an ‘unmanaged resource’. Bollier (2016) notes that what Hardin designates as a ‘commons’—the shared pasture that farmers with free access had no incentive to control the amount of grazing done by their cattle—was not a commons at all. Rather, what Hardin was talking about was unmanaged land to which users had open and unlimited access.

Berkes, Feeny, McCay, and Acheson (1989) distinguish between open access, private, communal property and state governance types of rights regimes in which commons resources may be held. One may distinguish open access commons at the centre of Hardin's (1968) ‘tragedy’ from communal property resources, over which an identified community exercises control over who has access to the common resource and the rules governing and monitoring its use, including penalties for misuse or overuse (Berkes et al., 1989). Elinor Ostrom's (1990, 2005) work, for which she won a Nobel Prize in economics, conceived of commons as ‘social institutions’. Here, social relationships play just as important a role in economic systems as impersonal market transactions (Bollier, 2016, p. 6). Recently, there has been growing concern with commons as political engagement, emphasising the practice(s) of ‘commoning’ within living social systems inhabited by creative agents (Cox et al., 2010; Marshall, 2018; Mendell, 2009). This more political view highlights the transformation of economic systems, so that they meet social need rather than consumer demand. Bollier (2016) argues that for the commons movement to develop institutions fit for a ‘postcapitalist, postgrowth order’ requires different human capacities; innovative social forms; access to financing/credit; open knowledge and networking technology and possibly a ‘commons-friendly’ partner state (Gibson-Graham, 2006, 2008; Laville, 2016; Mendell, 2009).

Extensive empirical research has shown traditional commons, which still support the livelihoods of the majority of the world's population, to be a necessary (but not sufficient) feature of all documented cases of sustainability and resilience in social-ecological systems (Berkes, 1990; Berkes & Folke, 1998). CLIs have, through conscious imitation or convergence based on the structural limitations of both state-led and market-led approaches, widely adopted commons as a medium of organisation and action (Henfrey & Kenrick, 2017; Penha-Lopes & Henfrey, 2019). CLIs are self-organised initiatives of people working together towards some defined set of environmental and/or social goals and most identify themselves with defined localities or communities of place (Penha-Lopes & Henfrey, 2019). Many also form part of translocal movements that seek to strengthen local action via networking, collective learning, pooling and sharing resources and mutual support (Avelino, Dumitru, Cipolla, Kunze, & Wittmayer, 2019). Although ‘community’ is identified as the key locus of action, its existence may be an outcome of rather than precondition for such action, and such initiatives in any case change the nature of the communities that undertake them. CLIs arise and operate independently of government but often seek to collaborate with local government and/or seek to influence policy (Esteves, 2017; Penha-Lopes & Henfrey, 2019).

Commons ecologies demonstrate this focus on relationships in two key ways. First, they prioritise local and regional (especially bioregional) level organisation of production and consumption. Such ‘short circuit’ approaches seek to structure chains of production, supply, consumption and disposal on a human scale, maximising use of local resources (natural and human) and ensuring the impacts (positive and negative) of production and consumption are experienced by those directly involved (Douthwaite, 1996). From the point of view of specific projects and enterprises, this means the effects on SDG implementation (whether activities enhance or conflict with delivery of one or more SDGs) are visible, creating feedback loops through which enterprises can modify their activities in order better to serve the SDGs (De Angelis, 2017; Douthwaite, 1996). At the level of the regional economy, the effect is to reconfigure the societal metabolism in ways that are more amenable to SDG delivery (Cato, 2013). Second, they place greater emphasis on nonmaterial (and nonmarketised) assets and, in particular, nurture and make effective use of social, human and (renewable and/or regenerated) natural capital in order to support high quality of life on the basis of relatively low levels of material consumption (Hall, 2015). This creates many natural synergies among different SDGs, more difficult to achieve in socio-economic models that assume correlation between wellbeing and material affluence.

Commons ecologies are a necessary feature of SSE, organisations and practices of which are in isolation vulnerable to capitalism's isomorphic pressures (Estivil, 2018). In other words, market forces and regulatory pressures induce enterprises to prioritise market over social and environmental concerns (Dey, 2014; Estivil, 2018; Mason, 2012; Roy, Sato, & Calò, 2015). These pressures can be overcome through forms of ‘boundary commoning’ (de Angelis, 2017): synergistic relationships among commons-based enterprises, and between commons-based and profit-led enterprises, that maximise their autonomy in relation to capitalism's isomorphic pressures. A preponderance of such interrelationships among commons in a single locality leads to a form of social power that instead subverts and constrains traditional business models (Bauwens & Niaros, 2017). Fundamentally, such commoning ‘opens up the boundaries [of commons systems], establishes the connections and sustains commons ecologies [and] could reshape existing institutions from the ground up’ (de Angelis, 2017, p. 24). Boundary commoning contributes to the nesting of CLIs at different scales of the SSE by giving ‘shape to commons at larger scales, pervading social spaces’ (de Angelis, 2017, p. 287).

The central argument of this paper is that the formation of commons ecologies through the deliberate practices, relationships and interactions that constitute processes of boundary commoning is the central mechanism by which CLIs successfully deploy SSE as a vehicle for effective action towards the SDGs. In this way, SSE itself becomes a form of boundary commoning that expands the potential scope and extent of commons-based action of the kinds inherently compatible with the aims of the SDGs. In very simple terms, SSE mitigates the damaging effects of profit-led activity and government action by supporting commons of all kinds. SSE also thwarts the drive of mainstream politics and economics to enclose commons in market-based or otherwise formally regulated organisational forms. SSE complements this inward buffering effect with a centrifugal dynamic, pushing outwards the possible boundaries of commons-based action. The paper illustrates this in practice with reference to four different case studies from Europe, South America and Africa.

3 METHOD

Based on the above review, the paper seeks to answer three research questions, which are set out as follows:

The paper adopts a case study approach to answering the research questions posed in the previous paragraph. Four case study examples are selected for their potential to illustrate features of commons ecologies and processes of commoning and contribute to SDGs. The characteristics of commons systems are drawn from previous literature and include self-organisation; the prevalence of nested units; shared practices; shared values and emphasis on interdependent social and ecological outcomes (see Table 1 for a summary of how the case studies exemplify these characteristics). The case studies identify features of boundary commoning required to build commons ecologies (see Table 2). These features are human capacities distinct from those typifying consumer capitalism; innovative social form; access to finance and/or nonmarketised/nonmaterial assets; open knowledge systems or networking technology and collaboration with commons-friendly partners. The number of cases chosen permits identification of common features across the examples but also attention to the specificities of each case study implicated with particular sites of activity. The case study analysis of permaculture enterprise in the UK (see also Genus, Iskandarova & Warburton Brown, this volume), Tamera Ecovillage and the Esperança/Cooesperança solidarity economy markets in Brazil is based on fieldwork carried out by the authors. The case study of food security in Podor, Senegal, is informed by action research conducted by Gaia Education (GE) there.

4 CASE STUDIES

5 DISCUSSION

The case studies presented in this paper are from diverse geographical (urban and rural), social, cultural and economic settings. They nevertheless illustrate common patterns illustrating both the difficulties of reconciling SDG implementation with capitalist logics and how such difficulties can be overcome through establishment of commons ecologies appropriate to their respective contexts. In each case, pressures originating in both states and markets mitigate against socially and ecologically regenerative livelihoods, buffered by multiactor networks of relationships within commons ecologies originating through self-organised action at community scale. This suggests that commons ecologies are a transferable strategy that can inform development of systemic approaches integrating environmental and social aims, thus mobilising SSE as a means of decreasing the disparity between scales of implementation of different SDGs.

Each of the four case studies considered here demonstrates, in its own way, the distinctive features of commons ecology approaches to deploying SSE as a vehicle for SDG implementation at the scale of the local community and linking this with wider fields of activity to engage with global action. Application of permaculture to the design and operation of SSE enterprises roots these enterprises in ethical orientations and organisational strategies that integrate SDG delivery as a core feature. Permaculture enterprises generate relationships of mutual support via their participation in regional enterprise ecologies and networks of action learning and strategic collaborations at or among local, regional, national, international and global scales. At Tamera ecovillage, these principles are integrated into the daily life of the residential community and regional networks of cooperation among SSE actors within and outside the community, making SDG implementation an embedded feature of local and regional economies. The work of Esperança/Cooesperança enables self-organisation of economically marginalised actors into local and regional SSE networks reflecting autochthonous social and ecological principles that strongly align with, and enable implementation of, the SDGs. GE's work in Senegal supports local people to mobilise their own material, intellectual, social and cultural resources for economic empowerment and participation in global networks for innovative deployment of SSE as a vehicle for SDG implementation. GE understands empowerment as a social action process that promotes the participation of local people in gaining control over their lives within their community, acting with other members of the community to effect change and improve sustainability of livelihoods. In all these cases, SSE connects local self-organisation towards SDG delivery with a range of local, regional, international and global networks. In this way, diverse perspectives, ways of knowing, practices and organisational strategies originating at locally, shared through multiscale commons ecologies, become the basis of wider collective learning and collaborative action towards the SDGs, as mentioned recently in an European state of the art by ECOLISE, an European network of CLIs towards sustainability (Penha-Lopes & Henfrey, 2019).

It is interesting to reflect now on differences between the four case studies. The case studies are drawn from different geographical settings, with two cases being located in the global south (Esperança/Cooesperança and GE Podor, Senegal) and two in the global north (Tamera ecovillage and permaculture in the UK). One case study setting is predominantly urban in character—Esperança/Cooesperança—whereas UK permaculture is practised in urban and rural settings. Tamera ecovillage and GE's work in Podor are both located in rural areas. The nature of commons in each case does tend to revolve around land, space and food, but there are distinctions to be made. For example, some permaculture entrepreneurs in the UK study share property and related responsibilities with other activists. In contrast, in other cases commoners do not share dwelling space. Tamera is different again, being a deliberately established new ecovillage. There are certain institutionalised differences in the profile of commoners, with one (GE, Podor) emphasising the role of women, another (Esperança/Cooesperança) women and other marginalised groups. Tamera's commoners are its ecovillage residents, whereas the commoners in the UK permaculture case are members of the Permaculture Association engaging in, for example, local food networks. Whereas organic food and farming are core activities in all cases, one case study (Tamera) also engages in activities relating to energy and water management. The rules of inclusion/exclusion are administered by community members in the case of Tamera or project facilitators in that of GE, Podor. The other two case studies have admission governed by membership rules of a local community initiative but also by an association of which CLI participants may also be members (Permaculture Association Britain and Esperança/Cooesperança).

The case studies best fit the communal type of property rights regime (Berkes et al., 1989). What the case studies demonstrate is that CLIs can govern commons to afford socially just as well as ecologically mindful use and, they would say, regeneration of resources. They draw attention to the development of commons ecologies as living processes (Bollier, 2016), as distinct from focusing merely on the characteristics of individual CLIs as a ‘point’ activity. Thus, the cases transcend the limitations of single-scale studies or isolated examples of community initiatives (Armitage, 2008) by foregrounding relations between multiple actors operating at or with different scales and resources and capitals.

As far as issues of scaling such initiatives is concerned, the case studies illustrate how boundary commoning helps to build commons ecologies and in doing so helps to contribute to SDGs. Contrary to Bollier (2016), the CLIs in the cases do not enrol the state, and only in one is a municipality central to building a wider commons ecology. However, the case studies do emphasise the importance of network-based regimes to commons governance, and there is some evidence of engagement with wider processes such as those of the United Nations and contribution to SDGs.

It could be argued that the cases depict the build-up of networks of supportive partners to the commons systems discussed in the paper and that these are represented best as ‘flat’ interactions among partners that are enrolled in commons ecologies, rather than as hierarchical relations among actors at the ‘top’ and those nearer the ‘bottom’ level of society. Certainly, much of the debate to date regarding commons ecologies has been couched in terms of ‘multilevel’ governance. However, there is further discussion to be had regarding a picture based on the established and growth of commons ecologies as extending communities of practice or interest, incorporating a different perspective—or ontology—of the structure of such ecologies.

It has been recognised for some time now that ‘context matters’ (Armitage, 2008) and that understanding better the potential contribution of commons systems and ecologies to SDGs requires closer attention to the specificities of particular cases. The above case studies query these observations to the extent that they draw attention to how CLIs and their ‘friendly’ partners in ecologies cocreate (part of) the context over a period of time through unfolding efforts and relationship building. These findings are in accordance with emerging thinking about institutions in that they appreciate the diffusion of what have been unconventional patterned relationships, which have the potential (at least) to challenge and possibly transform business as usual and thus become a new ‘normal’. Moreover, the case studies emphasise the collaborative work that diverse actors are undertaking in establishing and maintain commons ecologies, including the combining of lay and scientific knowledge (as in the case of GE in Podor) and the pooling of knowledge (within the permaculture knowledge commons). Further, the examples presented here do not appear to be ones in which cooperation with municipal, state or industry partners has come at the cost of co-optation of CLIs or diminution or trade-off of core socio-ecological concerns. One needs to appreciate in these cases a holistic view of society-ecology-economy that is the object of the practice of CLIs at the heart of commons ecologies, not the coexisting but distinct logics identified in previous work (De Clercq & Voronov, 2011; Muñoz & Dimov, 2015). The institutional work being undertaken by the actors in each case variously builds human, social, intellectual and economic capital required to nurture the commons system and ecology in question as commons address the complex of societal, environmental and economic challenges they face.

The cases show that diverse forms of organisation may be identified with SSE, including intentionally established eco-communities, socio-ecological movements such as permaculture, urban food networks and community development programmes. Self-organisation is a common characteristic of the initiatives presented in the paper, though one should note the prevalence of capacity development led by an external agency in the case of GE's work in Podor, Senegal, that enables participants to then undertake the actions discussed above. In all cases, the core assumptions challenge business as usual, being concerned to implement local, collective and practical actions to address integrated socio and ecological objectives. The rules of access vary for each commons system. In some, it is clear that an inclusivity/exclusivity rule is applied, such as that emphasising the participation of women or other marginalised actor or approach. In others, such rules of admission are unclear or may be absent. There is insufficient evidence regarding sanctions or penalties to be applied to rule breaking.

Across the cases, there is evidence of the importance of embedded relationships to commons ecologies and collective entrepreneurial action (cf. Muñoz & Cohen, 2018). This is shown in the alternative production/consumption chains that have been developed, for example, in connection with organic food provisioning. Relationships facilitate boundary commoning practices through which regional, national and international knowledge- and practice-sharing networks are built.

The analysis challenges policy-makers and practitioners to develop strategies for SDG implementation based on promoting local-regional clusters of community initiatives/SSE enterprises and other agencies as commons ecologies in the following ways:

6 CONCLUSIONS

The paper addresses core concerns of this special issue of Business Strategy and the Environment pertaining to sustainable entrepreneurship and relationships among social movements, business development and SSE. The policy context of the paper refers to the attainment of, or even going beyond, the UN SDGs. In connection with developing research agenda, the paper is motivated to interrogate sustainable entrepreneurship from a perspective that embraces collective action of marginalised actors who challenge institutionalised practices and forms of social and economic organisation. Thus, the paper helps to move the topic on from definitional exercises (Muñoz et al., 2018) to address substantive issues concerning the practice of sustainable entrepreneurship and how this may be understood better.

Empirically, the paper presented four case studies with which to explore developments in SSE that have the potential to illuminate the transformational potential and possible achievement of SDGs and provide fresh thinking about the nature and practice of sustainable entrepreneurship. The case studies were of CLIs, examples of communal governance analysed using the concept of commons ecologies. The concept of commons ecologies reveals the shared features that allow diverse forms of local SSE organisation to incorporate SDG delivery as an in-built feature. Such commons ecologies address economic, social and ecological factors in inherently synergistic fashion, in which they are mutually enabling, avoiding the tensions and trade-offs that inevitably arise under conventional market logic and approaches to sustainable entrepreneurship to be found in the extant research. Their involvement in global networks provides a ready-made basis for their deeper and fuller engagement with mainstream processes within the UN and elsewhere, which can benefit greatly from the novel solutions, insights and perspectives they provide. Fundamentally, the paper illustrates that commons resources need not be subject to overexploitation (cf. Hardin, 1968, on the tragedy of the commons; Berkes et al., 1989). The case studies illustrate how cooperative approaches embracing local communities and commons-friendly partners can address socio-ecological and SDG goals within particular commons systems and wider commons ecologies.

There are several limitations to the work reported in the paper. For instance, the comparative case study method applied was designed to explore and to illustrate the phenomenon of social and solidarity economy, primarily based on examples of CLIs. Thus, the selection of cases was nonrandom, being biased towards potentially insightful candidate cases. Moreover, the case studies were not all informed by a common approach to data collection. In addition, although the cases were drawn from different parts of the world and subject to varying local and national contextual conditions, the study was limited primarily to data that were available in English. Arguably, this limitation imparted a bias which affected the depiction and accuracy of the case studies as commons ecologies and their relevance to SDGs.

Future research could develop the exploratory work reported here. Three strands of inquiry are suggested. One strand is to conduct a more systematic, forensic analysis of community-led commons systems, to enrich understanding of different types of communal governance regimes. Relatedly, such a study could also probe more fully the boundary commoning processes which might stimulate and nurture commons ecologies, including analysis of the factors that enhance the development of capitals and anticapitalist (or possibly ‘postcapitalist’; see Gibson-Graham, Cameron, & Healy, 2016), value systems and their relation to global ends such as the SDGs. ‘Capitals’ here emphasises knowledge, experience and cultural human capacities as well as natural phenomena which can benefit and be regenerated in commons ecologies. This is to be distinguished from conventional references to (especially financial) capitals as sources of privatised benefits. Clearly, from the standpoint of sustainable entrepreneurship, research should seek to add to those contributions that transcend methodological individualism and instead seek to build insights into collective action in commons ecologies not reliant on the single heroic entrepreneur. As the paper has shown, such studies may be less concerned with trade-offs between sustainability goals and take greater interest in alternative, integrated paradigms, which prize the holistic and simultaneous pursuit and the regeneration of multiple social, political, economic and ecological objectives.