An Emergent Open Network and Global Fund For Community-Driven Sustainable Development

The New Earth Fund is a global source of seed funding, information exchange and peer review for community-driven development and continuous environmental and social improvement at companies. The Fund is built by voluntary contributions from businesses and individuals worldwide. New Earth provides an international support network among participating communities and businesses. Any company can make the commitments and become a member, making its support for people and planet globally visible and locally relevant. And any voluntary group of friends and neighbors can join, too, by simply forming a group, or by bringing an existing one into the New Earth network at www.newearth.info. The means for achieving its objectives are nearly un-specified by New Earth. Instead, New Earth enables participants to create a natural selection environment in which these means will continually be innovated by people in communities and companies, and in which the most successful approaches will spread and recombine. The “natural selection” takes place among ideas and approaches, not among people or communities or NGOs. New Earth will enable all of us to cooperatively generate what economists call “positive externalities” and “public goods,” meaning widespread benefits that cannot be captured in private financial/property terms by those who create them. The system includes feedback loops to allow New Earth itself to evolve in scope and effectiveness, as a gift to future generations. There is no small central group of people “in charge” of New Earth, no concentration of power, no bureaucracy, and no involuntary loss of current sovereignties for any individual, organization, community or nation. Rather, New Earth is governed from within, by interlocking systems of open reporting and peer review.