ECOs: Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives
Now’s the time to design sustainable landscapes.
Ecoregional Cooperatives can help.
What are Ecoregional Cooperatives?
Ecoregional Cooperatives (ECOs), as envisioned, are locally-led, self-sustaining business ventures that bring together landscape stakeholders through a multistakeholder cooperative membership program to address the triple planetary crisis: pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss. They achieve landscape stakeholders’ vision for their landscape through planning, designing, and supporting sustainable conservation initiatives and sustainable development programs at the local and ecoregional levels. These programs could include initiatives such as:
Afforestation and restoration of degraded habitats;
Climate resiliency and mitigation in partnership with Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs;
Indigenous peoples’ prescribed fire, American bison, and other conservation programs;
Private landowner conservation projects;
Regenerative agriculture;
Renewable energy siting and development projects;
Tribal, Federal, and State land protection projects…and more.
The goal of ECOs is to work through inclusive (i.e., multi-jurisdictional, multi-sector) and deliberative, science-based decision-making processes to achieve the Biden Administration's America the Beautiful "30X30" challenge while developing sustainable economies at the local and ecoregional level.
What are Multi-stakeholder Cooperatives?
Cooperatives have historically attracted members from specific groups of stakeholders, such as producer cooperatives owned by producers, worker cooperatives owned by workers, and consumer cooperatives owned by consumers. Multi-stakeholder cooperatives are organizations that intentionally seek membership from different types of members, including producers, consumers, workers, and community supporters who may not have a direct role in the enterprise's daily operations.
These cooperatives represent diversity in interests while also recognizing the commonality of need or aspiration among stakeholders and the interdependence between them. In Quebec, such cooperatives are referred to as "Solidarity" cooperatives, emphasizing their organizational basis of reinforcing commonalities rather than differences. All multi-stakeholder cooperatives adopt "Solidarity as a business model" by recognizing and catering to the range of interests and impacts of different stakeholders.
“A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled enterprise.”
What is a cooperative?
A cooperative is a business enterprise that is formed by a group of people who come together to solve a common problem or achieve a shared goal. Only members of the cooperative are allowed to own equity shares. All cooperatives operate on democratic principles, with each member having one vote.
Cooperative members come from diverse backgrounds, including different age groups and income levels. People establish cooperatives to meet a wide range of needs, and they offer various products and services, such as child care, groceries, agriculture products, and financial services. There are cooperatives for every possible need, such as daycare, burial societies, and more.
Cooperatives are distinct from other business entities in three ways: membership ownership, member control, and member benefit. In a cooperative, the same group of people own, control, and benefit from the enterprise: the cooperative members.
Joint Ownership
Cooperative members are not just ordinary customers, employees, or business users but also business owners. In a business that investors own, the main priority of the owners is to earn profits. However, in a cooperative enterprise, member-owners aim not only to make money but also to ensure that the business is meeting the needs of its members. These needs may be economic, such as receiving a fair wage, or non-economic, like contributing to a healthy environment, or sometimes both.
Democratic Control
Owners of a business exercise their rights by participating in the decision-making process. In companies owned by investors, the number of votes cast is directly proportional to the number of shares held by the investor. This means that those who own more shares have more control over the decision-making process. In contrast, in cooperatives, each member has control over the decision-making process, rather than each share of stock. Hence, each member has one vote in any business decision that is put before the group, regardless of the number of shares they own. Cooperatives are operated according to the democratic principle of "one member, one vote."
Co-ops: A long-standing international movement
Cooperative businesses are not limited to any particular industry. In the United States, the largest co-ops are often found in agriculture and finance, such as credit unions. Since the earliest days of the country, farmers and ranchers have joined forces in order to pool resources and labor for the harvesting and processing of their goods. In some cases, large organizations have formed credit unions to provide financial services to their employees.
Cooperative businesses can also be found across the globe. In Quebec (Canada), Northern Italy, India, and Japan, cooperatives play a significant role in their respective national and regional economies. Among the most widely recognized worker co-ops in the world are the Mondragon cooperatives located in the Basque region of Spain. This association of over one hundred cooperative enterprises has created an entire cooperative economy in which factories, schools, retail stores, and services operate on a cooperative basis.
“Equity. Equality. Self-help. Self-responsibility. Democracy. Solidarity. These are the values on which the modern cooperative movement was founded and the basis for the organization of every cooperative enterprise in the world today.”