Transforming Local Economies in Aotearoa: The Practical Promise of Community Wealth Building
Kinga Szalaba
Imagine a community where economic prosperity is not just a distant dream for a fortunate few but a tangible reality for all residents. Even more, where everyone has access to fair employment opportunities, education and inclusive decision-making processes. The good news is, this is not a faraway utopia. In fact, the pathway to such communities lies at arm´s length.
The above mentioned principles lie at the heart of Community Wealth Building (CWB), a collaborative and practical approach to economic development that prioritizes equity, sustainability and local empowerment. CWB goes beyond traditional models of economic development that focus on attracting external investment or promoting large-scale businesses. Instead, it emphasizes the importance of nurturing local assets and empowering residents to actively participate in shaping their economies and communities. Community Wealth Building is based on five pillars that enable citizens to build community wealth:
● Investing Locally
● Prioritising Fair Employment
● Diversifying Ownership Models
● Harnessing Spending and Local Supply Chains
● Making Land + Assets Work for Locals and the Environment
Anyone can contribute to these pillars in a variety of ways, depending on their resources and role within the community. Individuals can stimulate local spending and become involved in common ownership projects, companies can implement a living wage and fair working conditions, and local governments can put into place policies to protect the environment and support local businesses, just to name a few examples. This is what makes CWB highly pragmatic: it is a flexible and powerful place-based approach that can be adapted to different place contexts and tailored to communities` needs.
Fundamentally, CWB is centred around investing in partnerships and collaboration, facilitating local ownership, and establishing Anchor Institutions, such as councils, hospitals or educational institutions, that support equitable economic development. Inclusion and democracy being key values, CWB addresses issues such as income inequality, lack of access to resources, and economic disparities within communities by not only actively including citizens, but placing their voices and needs at the very centre of decision-making processes.
In an era marked by systemic economic challenges, the shortcomings of capitalism are becoming increasingly undeniable. Yet, finding feasible alternatives, attractive to both civil society as well as governments is challenging. Movements such as Doughnut Economics, degrowth or post-growth, for example, add innovative and valuable perspectives to the discourse on economic and societal transformation and could possibly contribute to exemplary human and planetary wellbeing. However, due to a lack of feasible strategies for implementation and their location outside the familiar capitalist framework, these concepts are commonly rejected as unrealistic and too radical in public discourse. Community Wealth Building, on the other hand, constitutes an equally attractive and pragmatic approach: under the clear and individually adaptable framework of the five pillars, it facilitates wellbeing and wealth by following common sense and implementing practical and meaningful change within communities and their economies.
Naturally, CWB is an approach under construction and can face challenges such as institutional barriers and policies, lack of will-power and commitment among decision-makers and citizens, or complex market forces such as globalization. At the same time, such challenges can help identify where meaningful change is most critical. There are a great number of examples, both internationally (see the Preston and Cleveland model) as well as in Aotearoa New Zealand, that illustrate successful implementation of CWB strategies and their far reaching positive impact on local communities.
If you keep your eyes open, you´ll see that Community Wealth Building is already all around us. Just recently, while walking down the main street in Paihia, I stumbled across a nicely decorated wooden shed, a community bookshop. Residents donate books to the shop, where they are sold at customer friendly prices and revenues circle right back to the community. This example illustrates how intuitive and easy CWB is: the bookshop is welcomed by residents and tourists alike, managed by the community and creates financial, cultural, educational and social wealth all at once.
A white paper on Community Wealth Building in Aotearoa New Zealand, recently published by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Aotearoa and The Urban Advisory, aims to raise awareness for the approach, identifies opportunities and provides a set of easy to follow steps on how community wealth can be built in Aotearoa. Community Wealth Building as a transformative approach to economic development can be implemented in a variety of ways, in any community, at any time. For example right now.
Kinga Szalaba is an active supporter of WEAll Aotearoa and helped the development of the CWB white paper.
