"Perhaps knowing one place intimately is to have a way of knowing all places."

We work on the frontline of environmental and cultural recovery, using the Isle of Wight’s UNESCO Biosphere as a living laboratory for regenerative change.

We believe in the principle of co-creation, treating people, place and nature as equal partners in the project of better world-making, a democratic social ecology.

We trust in the power of neighbourhoods, where life and work are most real.

We celebrate the global power of commonplace things, the local, the particular, the past, present and future on our doorstep, the invocations we take for granted, the magic that could slip through our fingers.

Welcome to The Common Space…

Richard Mabey 2006

Born in the Biosphere

Democracy, Ecology, and Community are the essential elements of a civilized society, combining as the shared resources that we rely upon. These concepts, governance by the people, our shared ecosystems, and social solidarity come together in the purpose and practice of all UNESCO Biospheres as defined by the United Nations:

UNESCO Biosphere Reserves are ‘learning places for sustainable development’, promoting and working towards a positive future by connecting people and nature. They are places for learning and research, testing local solutions to global challenges, and generating experience and innovation for a sustainable future.

We believe that the Isle of Wight UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve is a global commons from which we can and must construct new ways of thinking about civil, political, economic and cultural rights for a better future.

CoCreated

There is no organism without an environment, and no environment without an organism. They are not separate entities but are connected in a continual process of co-determination: organisms shape and create their environments, and environments shape and create organisms.

Societies of humans, communities of non-humans, and the geophysical spaces we share are therefore a co-created web of life.

We believe that we must respect and honour this principle.

Unlimited by Design

Our working method is all about agreement between people, place and planet, to share surplus, risk, cost and knowledge; know-how, be-how and do-how. We believe in open-source and unpaywalled productivity, bringing together users, collaborators, investors and regulators around new social and ecological purpose, sharing value equitably and protecting resources for the common good.

We must always value what is already here, local spaces of importance, indigenous knowledge, experience, and ambition. Then we can use these resources to protect the value of the past and grow new expectations for the future.

Why the Isle of Wight?

We believe that the 900 km² of Isle of Wight UNESCO Biosphere territory offers IUCN-scale ecosystem and socio-economic recovery opportunities that will attract substantial partnership and investment to the Island and to its devolved Solent region. The solutions produced here can become Biosphere-led resources for propagation anywhere in the world.

It is the ‘islandness’ factor that makes our Biosphere so valuable to others, precisely because of the concentration of environmental change effects and accelerated social, cultural, economic and ecological impacts in a contained territory.

UNESCO Biosphere Reserves are defined as ‘learning places for sustainable development’, promoting and working towards a positive future by connecting people and nature. They are places for learning and research, testing local solutions to global challenges, and generating experience and innovation for a sustainable future.
A living laboratory.

Headline Goals
By 2030

In our role as a frontier organisation, making space for new partnerships to take root, we aim to:

  • Secure £20 million in sustainability investments for the Island to fund systemic change in ecological, cultural and social infrastructure.

  • Confirm the Island’s achievement of an authentic 30x30 target, with one third of its land surface under active and restorative management for nature recovery.

  • Create a new union of the 33 Island parishes, doubling local investment in Island society and Island citizenship.

  • Establish a UNESCO-accredited Biosphere centre of excellence on the Island, including research partnerships, educational and lifelong learning outreach programmes, and new economic opportunities.

  • Build a global network of Co-Create partners connecting local design innovations propagated around the world.

The Common Space Family