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Named “New Guinea” by Yñigo Ortiz de Retez in 1545 and later administered by the Germans and Australians until it gained independence from Australia in 1975 the Independent State of Papua New Guinea is home to some of humanity’s oldest cultures.  Given its geologic history and inestimable biodiversity, outsiders have seen Papua New Guinea as “a mountain of gold floating on a sea of oil.”  German occupiers, Catholic missionaries, and Australian miners and drillers have a long history of seeing the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea as cheap labor on the best of days and a complete nuisance in their quest for resource extraction and pillage the rest of the time.

Aided by “development bank” manipulation, misinformation, and explicit inequitable business negotiations, Esso Highlands Limited, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil Corporation received the license to be the latest in a string of marauding interests in the country.  Bouyed by their November 2009 off-take agreement with Sinopec Corp with which Exxon has agreed to sell 2 million tones of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the PNG LNG Project has enriched several investors while adding to the systematic abuse of the local communities.

From “accidental deaths” including a recent fatality of a child who happened to be playing with blasting caps left unattended by contractors to forced relocation through coercion and force, thousands of Highland communities – many of whom have been living in their villages for tens of thousands of years – have become Exxon refugees.  These displaced persons have scattered across the country but many – estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000 have descended onto squatter towns around Port Moresby.  These displaced person encampments have no gardens, no potable water, no sanitation and no prospect of having these issues addressed.  All the while, Exxon trucks, pristine white Toyota trucks, Land Cruisers, and contractor vehicles race through these dusty villages as they race towards completion of an estimated $15 billion project that will be a windfall for U.S., European, Chinese, and Japanese investors.

For about six years, David Martin had been working on various community engagement projects in Papua New Guinea. Some of the work has included restructuring mining contracts, repatriating land from the Catholic Church to an East New Britain community, and expanding the global reach of the regions first organic certified spice company. Through this previous work in Papua New Guinea, we were introduced to Clement Kanau, a gentleman who sees a future for PNG that empowers the citizens in partnership with, rather than exploited by, the world.  Clement has decided to run for Parliament to build a new sense of identity for Papua New Guinea.  Rather than waiting to get into a position of power, he elected to demonstrate the type of policy he would like to see implemented by officials – policies that would address real needs of communities.  Feeling compelled to act, Clement negotiated with the landowners to use a section of government land to build a model village in which we could relocate the displaced communities.

In May of 2011, Clement Kanau met with David and asked if he would hold a meeting with representatives from the displaced communities.  David agreed and met the group on Elder’s Hill (located on the new property).  When he saw 50 people walking up the hill to meet him, they greeted each other and immediately decided to start living a new story.

Rather than repeat a systemic story of destitution, brokenness and abuse, the group decided to use this moment to give the members of the community something that had been lost.  Using M•CAM’s Integral Accounting environmental audit process, they took stock of the possibilities present in their local environment. Since the communities had been moved from their homelands rich with water supplies, they jointly decided that clean water would be the best building block to start rebuilding the communities.  

After leaving the meeting, there was a lot of work to do.  How could we, together with the elders and PNG community engage the global community to participate on this project?  On the flight out of Port Moresby, David Martin wrote a blog post and challenged the world to step up to the situation.  Two people responded.  First, David’s mom, Ruth Martin, reached out followed quickly by Bob Kendall.  Upon discussing options, Ruth and Aaron Martin decided to fund the windmill infrastructure.  The deal was structured so that windmill would be the basis for a water utility and income from the utility would be used to maintain the operation, pay workers, invest in additional technology and store wealth to replicate this operation in further deployments. Knowledge of this process, which includes a multi valued return of principal, allows the community to perpetuate and persist a cycle of communities responding to communities.  We are getting the first process started and we want to obsolete ourselves as quickly as possible!   We’d like to invite you into our world and manifest the next community and build a community of action around the principles stated above. 

The team began working on the project and partnered with the The Aermotor Co. (also known historically as The Aermotor Windmill Company).  Aermotor manufactures windmills which convert wind energy to mechanical energy and use the mechanical energy to pump water out of the ground.  Since 1888, Aermotor has continuously improved the designs of their model.  In this book, we assess windmill technology from many angles.  First we will introduce The Aermotor Co.’s historical timeline, map their innovation history and then provide a compendium of Aermotor’s actual patent documentation.  Following these sections, we expand technology options.  Other innovators throughout the years have improved components of windmills to be used in in new ways and in other applications.  We review these options to surface ideas and potential partners.  As an appendix, we included short primers and exercise relating to wind, wind power and the mechanics of the process.  We hope the book inspires innovation, repurposing and different avenues of engagement within and between communities.  

View The Global Innovation Commons Sets Around The PNG Water Project HERE

Frugal Dad is a blogger focusing on helping the average family find financial resources with a conservative (towards money, not poltiics) slant. Below is his take on patents, after listening to the episode of This American Life called "When Patents Attack". 

Source: http://frugaldad.com

The bioWAVE, a product of, is a utility-scale technology that produces power from the waves made by the ocean. By combining high conversion efficiency with the ability to avoid wave forces, the bioWAVE creates a supply of energy, which can then be converted into electricity.

Mounted of the floor of the ocean, the bioWAVE uses its “blades” to interact with the sea surface, which can be seen as potential energy, and the water’s back and forth movement, kinetic energy. The swaying motion, created by the water, the energy is contained and converted to electricity but a power conversion module. The result of using the bioWAVE is “efficient clean energy from the ocean.”

With low-cost installation, minimal environmental impact, and unique survivability, the bioWAVE has maximum efficiency to create energy in the ocean. By utilizing a resource, ocean water, which covers 71% of the Earth’s surface it is easy to see that the bioWAVE is a technology that could be used all over the world.

How could the Global Innovation Commons use technology like the bioWAVE to bring energy efficiency to places all over the world? Click and find out!

(an image of the the bioWAVE and its parts)

During your daily activities, how much do you stop and think about just how big the world truly is? Recently Kai Krause, posted work on Creative Commons as a “contribution in the fight against rampant immappancy”- Immappancy being the idea that most people normally think of certain land masses as larger than they actually are.  

By combining the area of Spain, Portugal, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, The United States, Eastern Europe, India, China, Japan and others he creates a map which shows that the area of many of the “big” countries combined still don’t equal the size of Africa! He goes on to state that “a survey with American school kids let them guess the land area of their country [and] unexpectedly the majority chose “largest in the world”.  And while critics are saying that it is difficult to compare a continent with countries and that his map used improper projections which can distort scales, it is still interesting to take a minute and just realize how big the world is and all of the amazing things humans can accomplish when they set their minds to it! 

M·CAM's partnership in Nepal has shared with us the Foundation's 2011 Progress Report. 2011 included biodynamic activities, the completion of construction on the community library, and work with the University of Virginia. You can view the report HERE