An Invitation for You
Before we begin, a request:
Set aside, for a moment, what you know of the world as it is. Set aside the assumptions about how societies must be organized, how economies must function, how power must flow. Set aside the rigid box of “realistic” and “pragmatic” that confines imagination to incremental adjustment of existing forms.
What you are about to read does not ask you to reform what exists. It asks you to imagine what could be.
Not as fantasy. Not as utopian dreaming disconnected from material reality. But as constitutional possibility—law for organizing human life that does not begin with nation-states and corporations and work forward, but begins with first principles and builds anew.
You have been trained to think within boundaries: “This is how government works.” “This is how economics functions.” “This is how power operates.” These boundaries feel natural because they are familiar. But they are not inevitable. They are choices previous generations made, and choices can be unmade.
What if we started over?
Not by destroying what exists in revolutionary violence, but by building an alternative so compelling, so coherent, so fundamentally aligned with human dignity and planetary health that communities voluntarily choose to adopt it?
What if the question is not “How do we fix the current system?” but “What would we build if we could start from first principles?”
The Covenant for the Commons of Earth is an answer to that question. Not the only possible answer, but a serious one. Constitutional, structured, detailed. Ready to be examined, critiqued, adopted, forked, and implemented.
This paper asks you to encounter it not as a reform proposal within existing legal systems, but as an invitation to imagine genuinely different foundations.
Set aside what you know.
Imagine what could be.
And then decide whether it is worth building.
The Text We Begin With
We, the People of Earth, in sovereign assembly and with full awareness of our duty to life, to liberty, and to the Earth itself — in order to secure the dignity of all persons, to protect the Commons as the domain of life, to uphold justice and repair harm, to ensure continuity across generations, and to govern in peace, consent, and shared stewardship — do ordain and establish this Covenant for the Commons of Earth.
These words do not request. They declare.
They do not petition existing powers for recognition. They claim authority from principles older and more fundamental than any nation-state, any corporation, any institution of the current order.
They speak not to citizens of countries, but to People of Earth. Not subjects awaiting permission, but sovereign beings exercising their inherent right to determine the terms of their own relation to each other and to the living world.
This is the Preamble to the Covenant for the Commons of Earth. And it represents something more than reform, more than revision, more than incremental change to existing systems.
It represents a return to first principles. A reimagining of law itself.
I. The Exhaustion of the Old Order
We live in a moment of cascading systems failure. The structures that have organized human life for the past two centuries—nation-states and corporate capitalism—are encountering limits they were never designed to transcend.
The Nation-State System Hits Its Boundaries
Nation-states emerged from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and were refined through 18th and 19th century revolutions. They were brilliant innovations for their time: territorial sovereignty, democratic representation, rule of law, protection of rights.
But they were designed to solve 17th-century problems: religious warfare, monarchical absolutism, feudal fragmentation.
They were not designed for:
Climate change that recognizes no borders
Pandemic disease that travels faster than policy
Economic interdependence that makes national sovereignty increasingly fictional
Mass migration driven by ecological collapse
Planetary-scale coordination required for species survival
The nation-state form is structurally nationalist. It distinguishes “us” from “them.” It concentrates loyalty within territorial boundaries. It treats cooperation as transaction between separate entities, not recognition of fundamental interdependence.
And so we have a United Nations that cannot act without the consent of the most powerful states. We have climate agreements that nations violate without consequence. We have humanitarian crises that nation-states watch from behind their borders.
The nation-state cannot become the vehicle for planetary coordination because it was designed to prevent it.
Corporate Capitalism Encounters Planetary Limits
The corporate form—limited liability, shareholder primacy, fiduciary duty to maximize profit—was another brilliant innovation. It enabled the pooling of capital, the coordination of complex economic activity, the acceleration of technological development.
But it contains a structural imperative toward endless growth. A corporation that stops growing is a corporation that dies. Shareholders demand increasing returns. Competitors demand market dominance. The logic is inexorable: extract, produce, sell, expand, repeat.
This logic has produced extraordinary material abundance. It has also produced:
Ecological devastation on a scale that threatens habitability
Wealth concentration that corrupts democracy
Labor exploitation that treats people as disposable inputs
Endless consumption of finite resources
Commodification of everything that can be privatized and sold
We have reached the point where corporate capitalism’s requirement for endless growth meets the Earth’s finite capacity for regeneration. Something must give. And it will not be planetary boundaries.
The corporate form cannot become regenerative because extraction is its operating system.
The Liberal-Conservative Binary Offers No Exit
Within nation-states, we are told we have choice. Liberal or conservative. Left or right. Progress or tradition.
But this is a false binary within a shared tapestry of law. Both sides accept:
The nation-state as the fundamental unit of organization
Representative democracy as the primary mode of governance
Corporate capitalism as the economic foundation
Gradual reform as the mechanism of change
Private property and market allocation as organizing principles
They differ on the rate of change, the distribution of resources, the degree of regulation. But they share the same basic assumptions about what kind of system we’re operating within.
Neither offers a path beyond the nation-state system. Neither questions the corporate form itself. Neither imagines horizontal coordination replacing vertical hierarchy. Neither centers the Commons or recognizes Earth’s legal standing.
The liberal-conservative debate is an argument about how to manage a system, not whether the system itself must be transformed.
We Stand at a Civilizational Threshold
This is not pessimism. This is pattern recognition.
We are watching:
Climate systems destabilize faster than models predicted
Democratic institutions weaken under the pressure of inequality
Pandemic response fail due to lack of coordination
Mass migration increase as regions become uninhabitable
Authoritarian movements grow as people lose faith in failing systems
Corporate power concentrate beyond any democratic accountability
The old order is not collapsing suddenly. It is eroding steadily, revealing its inability to address planetary-scale challenges requiring coordination beyond competition, care beyond extraction, and continuity beyond quarterly earnings.
We need something else. Not reform. Transformation.
II. The Preamble as Declaration of First Principles
Let us return to those opening words and understand what they actually declare.
“We, the People of Earth”
Not citizens. Not subjects. Not consumers or workers or demographics.
People.
This is a claim to universal standing. It does not distinguish between those born in wealthy nations and those born in exploitation zones. It does not separate by citizenship status, by documentation, by where accidents of birth occurred.
It recognizes that every human being possesses inherent dignity and sovereignty by virtue of being alive, conscious, and sharing a planet.
And it says: We, the People of Earth. Not “We, the Americans” or “We, the Europeans” or “We, the nations assembled.” The People. Of Earth. All of us. Together.
This is not imperialism pretending to be universality. This is recognition of interdependence. You cannot have human rights only within borders. You cannot have climate stability only for some nations. You cannot protect the Commons only for those with the right passport.
Either we are all People of Earth with equal standing, or none of us are.
“In sovereign assembly”
Sovereignty is not requested. It is claimed.
The Preamble does not say: “We petition the existing powers to recognize our rights.” It says: “We assemble in sovereignty.”
This follows the logic of every successful constitutional moment. The American revolutionaries did not ask King George’s permission to declare independence. The French people did not request the monarchy’s consent to proclaim the Republic. Constitutional power is never granted by those it replaces.
Sovereignty belongs to the People. Always has. Always will. The only question is whether we claim it.
“With full awareness of our duty to life, to liberty, and to the Earth itself”
Here the Preamble makes explicit something implicit in older constitutions: We have duties, not just rights.
Duty to life—not just human life, but the living world. Duty to liberty—not just our own, but the freedom of future generations. Duty to Earth itself—recognized as more than property, more than resource, as the Commons that enables all existence.
This is a rejection of the extractive mindset that treats the world as raw material for human use. It is a return to older wisdom, present in Indigenous traditions worldwide: We are not separate from the Earth. We are Earth become conscious of itself.
“In order to secure the dignity of all persons”
Dignity comes first. Not property. Not profit. Not power.
Dignity.
This means: No person shall be treated as disposable. No human being exists as a means to another’s ends. No one’s basic needs are negotiable based on their economic utility.
This is the foundation from which everything else follows. If dignity is non-negotiable, then systems that violate dignity are unlawful—no matter how legal they may be under current codes.
“To protect the Commons as the domain of life”
The Commons are not a resource pool to be managed. They are the domain of life itself.
Water, air, land, knowledge, culture, care—these are not commodities. They are the conditions of existence. To enclose them, to privatize them, to treat them as property rather than shared inheritance, is to commit theft against all life.
The Preamble declares: The Commons shall be protected. Not as charity. As law.
“To uphold justice and repair harm”
Justice is not punishment. Justice is restoration of right relation.
And where harm has occurred—and it has, extensively, for centuries—harm must be repaired. Not ignored. Not forgotten. Not declared “in the past.”
Repaired.
This is a commitment to reparative and restorative justice. It acknowledges that the current distribution of wealth, power, and ecological degradation is not natural or inevitable—it is the result of specific historical actions that created winners and losers, extractors and extracted.
The Covenant stands for repair.
“To ensure continuity across generations”
We do not govern only for ourselves. We hold the world in trust for those not yet born.
This is a rejection of short-term thinking, of quarterly capitalism, of political cycles that extend no further than the next election. It is a recognition that our decisions today shape the world for centuries.
Future generations have standing. They have rights. Even though they cannot yet speak, we must speak for them.
“And to govern in peace, consent, and shared stewardship”
Peace—not the peace of domination, but the peace of right relation.
Consent—not the fiction of voting every few years, but genuine ongoing participation in the decisions that affect our lives.
Shared stewardship—not ownership, not control, but collective care for what we hold in common.
This is the basis of legitimate governance. Not force. Not tradition. Not divine right or democratic majority. But peace, consent, and stewardship.
“Do ordain and establish this Covenant for the Commons of Earth”
Ordain. Establish.
This is constitutional language. The language of founding. The language that says: This is law because we declare it law. Its authority flows from the principles it embodies and the people who adopt it.
Like the US Constitution that declared “We, the People... do ordain and establish,” the Covenant claims authority not from pre-existing powers, but from the act of declaration itself.
It takes effect because it is just. And justice requires no permission to exist.
III. Why This Form / Why Now
Some will ask: Why write this now? Why not wait until more people are ready? Why not focus on reforming what we’ve got?
The answer is both strategic and necessary.
Prefigurative Politics: Build the Alternative Before Crisis Demands It
There is a principle in transformative movements called prefigurative politics: Build the world you want to see before the old world collapses. Create working alternatives before people are desperate enough to try anything.
History teaches us that societies in crisis reach for whatever constitutional order is available. If the only available order is authoritarianism promising security, people will choose authoritarianism. If the only alternative is chaos, people will accept domination to escape it.
But if there exists a fully-formed alternative—tested, documented, ready to implement—then crisis becomes opportunity for transformation rather than descent.
The Covenant is being built now so it exists when people need it:
When the 2026 midterms fail to address systemic problems
When the next climate disaster reveals the inadequacy of nation-state response
When the next recession shows the extractive economy cannot sustain itself
When the next authoritarian movement reveals democratic vulnerability
We are not waiting for readiness. We are creating readiness.
You Cannot Reform Structures Designed for Domination
Many people believe the nation-state can be reformed into a vehicle for planetary cooperation. Many believe corporations can be regulated into regenerative entities. Many believe existing systems just need better leaders, better rules, better intentions.
This misunderstands the nature of structural power.
Nation-states are structurally nationalist. They distinguish between citizens and non-citizens, between inside and outside, between “us” and “them.” No amount of internationalism can overcome this foundational division. The UN is coordination between nation-states, not governance beyond them.
Corporations are structurally extractive. They exist to maximize shareholder value. They must grow or die. They treat labor, resources, and communities as inputs to be optimized for profit. Regulation can constrain their worst excesses, but it cannot change their essential nature. A corporation that prioritizes regeneration over growth ceases to be competitive and is eliminated by the market.
Representative democracy at nation-state scale creates distance between people and power. We vote every few years for people who then make decisions in complex systems influenced by corporate lobbying, bureaucratic inertia, and party loyalty. Participation is reduced to periodic consent to be governed.
You cannot create horizontal coordination through vertical institutions. You cannot protect the Commons through private property law. You cannot achieve dignity through systems designed for domination.
You need a different structure. From the foundation up.
The Covenant as Shared Protocol
Think of the Covenant not as a government, but as a protocol—like the internet protocols that enable diverse systems to communicate and coordinate.
The Core and the Commons are like the protocol specification. They define the foundational principles that all communities in Covenant must honor:
Dignity is non-negotiable
Consent is required
The Commons are protected
Justice is restorative
Governance is participatory
But implementation is local. How communities organize themselves, what economic systems they use, what cultural practices they maintain—all of that is adaptive, contextual, diverse.
A worker cooperative in Barcelona, a consensus commune in Oregon, a federated council in Kenya—they can all be “in Covenant” if they honor the same foundational principles. They’re running the same moral operating system, but with different applications.
This is unity through shared foundation, not uniformity through imposed structure.
It’s how you achieve coordination without domination. It’s how you honor diversity while maintaining coherence. It’s how you enable local autonomy while creating planetary solidarity.
IV. From Nation-States to Bioregional Federation
The transformation the Covenant enables is not from one form of government to another, but from vertical hierarchy to horizontal coordination.
The Current Structure: Vertical
Nation-states are vertical
Government over people
Central authority over local communities
National law over regional autonomy
Political borders over ecological boundaries
Corporations are vertical
Shareholders over workers
Executives over employees
Profit over people and planet
Private ownership over collective stewardship
The UN is vertical
Nation-states over peoples
Security Council over General Assembly
Powerful nations over vulnerable ones
Decisions made at distance from those affected
This vertical structure creates single points of failure and capture. Get control of the central government, and you control policy. Capture the regulatory agencies, and you control enforcement. Lobby the legislators, and you write the laws.
Corporate power has learned to exploit this brilliantly. It’s much more efficient to capture a centralized government than to convince millions of people. It’s easier to lobby regulators than to earn community consent.
Centralized power is inherently vulnerable to corruption because there’s a single prize worth capturing.
The Covenant Structure: Horizontal
The Covenant creates fundamentally different architecture:
Power flows upward from communities through mandated delegates
Communities are the foundation
Delegates carry specific mandates from their communities
Delegates are immediately recallable
Delegates rotate regularly
Higher coordinating bodies exist to serve coordination, not to rule
Governance follows the subsidiarity principle
Decisions made at the most local level capable of addressing them
Bioregional coordination for watershed/ecosystem issues
Continental coordination only for truly continental matters
Planetary coordination only for genuinely global concerns
Economic power is distributed
All enterprise must be democratically owned by workers
No private ownership of Commons
Surplus circulates rather than accumulates
Communities enforce through coordinated non-cooperation
Boundaries follow ecological rather than political logic
Bioregions organized around watersheds and ecosystems
Coordination based on ecological interdependence
Traditional Indigenous territorial relations honored
Political borders become administrative, not sovereign divisions
There is no central authority to capture.
You cannot lobby “the Covenant government” because there isn’t one. You cannot bribe the regulators because enforcement is distributed across thousands of communities. You cannot dominate through concentrated wealth because the Commons are protected and enterprise is democratically owned.
Horizontal coordination is inherently more resilient to corruption because there’s no single point of failure.
V. The Path to a United Earth
For decades, people have dreamed of a united humanity. A world beyond war, beyond borders, beyond the divisions that have produced so much suffering.
Many have looked to the United Nations as the vehicle for this unification. Others have hoped that corporate globalization would create such interdependence that conflict becomes impossible. Others still believe that liberal or conservative policy, if correctly implemented, could gradually build toward peace and cooperation.
None of these paths can succeed. And understanding why reveals what path can.
Not Through the UN
The United Nations is fundamentally a coordination mechanism between nation-states. It has no direct relationship with the people of Earth. It cannot act without the consent of powerful nations. It has no enforcement mechanism beyond the willingness of nation-states to comply.
The UN represents the limit of what nation-state coordination can achieve. And that limit is insufficient for planetary-scale challenges.
To create a United Earth through the UN would require nation-states to voluntarily surrender their sovereignty to a higher authority. History suggests this will not happen. Nation-states exist to preserve and expand their own power.
The UN can facilitate cooperation but cannot transcend the nation-state system because it is built from nation-states.
Not Through Corporate Globalization
Some hoped that economic interdependence through global markets would make war obsolete and create de facto unity. If every nation depends on every other for resources and markets, the thinking went, conflict becomes too costly.
But corporate globalization has produced:
Exploitation at scale as capital seeks the lowest labor costs and weakest regulations
Ecological devastation as extraction moves to wherever resistance is weakest
Wealth concentration unprecedented in human history
Democratic erosion as corporate power supersedes popular will
Deepening inequality both within and between nations
Corporate globalization creates unity of a sort—the unity of an economic system extracting value from communities and concentrating it in the hands of shareholders. But this is not the unity of mutual care and shared dignity. It is the unity of empire.
United Earth through corporate hegemony is just domination by another name.
Not Through Liberal or Conservative Policy
Neither the liberal project of gradual reform nor the conservative project of restoring traditional order offers a path to United Earth.
Liberalism assumes the nation-state can be made more just, more democratic, more responsive through better policy. But it leaves unchallenged the structural problems: the nation-state form itself, the corporate structure, the extractive economy, the concentration of power.
Conservatism assumes the solution lies in returning to earlier social arrangements—traditional communities, religious values, national sovereignty. But it ignores that those arrangements were themselves sites of domination (patriarchy, colonialism, class hierarchy) and cannot address planetary-scale challenges.
Both are reform projects within systems that cannot be reformed to meet the moment.
Through Shared Moral Foundation
United Earth becomes possible when communities across the planet voluntarily adopt the same foundational principles and coordinate through horizontal federation.
Not united through conquest—which is empire, not unity.
Not united through imposed law—which is domination, not coordination.
Not united through economic integration—which is exploitation, not interdependence.
But united through shared commitment to:
The inherent dignity of all persons
The protection of the Commons as the domain of life
Restorative justice and repair of harm
Governance through consent and participation
Stewardship across generations
The Core and the Commons as moral operating system. Local implementation as diverse applications.
This is how you achieve unity without uniformity. Coordination without domination. Shared purpose without imposed structure.
A community in Japan and a community in Brazil can be “in Covenant” even if their governance structures, economic systems, and cultural practices look completely different. What they share is commitment to the same foundational principles.
And when communities share those principles, they can coordinate:
Responding to pandemics through mutual aid and resource sharing
Addressing climate change through coordinated transition away from extraction
Managing migrations through welcoming rather than borders
Resolving conflicts through restorative justice rather than violence
Stewarding Commons through bioregional coordination
This is how you build United Earth. Not through institutions that stand above the people, but through principles held in common.
VI. The Covenant Stands Ready
The Covenant is not waiting for everyone to be ready.
It is not waiting for crisis to deepen before offering an alternative.
It is not waiting for permission from existing powers to declare its principles.
It stands ready now.
For Those Ready Now
There are communities, organizers, movements, and individuals who have been working toward these principles for decades. They have built mutual aid networks, formed worker cooperatives, protected Commons, practiced restorative justice, organized horizontally.
They have been building the alternative in the shell of the old. What they often lack is shared constitutional law that names what they are building and connects their local work to a planetary movement.
The Covenant offers that law. It says: Your work is not isolated. You are not alone. You are part of a coherent vision of transformed relation between people and planet.
For Those Who Will Be Ready Later
Many people are not yet ready to abandon the hope that existing systems can be reformed. They believe the next election will matter. They think better regulation will constrain corporate power. They trust that climate agreements will be honored.
They will be disappointed. Not because they lack commitment, but because the systems cannot deliver what the moment requires.
And when that disappointment comes—when the next crisis reveals the inadequacy of nation-state response, when the next election changes nothing fundamental, when the next economic collapse shows that extraction cannot sustain itself—people will look for alternatives.
The Covenant will exist for them when they are ready.
It is not reactive. It is not built in panic during collapse. It is carefully considered, thoroughly documented, ready to implement. It offers not chaos or authoritarian order, but a third path: horizontal coordination based on shared principles.
For Future Generations
Perhaps most importantly, the Covenant exists for those not yet born.
We are living through the decisions that will shape the next thousand years. Will we continue extracting until ecological collapse? Will we allow authoritarian consolidation in response to crisis? Will we fracture into competing survivalist enclaves?
Or will we build the foundation for a genuinely different way of organizing human life on this planet?
The Covenant is a gift to the future. Law that says: Dignity can be protected. The Commons can be stewarded. Horizontal coordination is possible. You are not condemned to repeat the mistakes we made.
This is why we build it now, even before everyone is ready. Because the work of transformation is generational. Because foundations must be laid before the structure can be built. Because the best time to offer an alternative is before people are so desperate they’ll accept anything.
Conclusion
The Covenant for the Commons of Earth does not ask permission. It declares what is just.
It does not petition existing powers for recognition. It claims authority from principles older than any nation, any corporation, any hierarchy—principles embedded in the nature of human dignity and planetary interdependence.
It does not wait for everyone to be ready. It exists now as foundation, as law, as invitation.
Like every constitutional moment, it speaks from a position of moral clarity: These principles are true. These commitments are necessary. This law is just.
And then it invites adoption. Not through imposition. Not through force. Not through conquest or coercion.
But through recognition.
When a community reads the Covenant and says “Yes, this is what we believe. Yes, this is how we want to live. Yes, we claim these principles as our own”—in that moment, they become part of the Covenant.
And as communities make that recognition, as bioregions coordinate through shared principles, as the web of mutual commitment grows—United Earth emerges. Not as empire. Not as hierarchy. Not as domination.
But as federation of the committed. Coordination among communities who share moral foundation while maintaining local autonomy.
This is a path. Not through the UN. Not through corporate hegemony. Not through liberal or conservative policy within dying systems.
Through shared foundation and distributed power.
Through protection of the Commons and recognition of Earth’s standing.
Through dignity, consent, participation, and stewardship.
The Covenant stands ready. Not waiting for permission. Not waiting for crisis. Not waiting for everyone.
Ready now, for those who are willing to imagine a world without borders.
And when the moment comes that more people are ready—when the failures of the old order become undeniable, when the hunger for alternative becomes urgent—the Covenant will be there.
Not perfect. Not final. But real. And ready.
This is how transformation can happen. Not all at once. Not waiting for unanimity. But through committed people building the foundation for a world that honors the dignity of all beings and the Commons that sustains all life.
We, the People of Earth, in sovereign assembly.
The words have been spoken.
Now begins the work of making them real.
Let the Covenant stand as invitation—to communities ready now, to peoples who will be ready soon, and to generations yet to come. Let it say: another world is not merely possible. It has been articulated, structured, and made ready for those with courage to claim it.
The Preamble does not wait. It declares.
What Now? Act
If these words resonate—if you recognize the exhaustion of the old order, if you feel the pull toward something fundamentally different, if you’re ready to imagine what new constitutional possibility looks like—then engage.
Read the Covenant. Not as distant philosophy, but as law you might live under. Read the Core. Read the Commons. Read the Parts that address governance, economy, justice, Earth’s standing. See if they reflect what you believe about dignity, about the Commons, about how we should relate to each other and the living world.
Question it. Challenge it. Find the tensions, the gaps, the places where it fails to address what matters to you. The Covenant is not scripture—it’s constitutional law meant to be examined, critiqued, and improved through engagement.
Propose changes. The Covenant is forkable by design. If a principle needs refinement, propose it. If a section needs rewriting, write it. If your community needs different implementation, adapt it. This is living law, not monument.
Make it yours. If your community recognizes these principles, adopt the Covenant. Declare yourselves in Covenant with the Commons of Earth. Adapt the implementation to your context while honoring the Core. Build what this paper describes.
Share it. If you know communities, organizers, movements working toward these principles—people building mutual aid networks, forming cooperatives, protecting Commons, practicing restorative justice—share the Covenant with them. Not as recruitment, but as recognition: This is what we’re building. This is the law we’re claiming.
Join the work. The Covenant needs custodians—people willing to engage seriously with constitutional development, to hold space for difficult questions, to help build the infrastructure (discussions, documentation, implementation guides) that makes adoption possible.
This is not spectator work. This is not “support the cause” work. This is builder work—the work of people who take constitutional possibility seriously enough to make it real.
The Covenant stands ready. Are you?
Find the full text at github.com/worldconvention/covenant