Proposed Charter v0.1

1. Purpose

The Planetary Intelligence Commons exists to steward shared evidence, models, and deliberative processes that support the long-term habitability of Earth, while respecting ecological limits, community sovereignty, and democratic legitimacy.

The Commons enables better questions, better decisions, and continuous learning across nested scales—from neighborhoods and bioregions to planetary systems.

2. Scope

The Commons governs three interdependent domains:

Evidence Commons
Observations, datasets, community knowledge, monitoring protocols, and provenance metadata.
Model Commons
Forecasting models, scenario tools, causal maps, assumptions, uncertainty characterizations, and performance evaluations.
Deliberation Commons
Participatory processes, decision briefs, dispute resolution pathways, and records of reasoning behind collective choices.

3. Core Commitments

3.1 Epistemic Integrity

All published outputs must disclose:

primary sources and dates
transformations (cleaning, aggregation, AI summarization)
assumptions and known limitations
uncertainty and confidence levels
known incentives or conflicts
privacy and consent conditions

No unlabeled synthesis may circulate as “commons-validated.”

3.2 Consent and Knowledge Sovereignty

The Commons recognizes:

community ownership of local knowledge
Indigenous data sovereignty
revocable consent
restricted access tiers
explicit “do not publish / do not train” flags

Open does not mean extractive.

3.3 Subsidiarity and Nesting

Decisions are made at the lowest competent scale, with coordination across scales for spillover effects.
Bioregional nodes are primary; planetary coordination is integrative, not directive.

3.4 Anti-Capture and Pluralism

The Commons is structured to prevent domination by:

states
corporations or vendors
philanthropies
ideological blocs
technical elites

Pluralism is a robustness requirement, not an optional value.

4. Membership Classes

Communities & Bioregional Councils
Scientific & Technical Contributors
Civic Institutions & Agencies
Civil Society & NGOs
Funders (non-controlling)
Tool & Infrastructure Providers
Independent Auditors & Red Teams
Public Observers

Membership confers rights and responsibilities defined below.

5. Roles and Responsibilities

5.1 Commons Council (Stewards)

Sets standards and indicators
Approves governance changes
Enforces integrity and consent rules
Appoints auditors and ombuds

5.2 Maintainers (Operations & Data Stewards)

Maintain infrastructure
Implement standards
Manage access and versioning
Ensure security and continuity

5.3 Contributors

Submit data, models, analyses, or narratives
Comply with evidence and consent standards
Accept review and revision requirements

5.4 Auditors / Red Teams

Independently challenge high-impact claims
Stress-test models and assumptions
Detect misuse, bias, or manipulation

5.5 Ombuds / Mediators

Receive harm reports
Facilitate conflict resolution
Recommend corrective action or sanctions

6. Contribution and Validation Pipeline

Submission
Data, model, or claim submitted with required metadata.
Integrity Screening
Provenance, licensing, consent, and transformation checks.
Peer Review
Domain experts + affected community reviewers where relevant.
Adversarial Audit
Mandatory for policy- or finance-relevant outputs.
Publication
Versioned release with claim labels and uncertainty.
Monitoring
Post-publication error reporting and drift detection.
Revision or Retraction
Logged, transparent, and attributable.

7. Claim Labeling (Mandatory)

Every published statement must be labeled as:

Observational
Inferred (model-based)
Scenario (conditional)
Normative (value-based)
Recommendation
Speculative

This prevents the laundering of opinion or projection into fact.

8. Rights and Safeguards

Right to explanation and traceability
Right to contest and appeal
Right to withdraw consent
Protection for minority and dissenting views
Prohibition on pay-to-validate influence

9. Funding and Independence

Permitted funding sources:

public funding
diversified philanthropy (non-controlling)
membership dues (scaled)
paid services that do not affect validation outcomes

No funder may control standards, conclusions, or publication.

10. Amendments and Review

Annual governance review
Emergency amendment pathway
Supermajority requirement for core principles
Public change logs

II. One-Page Operating Model

How the Planetary Intelligence Commons Actually Runs

1. Flow of Intelligence (End-to-End)

Signals → Evidence → Models → Questions → Deliberation → Decisions → Outcomes → Learning

Each step has a gate, an owner, and an audit trail.

2. The Commons Engine (Human + AI)

Function	Who	Output
Integrity gate	Integrity agent + human steward	Admissible evidence
Analysis	Domain agents	Forecasts, scenarios
Challenge	Red-team agents	Failure modes
Sensemaking	Community agents	Value context
Deliberation	Facilitator agents + councils	Decision briefs
Evaluation	Learning agents	Performance metrics

No single actor controls more than one critical function.

3. Decision Surfaces

The Commons does not decide for communities.
It produces decision-ready artifacts:

trade-off maps
uncertainty ranges
distributional impacts
policy and finance pathways
“what would change our mind” criteria

Authority remains with legitimate local bodies.

4. Minimum Viable Outputs (First 90 Days)

Commons Charter (this document)
Integrity & consent standards
10–20 baseline indicators
One bioregional pilot node
Public questions backlog
Dispute resolution process

5. What Makes This Different

Questions are first-class outputs
Uncertainty is explicit, not hidden
Community knowledge is governed, not mined
AI is separated into roles, not centralized
Governance is nested, not globalized

This is intelligence with legitimacy, not optimization without consent.

Recommended Next Steps (Practical)

If you agree, the logical next moves are:

PIC Charter v0.1 (public PDF)
Clean, branded, funder-ready version.
Bioregional Pilot Addendum
Applying the Charter to Genesee–Finger Lakes (or another region).
Agent Charter Pack
One page per agent: mission, inputs, outputs, failure modes.
Founding Partners Brief
A short invitation document for collaborators and funders.

Developing the Planetary Intelligence Commons