News

Learning by doing: Solving the Tragedy of the Commons one Meal at a time

Published: 2.12.2022

Food Futures, part of ATARCA, Aalto University, in collaboration with Global Politics and Communication, University of Helsinki, present the video Learning by Doing: Solving the Tragedy of the Commons one Meal at a time.

The video explains how the Food Futures app provides a means to govern our climate commons using applied data science and analytic reasoning. The app incorporates blockchain technology to measure, record, and recognise individuals’ and the community’s contributions to achieving a sustainable 1.5 degree C lifestyle.

Food Futures, ATARCA — Learning by Doing

This video is the product of an interdisciplinary collaboration between bright minds from leading educational institutions in Finland. We invite you to have a look and discover how individual consumer choices, innovations such as the Food Futures app and blockchain tokens, as well as practice-based learning, can be combined to empower collective action for the wellbeing of our planet: one meal at a time.

As a part of our project, Food Futures offers a community cryptocurrency in the form of blockchain Foodprint tokens.

These tokens are in the Ethereum standard, and are awarded to users of the Food Futures app who have made sustainable meal choices. Over time this community currency system can be expanded so that tokens will serve a utility function to receive donated surplus goods. Since Food Futures is built on the concept of anti-rival value, in specific the externalities produced from sustainable choices, the Foodprint token itself is anti-rival. This means there is not a limited total supply. Tokens are minted when positive externalities are measured and recorded. Tokens serve to indelibly and permanently recognize individuals’ contributions toward achieving lower GHG emissions.

To combine learning with practical applications, we have also launched the Open University course Sustainable Consumption. This course welcomes everyone from all stages of lifelong learning to participate and reflect on the root of the challenge of making sustainable choices. The course exemplifies a remedy in line with Elinor Ostrom’s polycentric governance, and in combination with The Food Futures app, and the blockchain tokens serves as a tool to empower individuals and communities to realize the 1.5 degree Celsius lifestyle.

By S.M. Amadae, Marianna Laine & Maija Harju

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A new economic category for abundant goods — anti-rival goods that increase in value when shared — forms the basis of research to be conducted by ATARCA consortium. ATARCA aims to create a new economic system in which digital goods are no longer traded with mediums of exchange, such as fiat money, but with mediums of sharing.

Learning by Doing: An Open University MOOC on Sustainable Consumption

The approach of this course is highly innovative. It focuses on finding solutions and filling in the gap between intent and action. The course introduces an approach in which learning is achieved by doing and by using technological innovations to decrease food waste and by taking concrete action to protect the scarce resources of our planet.

Learn more and enroll