Every economy, no matter how sophisticated or diversified, is ultimately tied to the limitations and boundaries of the material world on which it depends for food, energy, raw materials, and stable ecological systems. Thus, while commonifying infrastructure and the industrial means of production is necessary for a compeerist transition, it is not sufficient. In this chapter, therefore, we consider efforts and ideas for fundamentally reshaping, along compeerist lines, the management and use of our natural resources and systems (the primary sector of the economy). More particularly this means pursuing more fair, democratic, collaborative, and ecologically sound governance arrangements when it comes to our earth-given endowments.

The importance of the ecological dimension, rooted in the ultimate limitations imposed by the physical laws of our natural world, cannot be overstated. Over and beyond its goal of commonifying the economy, compeerism is thus confronted with an imperative that is as straightforward as it is challenging, namely, to divert us from our current path towards planetary ecocide and guide us, instead, on an arc that ensures the establishment of long-term, environmentally (and socially) resilient communities and societies. It is a recognition that points to the necessary overlap between compeerism as an alternative organization of our social relations and, at the same time, a materially embodied alternative to our current relationship with the planet.

The ecological concept of resilience is useful here as it describes the ability of a system to achieve the long-term conditions needed to maintain wellbeing by effectively contending with various stresses; it is an outlook and understanding of the world that maintains significant synergies with compeerism. To achieve social and environmental resilience, for instance, non-market-based assets, such as social capital, diversity, and ecosystem services are seen as integral (Lewis and Conaty, 2012). For compeerists, in turn, creating an economy primed for equitable and democratic use-value production is intended precisely to create the conditions in which such non-market factors can fully develop and be harnessed; furthermore, this economy is itself dependent on processes like cooperation and solidarity that also lie outside exchange-valuation measures.

Fostering and applying knowledge/data to maximize positive outcomes is also a critical component of both resilience and compeerist frameworks, the latter of which pursues this aim by supporting the creation and collaborative use of an expansive data commons.