Post Tagged with: "Counter Solutions"

Forget GDP growth, it’s sustainable wellbeing we need to aim for

Forget GDP growth, it’s sustainable wellbeing we need to aim for

I’ve just been to a three-day conference on sustainable prosperity in Europe, attended by thousands of people. In a stirring opening address, the speaker said governments must stop misusing GDP growth as their goal and move swiftly and urgently to sustainable wellbeing within planetary boundaries. They got a standing ovation. The young leader of a climate and social justice movement[Read More…]

by 29/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Special Significance of the Next Decade in Human History, and a Campaign Linked to This

Special Significance of the Next Decade in Human History, and a Campaign Linked to This

There is increasing realization that recent times have not been utilized properly to confront and reduce the most serious problems of our deeply troubled world. While there is great urgency of responding adequately to what is now nothing less than a survival crisis, the world has instead been getting involved in more serious wars and worsening of the environmental crisis[Read More…]

by 29/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Walter Seymour Allward‘s Veritas (Truth) outside Supreme Court of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario Canada. By Colin Rose – originally posted to Flickr as Truth, CC BY 2.0

How do we know what is true?

It is self-evident that to survive this critical century, we need to learn the truth about it. Whether it is specific issues like the Ukraine war, the Covid pandemic, a conspiracy to take control of the world, or the wider pursuit of human progress, the truth is extraordinarily elusive, and fiercely contested. Furthermore, knowing the truth helps us to see[Read More…]

by 25/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Our Times Call for Managing Complexities, Not Solving Problems

Our Times Call for Managing Complexities, Not Solving Problems

How Paicines Ranch in California works to bring business and investment up to date with our times and closer to nature—prioritizing ecosystem health, habitat, and the sequestration of carbon through soil practices. At first the ground squirrels felt like the enemy—a problem to be solved. They were causing major issues for the 25 acres of vineyard at Paicines Ranch in San Benito[Read More…]

by 23/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Why Intergenerational Thinking Is Essential to Heal the Planet

Why Intergenerational Thinking Is Essential to Heal the Planet

As humankind grapples with climate change, communities around the world show what’s possible by planning hundreds of years ahead. In the state of Meghalaya in northeast India, ingenious elders from the Khasi community spent decades, even centuries, building living root bridges known locally as jingkieng jri. The bridges were shaped by pulling and intertwining the aerial roots of the rubber fig tree (Ficus elastica) over a bamboo framework[Read More…]

by 17/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
The Path of Change—Principles and Priorities, Agenda and Mobilization

The Path of Change—Principles and Priorities, Agenda and Mobilization

There is increasing realization that our deeply troubled world and endangered planet need a different path. What are to be the basic principles and most urgent priorities of this path, what will be its basic agenda and mobilization strategies? The most basic and durable principles are clear enough—equality and justice, peace and disarmament, democracy and decentralization, protection of environment, protection[Read More…]

by 16/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Core Issues for Creating A Better and Safer World

Core Issues for Creating A Better and Safer World

How to create a better world has been the most abiding concern of thoughtful and caring people all through human history. Increasing commitment to justice, equality and peace appeared to several of these people as the most obvious way for achieving this. One way of achieving this related to improvement of human relationships and more compassion towards other forms of[Read More…]

by 27/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Global Polycrisis as a Pathway for Economic Transition

Global Polycrisis as a Pathway for Economic Transition

This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between the United Nations Development Programme (Bureau for Program & Policy Support’s Strategic Innovation Unit & the Inclusive Growth/Chief Economist) and One Project. The purpose of the collaboration is to connect expertise in new economics with an emerging understanding of the global polycrisis. In this first article, we synthesize existing work and[Read More…]

by 25/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
One World, Earth without Borders: Solutions for Times of Survival Crisis

One World, Earth without Borders: Solutions for Times of Survival Crisis

Socrates said, “I am not a citizen of Athens, not a citizen of Greece, I am a citizen of world.” A time may have come today 2400 years later to give much more attention to this most basic identity of human beings which unfortunately is also most neglected. Most members of humanity have been identifying themselves more in terms of[Read More…]

by 20/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Agrivoltaics: The Farm-to-Solar Trend That Can Help Accelerate the Renewable Energy Transition

Agrivoltaics: The Farm-to-Solar Trend That Can Help Accelerate the Renewable Energy Transition

Using the same land for the production of both agriculture and solar energy is a win-win for the climate and farmers. Access to solar power is increasing in rural parts of the U.S., partly with the support of farmers who lease out their land for utility-scale solar arrays. This farm-to-solar trend known as “agrivoltaics”—defined by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as[Read More…]

by 11/04/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
How Indigenous Land Management Practices Are a Blueprint for Climate-Resilient Agriculture

How Indigenous Land Management Practices Are a Blueprint for Climate-Resilient Agriculture

 As a rapidly warming world strains at the shortcomings in industrial farming, key lessons can be taken from Indigenous practices. Several Hollywood action films center around an impending apocalypse in the form of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth—a glaring metaphor for the real-world implications of a rapidly accelerating climate crisis. As this crisis unfolds before our very[Read More…]

by 28/03/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Photo by gideon_wright

Can there be a long-term solution to Ecological Crisis?

In the backdrop of the 18th G20 Heads of State and Government summit to be held in New Delhi on 9th-10th September 2023, it becomes imperative to talk about India’s commitment to the environment conservation to preserve biodiversity, along with sustainable growth of the economy. As a part of an Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group (ECSWG) under G20, India[Read More…]

by 03/03/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Why Understanding Limits Is the Key to Humanity’s Future

Why Understanding Limits Is the Key to Humanity’s Future

Recent news articles about a breakthrough in nuclear fusion research heralded the potential for “limitless” energy. Whenever I read that word limitless I wince, because I’ve learned to view it as a subtle instruction to readers to “please stop thinking now.” After decades of false promises to deliver limitless energy, we need to start thinking instead, and search for limits both obvious and hidden. Doing so[Read More…]

by 21/01/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
An Ancient Recipe for Social Success

An Ancient Recipe for Social Success

by Linda M. Nicholas and Gary M. Feinman New evidence and understandings about the structure of successful early societies across Asia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere are sweeping away the popular assumption that early societies tended toward autocracy and despotism. Archaeology has a more valuable story to tell: Collective action and localized economic production are a recipe for sustainability and broader well-being. The Mesoamerican city[Read More…]

by 21/01/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
‘Public Trust’—A Key Legal Tool to Preserve Our Natural Resources

‘Public Trust’—A Key Legal Tool to Preserve Our Natural Resources

Law professor Mary Wood breaks down how people can protect their right to clean air, water, and land as well as fortify their climate change resiliency. With the reality of climate change becoming more apparent in the form of extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, and floods, it is clear that the future of all life on the[Read More…]

by 05/01/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
The present ‘development’ impoverishes us in every sense: Helena Norberg-Hodge

The present ‘development’ impoverishes us in every sense: Helena Norberg-Hodge

by A K Shiburaj/Helena Norberg-Hodge Helena Norberg Hodge is the founder and director of Local Futures, an organization working to revitalize cultural and biological diversity and empower local communities and economies around the world. Helena’s book ‘Ancient Futures’, which explains the traditions of the people of Ladakh and the changes in their culture, has received international attention. Translated into Malayalam[Read More…]

by 04/01/2023 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Sustainable Consumption, Sustainability in Value Chain

Sustainable Consumption, Sustainability in Value Chain

This is a small article addressed to beginners Sustainable Consumption Life on earth can be divided in two parts – plant life and animal life. The difference between the two is that plants produce their own food whereas animals, humans included, live directly or indirectly on food produced by plants. To sustain themselves, humans consume goods and services not only[Read More…]

by 30/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
The initiative of the Vaagdhara organization to preserve coarse grains

The initiative of the Vaagdhara organization to preserve coarse grains

The world today is facing a big challenge like the food crisis due to Covid, the climate crisis, the Ukraine war, etc. In such a situation, there is a need to promote the cultivation and consumption of millet to ensure food security. Millet is such a super food, which is a traditional nutritious and low-cost alternative to deal with the[Read More…]

by 29/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
GDP is a useless measurement. But what should replace it?

GDP is a useless measurement. But what should replace it?

We must place true value on the environment and go beyond gross domestic product as a measure of human progress and well-being,” said United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres in June at Stockholm+50, a meeting convened by the UN to discuss the world’s environmental and ecological crises. It was an astonishing statement. This once-fringe idea of going ‘beyond GDP’ is finally appearing[Read More…]

by 28/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Rattan has taken up natural farming and multi-cropping to minimise crop loss and maximise the value of his crops (Picture credit - Rohit Prashar)

Can small-scale farmers feed the world?

One of the things I wondered about a lot during my first months of work in the food system was productivity. Growing up in a Minority World country, practically all of my food came from large-scale, industrial farms. As a result, I—like many others—believed for a long time that industrial agriculture a necessary evil, an unfortunate requirement given how many[Read More…]

by 25/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Of George Monbiot, mathematical modernism and the case for agrarian localism

Of George Monbiot, mathematical modernism and the case for agrarian localism

When you read a book with which you profoundly disagree, I guess it’s usually best just to shrug, put it back on the shelf and get on with your work. The hatchet job review is a popular but ignoble genre. Having been the object of one myself I can attest the outcomes are rarely positive, apart perhaps from a warm[Read More…]

by 10/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Book Review
Family affair: Sione Vaianginam, a farmer, with his children on their tractor in Nukuʻalofa, the capital of Tonga. (Photo credit: Luis Enrique Ascui/Asian Development Bank/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Pacific Islanders’ Food-Sharing Customs Ensure Resiliency in Face of Disaster

by Stacy Jupiter, Teri Tuxson, Caroline Ferguson & Sangeeta Mangubhai  Strong social networks foster resilience to food system shocks, both within and between Pacific Island communities. Pacific Islanders are no strangers to disasters. For millennia, island peoples have coped with and adapted to disasters like tropical cyclones and tsunamis, as well as unpredictable shifts in precipitation patterns, leading to droughts and floods.[Read More…]

by 09/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Resisting End-Time

Resisting End-Time

In a recent report, the United Nations set out some top priorities everyone can practice in helping to counter climate change and keep Earth (humanly) habitable. Here is the short list: (1) eat a plant-based diet, (2) reduce unnecessary consumption and excessive waste (in the United States the reduction needs to be radical because the abuses are extreme and constant)[Read More…]

by 29/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
We Can Have A Livable World Or Capitalism, But Not Both

We Can Have A Livable World Or Capitalism, But Not Both

Humanity is facing a choice it never had to face before: either radically change how people relate to nature and to one another or face ecological ruination and general social collapse. For a long time there has been a stubborn problem of awareness about the ecological perils awaiting us and its systemic root. By now, most people have become aware[Read More…]

by 28/06/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Farmers, Women, Innovators Give Hope for Meeting Climate Challenge in Rural India

Farmers, Women, Innovators Give Hope for Meeting Climate Challenge in Rural India

At a time of increasing concern over climate change, contributions of several women, farmers and innovators have given reason for increasing hope in mitigation as well as adaptation work in villages of India. When Leela Devi was married in Tilonia village (Ajmer district of Rajasthan), she had not heard of solar energy. But making use of the existence of solar[Read More…]

by 29/05/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
How Small Farms Are Reclaiming Culture in Palestine

How Small Farms Are Reclaiming Culture in Palestine

Palestinians are organizing CSA programs and small farms to become food sovereign and protect their culture against colonialism. Food sovereignty is an urgent issue in communities around the world, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic led to further disruptions in the already fragile global food supply chains. In Palestine, where traditional farming has been a way of life for millennia (and perhaps where farming began, according[Read More…]

by 25/05/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Jeremy Corbyn: It’s Not Enough to Resist—We Have to Build, Too

Jeremy Corbyn: It’s Not Enough to Resist—We Have to Build, Too

In April, the UN’s climate scientists warned it’s “now or never” to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. You can almost hear them screaming at their keyboards, desperate for governments to actually do something, when they outline the need for “rapid, deep and immediate” cuts in CO2 emissions. But their words are not just a warning about the[Read More…]

by 14/05/2022 Comments are Disabled World
Why ‘Bolivia Is the Center of the World’ for People’s Movements

Why ‘Bolivia Is the Center of the World’ for People’s Movements

Humanity finds itself at a crucial moment. It’s not only war and climate change that threaten life on our planet. Ideologies and some people do too. We know that money and the production of wealth and well-being have created an ever greater and more profound gap between people, neighborhoods, cities and countries—a gap that has been exacerbated by the pandemic.[Read More…]

by 14/05/2022 Comments are Disabled World
How People Can Change the World—JEPESD Path of Social Movements

How People Can Change the World—JEPESD Path of Social Movements

Many thoughtful people of world are now concerned deeply about aggravation of several serious problems led by life-threatening environmental problems and accumulation of weapons of mass destruction. At the same time they realize that the earlier problems of inequalities and injustice are also worsening in many contexts. As life-nurturing conditions of our planet are also threatened there is greater urgency[Read More…]

by 04/05/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
We Cannot Adequately Resist Without Reimagining the World We Want

We Cannot Adequately Resist Without Reimagining the World We Want

We need change-making—both big and small—around the world, that challenges the structural causes of militarism, corrupt capitalism, and climate catastrophe, while at the same time, concretely creating an alternative system based on a just and sustainable peace. The past two and a half years of pandemic, food shortages, racial uprisings, economic collapse, and now another war are enough to make one[Read More…]

by 30/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Localization and Local Futures: The Alternative to the Authoritarian New Normal

Localization and Local Futures: The Alternative to the Authoritarian New Normal

     ‘World Localization Day’ will be celebrated on 20 June. Organised by the non-profit Local Futures, this annual coming together of people from across the world began in 2020 and focuses on the need to localise supply-chains and recover our connection with nature and community. The stated aim is to “galvanize the worldwide localization movement into a force for systemic[Read More…]

by 26/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Pandemic Blues

Pandemic Blues

During an extermination event – the first and only ever such event in the universe’s life – it is difficult to contemplate the relations between humans and the rest of nature. In 2021, Meral Cicek invited me to do precisely this through an essay for Jineoloji magazine, a publication of the women’s movement of Kurdistan. The pandemic, lethal as it[Read More…]

by 14/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
A solution for climate change which does not even mention the ff words!

A solution for climate change which does not even mention the ff words!

Is it possible to suggest a solution for climate change which does not mention the words fossil fuels even once? Before you dismiss this suggestion, kindly spare just two minutes for the very short viewpoint below. Very briefly, I recommend six changes to be taken up in the next decade as a top priority. Firstly, we have to take a[Read More…]

by 08/04/2022 1 comment Counter Solutions
An Alternative Path for India

An Alternative Path for India

 A Program Based on Justice, Equality, Peace, Harmony and Environment Protection Introduction    In the middle of unprecedented world problems and many-sided internal distress, India must find a firm path based on equality, justice, meeting basic needs of all, strengthening creative livelihoods, social harmony and peace. As its present path is far from being such a path, there should be very[Read More…]

by 03/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Movement Generation Works to Usher in a Sustainable Just Transition

Movement Generation Works to Usher in a Sustainable Just Transition

Movement Generation educates activists on the dynamics of social and environmental justice. In the mid-2000s, when the documentary featuring former Vice President Al Gore, “An Inconvenient Truth,” first alerted viewers that human activity was drastically altering the environment, and global warming would insidiously thaw the North and South poles and raise the sea levels, urban organizers like Mateo Nube heard[Read More…]

by 03/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Sustainability Is Not as New an Idea as You Might Think—It’s More Than 300 Years Old

Sustainability Is Not as New an Idea as You Might Think—It’s More Than 300 Years Old

Modern sustainability evolved from forest management of the 18th century, and its ancient roots go back even further. Could it help with today’s climate crisis and lumber shortage? The proverb “necessity is the mother of invention” has roots that go back to Aesop’s fable “The Crow and the Pitcher” and to Plato’s “Republic.” It is realistic to assume that Hans[Read More…]

by 10/02/2022 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Putting technology in its place

Putting technology in its place

The most recent topic explored by the thinkers and activists who make up the Great Transition Network was “Technology and the Future”. As writer after writer posted their thoughts, it was heartening to see that almost all recognize that technology cannot provide real solutions to the many crises we face.  I was also happy that Professor William Robinson, author of[Read More…]

Debunking the Eternal Economic Growth Model

Debunking the Eternal Economic Growth Model

Can those who advocate hitting the brakes on economic growth get their message across before it’s too late? Over the last three decades, a growing number of scientists and ecologists have argued that economic growth has long outstripped the capacity of the planetary ecosystem. They have developed numerous sophisticated models to demonstrate their point. They have boiled down the technical information—about[Read More…]

by 23/12/2021 1 comment Counter Solutions
Kurosawa’s Ikiru and the current spate of resignation among professionals

Kurosawa’s Ikiru and the current spate of resignation among professionals

Akira Kurosawa (1910 – 1998), was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential film-makers in the history of cinema. Ikiru (‘To Live’) is a 1952 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film examines the struggles of a terminally ill Tokyo[Read More…]

by 21/12/2021 2 comments Counter Solutions
This path of development is toxic

This path of development is toxic

There are many discussions going on regarding pollution. But the one aspect that is being overlooked in all these debates is our development model. It has a major contribution in increasing pollution. It considers material development as the measure of human development. This model, which is about 150-200 years old, emphasizes maximising production, so that people’s income increases and they[Read More…]

by 19/12/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
World Soil Day

World Soil Day

Today December 5, is celebrated as the world soil day (WSD). The proposal for a global day to celebrate soil was first recommended in the year 2002 by the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS). Under the framework of the Global Soil Partnership, and the leadership of the King of Thailand, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) lent[Read More…]

by 05/12/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
The ‘Dharitri Youth Conclave 2021’: In search of ecological citizenship

The ‘Dharitri Youth Conclave 2021’: In search of ecological citizenship

The progressive Odia daily newspaper ‘Dharitri’ has organised ‘Odisha Youth Conclave on Climate Change’ while celebrating its 48th birthday on 24th of November 2021. In a profit driven mass media industry with its rent seeking family ownerships, it is rare these days for newspapers to think about people and planet. The ‘Dharitri’ and its family deserves all appreciation for being[Read More…]

by 26/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
What do we really need to change?

What do we really need to change?

We need to change our ways! Unless you’ve been living in a cave in the last 40 years or so, you’d be getting a pretty strong message about that pretty much every day. No more “blah blah”, no more excuses, no more pseudo airy fairy technological fixes, we have to stop polluting, we have to stop destroying habitats, in other[Read More…]

by 24/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
A Common Justice-Based Program for Entire World to Check Climate Change

A Common Justice-Based Program for Entire World to Check Climate Change

While the need for checking climate change is being re-emphasized with a great sense of urgency, at the same time the inadequacy of the existing response and efforts to check climate change is also emerging clearly. Hence here we present a very different approach to checking climate change. This approach is based on a common program for the entire world,[Read More…]

by 24/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Indigenous Leaders Call for Landback Reforms and Climate Justice in “Required Reading”

Indigenous Leaders Call for Landback Reforms and Climate Justice in “Required Reading”

As the world watches what transpires at COP26, the United Nations climate summit taking place this week in Glasgow, the U.N. has blasted governments and businesses for utterly failing to meet their climate obligations. There’s a sense that time is running out and radical change is the only hope–including a sweeping transformation of industrial agricultural practices to more sustainable and regenerative ones. At the same time, Indigenous peoples from[Read More…]

by 12/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Trying to Solve One Problem by Increasing Another Will Not Protect Environment

Trying to Solve One Problem by Increasing Another Will Not Protect Environment

The increasing emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuels should be very widely welcomed, but the entire environmental issue cannot be reduced to just this. It is much wider. However our systems have suffered often from a one-point approach to solving complex problems, or may be they are not yet capable of a holistic approach. In the present[Read More…]

by 09/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
A World Without Money

A World Without Money

And climate change begins . . . “Three or four thousand years ago the gods began a migration from the lakes, forests, rivers, and mountains into the sky, becoming the imperial overlords of nature rather than its essence.” So writes Charles Eisenstein in Sacred Economics, defining a transition in human existence that has finally begun to haunt us — haunting some of us[Read More…]

by 06/11/2021 1 comment Counter Solutions
A 2 Per cent Tax on Billionaires Can Provide 260 Billion Dollars to Climate Fund

A 2 Per cent Tax on Billionaires Can Provide 260 Billion Dollars to Climate Fund

In 2009 a commitment was made by rich countries to create an annual fund of 100 billion dollars to help the Global South in climate change mitigation and adaptation by 2020.  Leaving aside the loans, the grants provided in the year 2020 under this fund actually amount to just about 16 billion dollars or so. Considering that climate change is[Read More…]

by 05/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Bicycle In Jamshedpur

Bicycle In Jamshedpur

In the twentieth century nothing represented the working class culture more than the bicycle  did. That is why the film ‘Bicycle Thief’ (1948, Italy, Director: Vittorio De Sica) remained the best film ever made for many years and still is one of the ten best films ever made. Jamshedpur with a population of 1.34 million is the largest and most[Read More…]

by 03/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Toxic Earth ~ Mary Southard CSJ
Courtesy of Ministry of the Arts

The Ecological Crisis is the Climax of Patriarchy and Religious Patriarchy – What’s Next?

Ecological wisdom emanates from a deep awareness that, while humans are unique among all animals, they remain utterly dependent on their biophysical environment to sustain human life, and therefore must strive to live in harmony with the entire community of creation in order to ensure their own wellbeing. This is not what we are doing. We now face a situation of ecological overshoot due to[Read More…]

by 02/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions, Patriarchy
As Climate Change Threats Increase, Solutions Offered by Farmers and Workers Should Get More Attention

As Climate Change Threats Increase, Solutions Offered by Farmers and Workers Should Get More Attention

          There is deepening concern worldwide at the increasing threats from climate change and the ongoing Climate Summit at Glasgow is in the middle of examining these serious issues. Scientists are giving increasing attention to finding smarter ways of climate change mitigation and adaptation. However adequate attention is not yet being given to properly tapping the potential contribution which ordinary[Read More…]

by 01/11/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Democratic Eco-Socialism in Australia

Democratic Eco-Socialism in Australia

by Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young Bushfire smoke over the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge on 29 December. Photograph Source: Nick-D – CC BY-SA 4.0 Perhaps democratic eco-socialism starts with a need to solve the climate crisis and related crises. This requires a radical socio-ecological revolution that transcends capitalism through the non-violent dismantling of capitalism. It replaces capitalism with an alternative system based[Read More…]

by 29/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
The Socialist Cooperative Commonwealth

The Socialist Cooperative Commonwealth

Since its origin in the early 19th century by followers of Robert Owen, the term “socialism” has evolved to mean many different things to many different people and has been misused by dictatorships to describe their draconian management of capitalism.  At the present time “socialism” is an unpopular word. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot have poisoned our understanding by applying the word “socialism” to[Read More…]

by 24/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Photo: Tom Pennington

Our Future vs. Neoliberalism

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies In country after country around the world, people are rising up to challenge entrenched, failing neoliberal political and economic systems, with mixed but sometimes promising results. Progressive leaders in the U.S. Congress are refusing to back down on the Democrats’ promises to American voters to reduce poverty, expand rights to healthcare, education[Read More…]

by 20/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
U.S. Veterans joined the Standing Rock Sioux encampment protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. (Photo: Joe Brusky/Overpass Light Brigade)

An Indigenous peoples’ approach to climate justice

Climate change has been identified as the “defining issue of our time” by many of the world’s leading experts and the diagnosis of planetary health is dire. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has concluded that goals for achieving sustainability “cannot be met by current trajectories” and UN secretary-general António Guterres has referred to humanity’s “war on nature” as “senseless and suicidal”. The[Read More…]

by 20/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
What Youth-Led Movements Teach Us About Democracy

What Youth-Led Movements Teach Us About Democracy

Youth-led mass mobilisations in recent years have challenged the argument that young people have no interest in politics or democratic processes. Young people displayed a commitment to change and modelled an inclusive approach to participatory democracy through street actions, events, and debates as seen in the climate movement. Jasmine Lorenzini explains how young people challenge the norms of participation today,[Read More…]

by 20/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
How to Raise Climate-Resilient Kids

How to Raise Climate-Resilient Kids

In the face of climate change, children need positive stress as well as compassion to maintain mental health and inform their responses. Climate-related disasters are on the rise, and carbon emissions are soaring. Parents today face the unprecedented challenge of raising children somehow prepared for a planetary emergency that may last their lifetimes. Few guidebooks are on the shelves for this one, yet, but[Read More…]

by 09/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
How 9/11 Set Progressive Causes Back—and How We Rebounded

How 9/11 Set Progressive Causes Back—and How We Rebounded

 As the 20th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center approached, I wasn’t paying much attention. But then I received an email from my longtime colleague John Cavanagh, former director of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. It was a private message recalling the “Justice, Not Vengeance” initiative that the institute and YES! Magazine organized along with Harry Belafonte and[Read More…]

by 06/10/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
What Might an Ecosocialist Society Look Like?

What Might an Ecosocialist Society Look Like?

Before describing possible features of a future ecosocialism, it is worthwhile to consider why such a system is even needed. Why can’t the problems that ecosocialism would solve also be remedied within the current global capitalist system? Part I of this essay addresses that question by summarizing recent scientific reports on the state of the climate and extent of the[Read More…]

by 30/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Reclaiming Our Common Home

Reclaiming Our Common Home

 The path to an ecological civilization is paved by reclaiming the commons—our common home, the Earth, and the commons of the Earth family, of which we are a part. Through reclaiming the commons, we can imagine possibility for our common future, and we can sow the seeds of abundance through “commoning.” In the commons, we care and share—for the Earth[Read More…]

by 20/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Passing the Torch

Passing the Torch

The baby-boom generation is ending its lap in the human race, and the Fridays-for-future generation is beginning its run. Generational shifts of power are symbolized by the image of passing the torch, but now what the older has to pass on to the younger seems not a torch but a time bomb, a legacy of crises. To find a way[Read More…]

by 18/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Pandemic And The City  

Pandemic And The City  

   Density is desirable in the modern world. Flourishing Cities and their thriving suburbs being living examples of the lure of density. The density which seemed alluring in the past rendered cities vulnerable and perilous amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. As the virus spread, the chorus against urban proximity grew louder. Lockdowns turning lively vibrant cities dormant, their survival being questioned,[Read More…]

by 17/09/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Agriculture, technology, and addiction

Agriculture, technology, and addiction

Even for the smallest ailment, people, these days, resort to medicine. They trust that medicines can ‘cure’ the root cause of the disease. Some people take refuge in medicines even without any detectable illness. Nowadays, the SOLUTION to all the PROBLEMS is prescribed in the form of medicines. The answer to everything must be a ‘product’ – this is a[Read More…]

by 16/09/2021 1 comment Counter Solutions
Energy needed to eradicate poverty ‘compatible with climate goals’

Energy needed to eradicate poverty ‘compatible with climate goals’

From the houses we live in to the food we eat and the education we receive, living a good life requires materials and energy. For many, this means an increase in wellbeing requires an increase in resource use. This necessity has been used by some commentators to argue that eradicating poverty is at odds with the need to reduce emissions and tackle climate change.[Read More…]

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The Only Long-Range Solution to Climate Change

The Only Long-Range Solution to Climate Change

This article is adapted from POWER: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival (New Society Publishers, September 2021) by Richard Heinberg Climate change is often incorrectly described as an isolated pollution issue. In this flawed framing, humanity has simply made a mistake in its choice of energy sources; the solution entails switching sources and building enough carbon-sucking machines to clear the atmosphere of[Read More…]

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Enough for Everyone

Enough for Everyone

Given the current climate emergency and the broader ecological breakdown that looms, there are few issues more pressing than that expressed by the single word: enough. Yet, it is possible to satisfy humanity’s universal needs fairly—and keep the world livable. What is enough? Put that question to any economist or politician, and you are likely to get a blank stare in return.[Read More…]

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As Our Bodies and Planetary Systems Become “Inflamed,” How Do We Heal?

As Our Bodies and Planetary Systems Become “Inflamed,” How Do We Heal?

In their new book, authors Rupa Marya and Raj Patel explore how capitalism and colonialism have caused sickness and how Indigenous knowledge can offer healing. Multiple planetary crises are breaking out simultaneously: a global pandemic, heat waves, deadly floods, disappearing biodiversity, failing infrastructure. To authors Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, these crises—and their solutions—are intimately linked and ought to be viewed[Read More…]

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Restless and Relentless Minds: Thinking as a “Species out of Context”

Restless and Relentless Minds: Thinking as a “Species out of Context”

Abstract The stability of the Earth’s ecosystems, and hence the future of the human species, depends on people recognizing and responding to multiple, cascading social and ecological crises that can easily overwhelm our imaginations. We need to cultivate restless and relentless minds to deal with unprecedented analytical questions and moral challenges if we are to go beyond the failed approaches[Read More…]

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Barefoot College Lights the Path of Decentralized Solar

Barefoot College Lights the Path of Decentralized Solar

            While the importance of increasing renewable energy particularly solar energy is now widely recognized, there is need also for giving more importance to its decentralized spread. There has been a tendency of placing more dependence on mega projects taken up by big business houses for expanding solar power capacity in several countries including India, but this can have several[Read More…]

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A Viable Human Future Depends on Living With Less

A Viable Human Future Depends on Living With Less

We cannot eat money and there are no winners on a dead Earth. Science tells us that we now have fewer than 10 years to reduce the human burden on Earth or trigger tipping points in Earth’s natural systems from which there is no return. Most discussion centers on the climate emergency, but we also have crises related to air, water,[Read More…]

by 21/08/2021 3 comments Counter Solutions
The Inspiring Legacy of Global Movements

The Inspiring Legacy of Global Movements

With a harrowing new IPCC report, a global pandemic with no signs of abetting, and the ongoing humanitarian disasters left in the wake of war and conflict, it is easy to feel pessimistic. But in the necessary quest to push beyond the current limits of imagination and politics to foster solidarity beyond the state, we can still find grounds for[Read More…]

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 Capitalist Crisis, Radical Opportunity

 Capitalist Crisis, Radical Opportunity

In the wake of interlocking global crises, we must remember that capitalist crises (of profitability or legitimacy or both) have led to collective action (revolutions, social movements), which in turn has sometimes compelled states and ruling elites to enact people-oriented welfarist policies. Let’s note, however, that since the 1980s, the ruling elites have refrained from enacting such policies; instead, they[Read More…]

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From Soil to Society: A Systems Approach to Change

From Soil to Society: A Systems Approach to Change

To build a different system—one that values healthy soils, biodiversity, clean water, and human capital over exploitation and profit at all costs—we must invest in the knowledge that supports it. Soil scientist E. Britt Moore drives home the foundational nature of soil to his undergraduate students with an etymology lesson. Human, he tells them, comes from the Latin humus, or soil.[Read More…]

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It Is Possible to Satisfy Humanity’s Universal Needs Fairly and Keep the World Livable?

It Is Possible to Satisfy Humanity’s Universal Needs Fairly and Keep the World Livable?

Given the current climate emergency and the broader ecological breakdown that looms, there are few issues more pressing than that expressed by the single word: enough. What is enough? Put that question to any economist or politician, and you are likely to get a blank stare in return. In a society devoted to continuous economic growth, there is no way to[Read More…]

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Questions to Richard Heinberg from a 15-Year-Old Student

Questions to Richard Heinberg from a 15-Year-Old Student

Callum Alexander from Scotland recently contacted me with a few queries about renewable energy. I thought they were interesting questions that might occur to others, so I asked his permission to publish our dialog. Callum: If you replace a coal- or gas-fired power plant with a solar and/or wind farm (with a back-up reliable energy source), will you reduce or[Read More…]

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Nature Is Not a Machine—We Treat It So at Our Peril

Nature Is Not a Machine—We Treat It So at Our Peril

From genetic engineering to geoengineering, we treat nature as though it’s a machine. This view of nature is deeply embedded in Western thought, but it’s a fundamental misconception with potentially disastrous consequences. Climate change, avers Rex Tillerson, ex-CEO of ExxonMobil and erstwhile US Secretary of State,  “is an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions.” This brief statement encapsulates how[Read More…]

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Our Dark Wicked Side

Our Dark Wicked Side

We have a dark wicked side. It controls many of our thoughts and actions. It ensnares the smart and the dumb, the privileged and the non privileged, the healthy and the sick. In today’s world it undermines many of our economic, social, political, philosophical and religious structures. It may be about to end our life on this Planet. This Essay defines it[Read More…]

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How to manage urbanization

How to manage urbanization

Urban areas are generally perceived to be expanding at the cost of displacing villagers and destroying villages. Even if their houses can be retained, villagers still lose their farms, farming and related livelihoods, being left only with cash compensation for purchased/ acquired farmland. Even if they are not cheated, as is quite often the case, and manage to get adequate[Read More…]

by 31/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Shetland crofthouse museum

The Crofting System

A land tenure system that has existed for hundreds of years and remains relevant even in the twenty-first century is the Crofting system. Crofting is a traditional form of land tenure and small-scale food production system, specific to the Scottish Highlands, the islands of Scotland and earlier on the Isle of Man. Croft, Crofter and Crofting – these three are[Read More…]

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Forest Food — Important Source of Nutrition, Income and Joy for the Poor

Forest Food — Important Source of Nutrition, Income and Joy for the Poor

                                                                             “ They had never in their short lives had nice things to eat . They were young and their palates were untrained,[Read More…]

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(Photo: FridaysForFuture/Flickr/cc)

From Systems Theory to Action

At this time ecological thinkers are emphasizing systems, especially as these are defined by systems theory.  This interdiscipline is a life-saving departure from traditional reductionist methods in science but has yet to be made relevant to people’s individual everyday conduct.  The objective of this essay is to develop the notion of systems to explain how people can act systematically now[Read More…]

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On Degrowth

On Degrowth

What is degrowth? Degrowth is an ambiguous  label used by different currents that have emerged or have been reconsidered as such since the 1960s when the contemporary environmentalist movement got underway.  The bulk of these movements identify as Greens although it includes eco-anarchists (e.g. Trainer 2010; Australian Simplicity Institute) and others.  The ambiguity of what degrowth stands for is a problem both for its[Read More…]

by 30/07/2021 Comments are Disabled Book Review
 The Existential Question of Our Age

 The Existential Question of Our Age

Here is the existential question of our Age: Is there a way for us to break out of our downward ecological spiral? The answer: Yes. But first we will have to examine all of those existing patterns of our thought and behavior we have believed to contain “inherent truths” that are now an existential threat; our lifestyles, our economics, our political systems,[Read More…]

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The case for ecocentric socialism: Part 1

The case for ecocentric socialism: Part 1

“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions[Read More…]

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Peace, Ecology and People

Peace, Ecology and People

The existential crisis has emerged at world level as the most crucial issue of our times. As is widely acknowledged now, this consists mainly of two components. Firstly, there are about a dozen serious environmental problems led by, but certainly not confined to, climate change. Secondly, there are the weapons of mass destruction as well as the possibility of space[Read More…]

by 15/07/2021 Comments are Disabled World
Applying Nonviolent Noncooperation

Applying Nonviolent Noncooperation

I suppose I could have titled this writing Applying Nonviolent Noncooperation to Pernicious Consumerism, or to Malignant Normalcy.  Notwithstanding, here are my thoughts…. For as long as it remains profitable NOT to find or accept solutions to planetary problems, those who possess economic and political power will not allow solutions.  Looked at from another side, it is the same as[Read More…]

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#WorldLocalizationDay: Peasants rise up to demand genuine food-system reforms

#WorldLocalizationDay: Peasants rise up to demand genuine food-system reforms

Food nourishes life. Our farmers produce more than enough food to feed all the people on the planet but due to socially unjust and ecologically unsustainable food systems, many people are forced to go hungry. Moreover farmers who help nurture life, continue to struggle for their livelihoods and human rights. In lead up to 2021 World Localization Day, farmers from[Read More…]

by 16/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
 An Aspirational Vision of Life After Fossil Fuels

 An Aspirational Vision of Life After Fossil Fuels

What will life be like after peak oil, in an age of major climate shifts? Hollywood movies often depict it as a bleak, dystopian world where each day is a struggle to survive after every system we depend on has been stripped away. Unfortunately, that version of the story seems to be on track so far. Despite mounting scientific consensus on[Read More…]

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photo credit: Three Pemon youths By La Mesa – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11506616

7 Things I Learned by Collaborating with Indigenous Wisdom Keepers

I first met Indigenous wisdom keepers as a child. After days of off-road driving to the Gran Sabana in Venezuela, we had arrived at the ancestral lands of the Pemón people, where they still lived. “Go fill up your thermoses with water from the river,” my father said. As I got out of the car with my round, red canteen[Read More…]

by 09/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
126 Nobel Laureates and Experts Issue Timely Warning on Some Crucial Issues, But  Miss Other Urgent Concerns

126 Nobel Laureates and Experts Issue Timely Warning on Some Crucial Issues, But  Miss Other Urgent Concerns

An extremely important recent statement on critical issues faced by  humankind was recently released in late April  by 126 Nobel Laureates.  This statement was inspired by the discussions at the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit , issued by the Steering Committee and co-signed by Nobel Laureates and experts. This statement is titled Our Planet, Our Future—A Call for Action (OPOF-CA). While this[Read More…]

by 08/06/2021 Comments are Disabled World
What Is The Best Way Of Disposing Off A Dead Body?

What Is The Best Way Of Disposing Off A Dead Body?

Written by Abhay Jain and Sandeep Pandey As Covid consumes human life in a very conspicuous way we are confronted with additional problem of disposing off human corpses. Cremation grounds are lit with continuous pyres, graveyards are running out of land and now Ganga has become a mass grave potentially polluting its water. In India, one estimate reveals that funeral[Read More…]

by 27/05/2021 1 comment Counter Solutions
Potential of Cooperative Movement Not Adequately Realized Yet

Potential of Cooperative Movement Not Adequately Realized Yet

             Aggressive forms of capitalism are not only snatching jobs ruthlessly but in addition are also  increasing  job related discontent, frustration and alienation. At the  same time there is growing yearning for forms of economic organizations which can provide  more satisfactory, stable, sustainable and creative livelihoods. In this context cooperatives should be getting increasing attention. However organization of cooperatives cannot[Read More…]

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For Real Progress Learning to Avoid is As Important as Learning to Acquire

For Real Progress Learning to Avoid is As Important as Learning to Acquire

Human beings were bequeathed a bountiful and beautiful planet as their home and there is enough for all of us to lead a satisfying life, while also providing enough for other forms of life. But there is overwhelming scientific evidence now that this has been messed up badly, mainly by the more selfish and powerful members of humanity, with the[Read More…]

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Every Day Is An Earth Day: Suggestions for Living in an Ecozoic Future

Every Day Is An Earth Day: Suggestions for Living in an Ecozoic Future

Here are two lists of changes that can and should be made, restoring this Earth home more fully to a habitable, life-diversified, and evolving planet. Outward behaviors everyone can practice and contribute to: Reduce and eliminate uses of fossil fuels.  Support and participate in clean energy alternatives. Reduce and eliminate non-biodegradable plastics.  Support and participate in oceanic and fresh water[Read More…]

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Gandhian Concept of Swadeshi Has An Increasing and Wider Relevance Today

Gandhian Concept of Swadeshi Has An Increasing and Wider Relevance Today

The concept of swadeshi played an important role in the freedom movement in India in opposing colonial exploitation, but as was emphasized by Mahatma Gandhi even then, we should also look at this concept in terms of its continuing relevance even after the end of colonial rule. It is good to see that this concept is still mentioned and discussed[Read More…]

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Contribution of Urban Gardening Can Improve Greatly with A Few Changes

Contribution of Urban Gardening Can Improve Greatly with A Few Changes

One of the first  ways in which a city gets judged is by its greenery. However it is well to remember that aspects of urban greenery at first glance can be quite deceptive. There may be big lawns with very  colorful flowers on various sides. But a question worth asking is the extent to which these have  involved heavy inputs[Read More…]

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Ultimate Success

Ultimate Success

In early fall 2020, I took a break from intense work on textbook preparation to immerse myself in nature, in the form of a month on the Olympic Peninsula. I spent periods of good weather in the backcountry, and therefore didn’t bother carrying a tent along in my already-too-heavy backpack. Somehow sleep is more precious when there’s some chance of[Read More…]

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Movements for Improving Internal Strengths, Integrity and Resilience of Rural Communities

Movements for Improving Internal Strengths, Integrity and Resilience of Rural Communities

Social movements in the context of rural areas have generally been discussed at two levels. Both involve a plea for  justice, or a reduction or removal of perceived injustices. Both are highly relevant. Firstly, there are movements  which relate to perceived injustices of an external agency. The external agency may be the government or a private party, or a collusion[Read More…]

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For Resolving Farming Crisis, Some Small Farmers Show the Way With Big Achievements

For Resolving Farming Crisis, Some Small Farmers Show the Way With Big Achievements

          Just as it is important for a journalist to report about problems, similarly it is important to report about achievements . While writing about agriculture for the greater part I have been reporting about problems because the overall strategy of farm development in India has been so problematic in terms of raising economic and environmental costs. But whenever I[Read More…]

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The World As It Is And The World As It Could Be

The World As It Is And The World As It Could Be

A new freely downloadable book I would like to announce the publication of a new book, in which I have tried to contrast the world that we experience today,  filled with terrifying existential threats, such as catastrophic climate change, pandemics, all-destroying nuclear war, and the threat of large-scale famine, with the world that we would wish it to be. The[Read More…]

by 29/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions, Book Review
History reveals that our controlling class is irresponsible

History reveals that our controlling class is irresponsible

The dominant class writes our history from their own perspective, therefore its harsh brutal and dishonest, and that’s blame on our human nature to absolve our masters. We are unaware of our entrapment in that harsh competitive society that’s bounded together by our compulsive socialness; we therefore see that setup as something of an asset as it still nurtures our[Read More…]

by 27/03/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Himachal Efforts For  Self-Reliance in Seeds to Support Natural Farming Need Support and Wider Reach 

Himachal Efforts For  Self-Reliance in Seeds to Support Natural Farming Need Support and Wider Reach 

Hilly areas with their varying heights and land categories are known for their valuable bio-diversity which should be protected. The vast Himalayan ranges including  hills and valleys, plains and peaks in particular are all the more important in this context. While the tendency to introduce genetic uniformity of monocultures was unfortunate everywhere, it was all the more harmful in the[Read More…]

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Increasing Need of Community Support for Social  Activists

Increasing Need of Community Support for Social  Activists

Social activism  has grown in India generally in conditions in which institutional support has been taken as the main source of support.  However there are many reasons, including those relating to stability and durability of support, where in addition more options of community support should be considered. This can also lead to conditions in which social activists have less constraints[Read More…]

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 Soil Is Gold

 Soil Is Gold

Gold has long been considered the most important form of wealth. Diamonds are another. When oil became the most widely used source of energy, then people started referring to oil as the black gold. At various times since then, different  important minerals have been highlighted as being very valuable. But the more these minerals are extracted  in any country, the[Read More…]

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Capital Versus Biosphere: An Eco-social Agenda Fit for the Times

Capital Versus Biosphere: An Eco-social Agenda Fit for the Times

The coronavirus pandemic has been a reminder of humanity’s inherent interconnection with the natural world. At the same time, the crisis threatens to further deprioritise climate action when it is needed most urgently. Joan Herrera i Torres, former leader of the Catalan Green party, proposes an eco-social agenda for post-Covid Europe based on three key elements: protecting biodiversity, valuing the[Read More…]

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Most Important Changes the World Cannot Postpone Any more

Most Important Changes the World Cannot Postpone Any more

      A significant number of people in world are working hard for making  improvements in several aspects of life at several levels. They all help to create a better world. They help to reduce the distress of people and other forms of life, they help to create the conditions for more justice and equality, they protect environment in various ways[Read More…]

by 28/02/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Why Concepts of Earth  Without Borders and One World Have A New and Wider Relevance Now

Why Concepts of Earth  Without Borders and One World Have A New and Wider Relevance Now

          The beautiful phrase ‘Earth Without Borders’ has been used in more than one contexts from time to time. This is often used to convey the idea that those who work with a spirit of serving humanity should not be confined merely to serving their own country. This may be particularly true of a profession of doctors which ideally should[Read More…]

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 Our Badly Threatened World Needs Out-of-Box Governance Reform

 Our Badly Threatened World Needs Out-of-Box Governance Reform

          It is a basic principle of effective governance that it should be in accordance with ability to achieve the most important aims and tasks. In terms of this very basic definition, the huge, colossal failures of existing governance systems in our deeply troubled world facing unprecedented threats have been exposed in more and more glaring and disturbing ways in[Read More…]

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Degrowing for peace? Tackling structural violence and climate resilience

Degrowing for peace? Tackling structural violence and climate resilience

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda sets out global priorities, calling on countries to take “transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path”. The Agenda seeks to strengthen universal peace as part of a holistic agenda, bringing together social, environmental, and economic goals for sustainable development. Globally and in our local communities, we face complex[Read More…]

by 15/02/2021 2 comments Counter Solutions
Doughnut Economics Boots Capitalism Out!

Doughnut Economics Boots Capitalism Out!

The rapid rise of Covid-19 has spawned a renaissance in socio-economic thinking about the best way to face the future, as mayors of cities throughout the world search for answers in the face of declining revenues while society demands more urgent help. Eureka! Amsterdam, the Venice of the North, discovers doughnut economics. With a click of fingers, it abandons the[Read More…]

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Majority Report

Majority Report

There is something at the very core about us that needs to change.  This cannot be emphasized often enough.  We need to change how we think.  How we think of ourselves, our place in creation, how we think of how we live, how we think of our relationships to the diversity of planetary life, to structures, elements, systems of nature[Read More…]

by 28/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
The Most Obvious and Important Role of Humanity  is Now the Most Neglected and Violated

The Most Obvious and Important Role of Humanity  is Now the Most Neglected and Violated

Ever since the dawn of human life, philosophers as well as common people have often pondered on the meaning and role , the goal and aims of human life. Many ideas have emerged, some interesting and valuable, others clumsy and risky. When humanity is examined not just in isolation but in integration with  nature and  environment, and all the millions[Read More…]

by 22/01/2021 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Photo by George M. Groutas

Yearnings for Alternative Food and Farming Systems

           “Men who can graft the  trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce . Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.” – John Steinbeck[Read More…]

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Contribution of Farming to Checking Climate Change Can be Immense, and Traditional Wisdom Can Contribute Much

Contribution of Farming to Checking Climate Change Can be Immense, and Traditional Wisdom Can Contribute Much

Keeping in view the importance of checking climate change , all sectors must contribute to he reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In this context the extremely important contribution which the food and agriculture  sector can make was underestimated initially but more and more research is now indicating that the contribution of this sector can extremely important. In fact if all[Read More…]

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Better Understanding Needed of Close Link Between Soil Health and Nutrition

Better Understanding Needed of Close Link Between Soil Health and Nutrition

           While the critical importance of soil health for good farming is well-established and  widely recognized, one aspect which has not received adequate attention is the link of soil health to nutrition of crops. This aspect needs to be explored further and the already available evidence should also be better appreciated and collected. In a note of the Food and[Read More…]

by 21/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
How Farmers’ Laws Are Undermining Sustainability And Equity

How Farmers’ Laws Are Undermining Sustainability And Equity

Context Recently, as a part of the ‘Satyagraha series’ organized by SPI, I got an opportunity to listen to Dr. Shreekumar, who is an organic farmer in the south, and “student and practitioner of sustainability and just resource use”. He has a BTech (chemical engineering from Karnataka Regional Engineering College), Ph.D. (Indian Institute of Science), and has taught at NITK[Read More…]

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Life’s primary need is to secure one’s offspring

Life’s primary need is to secure one’s offspring

Our young ones are our primary social responsibilities; we must ensure the planet is able to support them in the best health and spirit by maintaining a bountiful life, which was our responsibility when we lived in small groups that were able to know every one’s character. However, it’s impossible to know the character of every one in a large[Read More…]

by 11/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Essential Concerns and Priorities of Social Movements

Essential Concerns and Priorities of Social Movements

There are  many kinds of social movements and it is understandable that social movements are often preoccupied with their immediate demands which are likely to be of a very specific nature. At the same time  there are some very basic concerns and priorities which should be common to more or less all social movements on an enduring basis. No matter[Read More…]

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What do human-elephant conflict, smart cities, thermal power plants on a sea coast, C-section births and the recent migrant labour debacle have in common?

What do human-elephant conflict, smart cities, thermal power plants on a sea coast, C-section births and the recent migrant labour debacle have in common?

Stop. Think. To me, the first word that comes to mind is development. Cambridge Dictionary defines development as the process by which something grows or changes and becomes more advanced. In Economics, development is irretrievably tied with persistent growth with  the most popular metric for measuring such growth: GDP. As a consequence, some countries are considered developed, and others, like[Read More…]

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What Is the Alternative Farming and Food System That India Needs?

What Is the Alternative Farming and Food System That India Needs?

As the attention of people of India is focused on agriculture in the context of the farmers’ movement, this is a good time to initiate a debate on exactly what sort of alternative system of farming and food the country needs. It is not enough to criticize the existing system, we should be clear about what we actually need. If[Read More…]

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Can We Win?

Can We Win?

By win, I mean win it all, not win a little. Win a new world. Win new defining social institutions. Win an end to injustice, inequality, subordination, and domination. Win an end to class, gender, sex, race, and all hierarchies that position some people above and other people below. Win equity. Win solidarity. Win diversity. Win self management. Win today’s[Read More…]

by 01/12/2020 1 comment Counter Solutions
The planet cannot heal until we rip the mask off the West’s war machine

The planet cannot heal until we rip the mask off the West’s war machine

Making political sense of the world can be tricky unless one understands the role of the state in capitalist societies. The state is not primarily there to represent voters or uphold democratic rights and values; it is a vehicle for facilitating and legitimating the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. In a recent post, I wrote[Read More…]

by 30/11/2020 1 comment Counter Solutions
While Confronting New Challenges, Social Movements Must Also  Consolidate Old Commitments and Strengths

While Confronting New Challenges, Social Movements Must Also  Consolidate Old Commitments and Strengths

The world has been changing fast, and so must social movements, to keep up with the emerging challenges. The most significant aspect of the fast-changing world is the emergence of very serious threats to the basic life-nurturing conditions of earth, and in keeping with the recognition of this as the most important issue, social movements must prepare in many creative[Read More…]

by 28/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Survival Crisis Has No Technological Fix; Resolving This Needs Changes in the Way People Live and Think

Survival Crisis Has No Technological Fix; Resolving This Needs Changes in the Way People Live and Think

Although there is increasing recognition among many eminent scientists and learned scholars ( and of course many environment and disarmament activists )  that the world is now faced with a very serious human-made survival crisis, which has no comparison in  the  history so far, no credible road-map has  yet emerged to avoid this many-sided, very serious crisis. We have some[Read More…]

by 26/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Social Agro-Ecology Is The Key To Real Progress and Security of Food and Farming Systems

Social Agro-Ecology Is The Key To Real Progress and Security of Food and Farming Systems

Despite some local differences, the  food and farming systems of most countries have suffered from somewhat similar serious problems in recent decades. Firstly, the problems of ordinary farmers have intensified despite government claims of increasing farm support. In many cases this is related to heavy escalation of costs, in turn leading to debts. Many have lost the status of owner[Read More…]

by 25/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Toward Global Sharing

Toward Global Sharing

Since the onset of the global pandemic, the idea of a universal basic income has rightly received high-level political attention—not only within individual countries (such as here in the UK where it was at least debated by Parliament back in March), but also on the international level as endorsed by the United Nations. Never has there been such a need[Read More…]

by 24/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Photo by George M. Groutas

An Appeal To Farmers’ Movement –Kindly Give A More Central Role to Ecologically Protective Farming

The farmers’ movement in India has a historically very important role in protecting the small ( and medium ) farmer base of agriculture in the country. In recent times the movement has done well to oppose the corporatization trends as these ultimately present a threat to small farmers, as has been evident from the historical experience of many countries. This[Read More…]

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Thinking Out of the Box  on Climate Change Needed for Timely Solutions to Emerge

Thinking Out of the Box  on Climate Change Needed for Timely Solutions to Emerge

Climate change provides the  strangest example of a problem which is very widely and increasingly recognized by the best available scientific opinion to be a huge and definite danger to basic life nurturing conditions of our planet, and yet, in the decades after this became convincingly established, the emissions which cause this have been permitted to increase beyond dangerous limits.[Read More…]

by 22/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
India’s Economy Needs A Great Green Stimulus

India’s Economy Needs A Great Green Stimulus

In the wake of the Covid 19 pandemic the crisis in Indian economy has accentuated and this deepening  crisis has  most adversely affected some of the poorest sections of society. While the need for government policy to deliver an adequate stimulus package for the economy is felt widely, there is wide difference of opinion regarding the precise form this should[Read More…]

by 21/11/2020 1 comment Counter Solutions
Changes in Value Systems A Must For Resolving Big Problems

Changes in Value Systems A Must For Resolving Big Problems

Today in our deeply troubled world  several problems have reached a situation where the basic life-nurturing conditions of our planet are threatened. These include serious environmental problems like climate change and the accumulation and the race for weapons of mass destruction. In addition there are the long-persisting problems of injustice, inequality and exploitation which are  perhaps the most common cause[Read More…]

by 20/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Playing Politics with the Truth

Playing Politics with the Truth

The 1980 film Brubaker starring Robert Redford, based on a true story, had one scene that told it all.  Reform warden Henry Brubaker gets fired for seeking to uncover past corruption surrounding the penitentiary. As he is walking away down the hallway, his friend Lillian, who works for the governor and actually got him the job, runs after him. She[Read More…]

by 18/11/2020 1 comment World
Photo by George M. Groutas

Organic Farmers Need  Support and Linkages to a Fair Market

There is worldwide realization that food system has been  becoming less safe and healthy. This is to a large extent because of the use of excessive  chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Some of the inputs used in fact have been found to be so poisonous and harmful that it is a very sad surprise how their use in food and[Read More…]

by 15/11/2020 1 comment Counter Solutions
From Fear and Anger to Collective Purpose

From Fear and Anger to Collective Purpose

A few days ago, I participated in a webinar that introduced me to Paul Chappell, a thoughtful peace activist with an extraordinary history. Born in 1980, Chappell grew up in Alabama, the son of an immigrant Korean mother and a violent mixed-race father traumatized by military service in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. His abusive home environment shaped in him[Read More…]

by 14/11/2020 1 comment Counter Solutions
Linking Justice  to Environment Protection –  Meeting Basic Needs of All While Also Reducing GHG Emissions

Linking Justice  to Environment Protection –  Meeting Basic Needs of All While Also Reducing GHG Emissions

            While the very pressing need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is very widely recognized at the scientific level, this can become an issue of mass mobilization only if this is also linked to justice based issues. When world level planning for reducing GHG emissions is linked to meeting the basic needs of all people, then this will be[Read More…]

by 05/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
First and Foremost Responsibility is to Protect Earth for Children

First and Foremost Responsibility is to Protect Earth for Children

    Our children and their children’s grandchildren have the right to hold us to a high standard of accountability when their future—and maybe their survival—is hanging in the balance. They  too deserve something more than a generation of political leaders who look at the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced and then sit on their hands. – Human Development Report[Read More…]

by 03/11/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Soil and carbon sequestration

Soil and carbon sequestration

Soil has the capacity to bind large quantities of carbon in the long term. An international team of researchers, including from the University of Bonn, is now advocating effective use of this potential. Experts estimate that this could reduce the increase of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by a third. At the same time, agricultural yields in[Read More…]

by 30/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Mangal Turbine –Neglected Innovation of Great Potential

Mangal Turbine –Neglected Innovation of Great Potential

Why  An Innovation That Can Reduce Vast Amounts of Farmers’ Costs, Foreign Exchange and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Still Continue to  Suffer From Official Neglect and Apathy After Repeated Official Confirmation of Its Great Value?             If an innovation can save billions of Rs. worth of diesel for farmers while at the same time cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions, then[Read More…]

by 29/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
The Rescue of the Spirit and of Nature

The Rescue of the Spirit and of Nature

The world has reached its limit. Humanity no longer resists. Who dares to defend this order full of injustice, shame, catastrophes, depredation? In the name of whom or what? What –ism can you defend today? It only remains to delve into natural history and human history in search of the essence of the species. To try to overcome it by tracing[Read More…]

by 23/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Humility, Caring and Wisdom Make a Better Future Possible

Humility, Caring and Wisdom Make a Better Future Possible

For many, the pandemic has renewed our innate appreciation for and connection to nature. People have taken to growing food on windowsills and in backyard and community gardens. We’re cultivating yeasts to bake bread and getting outside more to walk, run, swim and cycle. In the face of uncertainty, nature brings solace and sustenance. Research shows time spent in forests — and[Read More…]

by 18/10/2020 1 comment Counter Solutions
Guddanti / Pixabay

Educating in times of systemic collapse

The economic and health crises which we are now experiencing form part of a more global systemic crisis, a consequence of the degeneration of our socio-economic order. Behind this degeneration lies (among other factors) climate change, ecosystemic destabilisation and reduced availability of materials and energy. What we have experienced in the last few months (huge fires in Australia, California and[Read More…]

by 15/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Dileswari teaching children in her village

Balangir girl bridging learning gap among underprivileged children during lockdown

Dileswari, who is earning praise from locals for her dedication during the lockdown, underpins the importance of education and why it cannot wait till the schools reopen Balangir, Odisha: At the height of the pandemic, Dileswari Dharua, a 21-year-old intermediate college student from Balangir district hails as a Good Samaritan for her dedication in teaching the academically low performing children,[Read More…]

by 14/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Who is “we”?

Who is “we”?

Who is “we”? We humans have made a mess of things, which is readily evident if we face the avalanche of studies and statistics describing the contemporary ecological crises we face. But even with the mounting evidence of the consequences for people and planet, we have not committed to a serious project to slow the damage that we do. One reasonable response to those statements is, “Who is ‘we’?”[Read More…]

by 13/10/2020 1 comment Counter Solutions
What If Preventing Collapse Isn’t Profitable?

What If Preventing Collapse Isn’t Profitable?

The real downside of the green-profit narrative has been that it created the assumption in many people’s minds that the solution to climate change and other environmental dilemmas is technical, and that policy makers and industrialists will implement it for us, so that the way we live doesn’t need to change in any fundamental way. That’s never been true. The[Read More…]

by 24/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Our duty is to ensure that our young ones survive

Our duty is to ensure that our young ones survive

What does civilization stand for and what it has produced over its four to five thousand years of its existence. In Western Europe from the earliest civilised times those societies were supported by the labour of slaves until the Christian era. Yet we highly value the work of intellect whose lives were supported and nurtured by slaves before the end[Read More…]

by 24/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Cutting Back

Cutting Back

I am adamant about this topic. I know that the only way forward is to limit ourselves in resource and energy use. In that vein, I wrote to the USA Sierra group that was touting electric cars: “I respectfully disagree with you. From where does the majority of our electricity derive? The answer is fossil fuels. That is obvious. So[Read More…]

by 22/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
(Photo: Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Confronting Collapse

As we pick up the pieces of the shattered economy, the route to the Great Transition becomes clear: we need to recapture and democratize money as a lever for resource allocation and collective power. A quick survey of the GTI scenarios and the world around us will show that we slid from Conventional Worlds to Barbarization in the first three months of[Read More…]

by 19/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Choices and cost

Choices and cost

Root Cause: I don’t know if it is right to attribute this to the education system and societal values but the most important thing that is sought after in life is ‘career’ and ‘money’. Because let’s face it, it is only after possession of this that you can afford the most sought after livelihood, you can enrol your child into[Read More…]

by 17/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
In the pursuit of ‘Khushaal Zindagi’- Journey of villagers from being beneficiary to researcher

In the pursuit of ‘Khushaal Zindagi’- Journey of villagers from being beneficiary to researcher

By Vivek Sinha, Parijat Ghosh, Dibyendu Chaudhuri Introduction Sukanti Oraon of Jana, a village in Gumla district of Jharkhand, clearly remembers the day her Self Help Group (SHG) was formed. It was the 25th of November 1995, Saturday. Women of this Adivasi village came together to form SHGs with guidance from PRADAN, a national level Non-profit. Like many other villages[Read More…]

by 14/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Education in a Time of Collapse

Education in a Time of Collapse

In a recent committee meeting at my institution, I heard a colleague say: “Our job is to prepare students for the world.” This comment wasn’t intended as an earth-shaking revelation, but it nevertheless caught my attention and got me thinking. On the surface, the idea appears to be simple and non-controversial, even banal. Those of us who are associated with[Read More…]

by 05/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Crisis Management: Post Pandemic – with a System of Justice (Part – II)

Crisis Management: Post Pandemic – with a System of Justice (Part – II)

In the first article of Crisis Management, discussing the solutions “Adopt a Village” was an idea shared. This thought is not just for doing social service but also to improve the financial conditions of those villagers, establishing small scale industries, creating employment opportunities, overall to contribute to the country’s GDP. In an article of EPW written by Prof. Arun Kumar[Read More…]

by 01/09/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Going against the tide: The Changing mindset in Jana, Jharkhand

Going against the tide: The Changing mindset in Jana, Jharkhand

Co-Written by Bibhubanta Barad. Parijat Ghosh and Dibyendu Chaudhuri Introduction It was a sunny summer morning in 2017. Self Help Group (SHG) members of Jana[1] congregated beneath the tamarind tree, their usual meeting place.  Some men also were sitting there and the SHG members were taking loan to purchase inorganic fertilizers and hybrid seeds. They were discussing whether they would[Read More…]

by 27/08/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
System Change: A Basic Primer to the Solidarity Economy

System Change: A Basic Primer to the Solidarity Economy

Co-Written by Emily Kawano and Julie Matthaei The COVID-19 pandemic has upended our world. It has laid bare the inequity, the limits, and the failures of capitalism. The door to a better future beyond capitalism, already cracked open by the Great Recession, has been pushed open a little wider. Things that seemed impossible a few months ago now seem both[Read More…]

by 28/07/2020 2 comments Counter Solutions
For a better world, our lifestyle must be based on as less resources as possible

For a better world, our lifestyle must be based on as less resources as possible

Senior activist Medha Patkar launched a youth led, Towards A Better World campaign, in an online session where several youth leaders of Fridays For Future (a global movement led by Greta Thunberg) and other youth activists took part. We must change our life, lifestyle and sources of livelihood for a sustainable and just development, said Medha Patkar. “People should commit[Read More…]

by 24/07/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Gearing Up or Dying Down

Gearing Up or Dying Down

Since the 1960s, how many movements have excitedly exploded into existence, only to later morbidly melt away? In contrast, how many movements have constantly interminably grown and strengthened over time? The answer, best we can tell, is that most movements have rapidly grown during their initial stages, only to lethargically decline later. Most movements gloriously birth and later ingloriously die.[Read More…]

by 11/07/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
The Bell is tolling; Are you listening, Growth maniacs?! Economy of Development Vs Economy of Permanence

The Bell is tolling; Are you listening, Growth maniacs?! Economy of Development Vs Economy of Permanence

Kenneth E Boulding, an English-American economist and an interdisciplinary philosopher once said;  “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” Further, he added, “unfortunately, we all are economists.” Boulding made this statement in 70’s. Sad to say that, we still adhere to the illusion implied by Boulding for[Read More…]

by 11/07/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
It’s the economy, stupid!  Or is it the stupid economy?

It’s the economy, stupid! Or is it the stupid economy?

According to statistics from the World Health Organisation, the number of coronavirus cases being reported worldwide remains significant.  For example, in the 24-hours between 9th and 10th July, over 200,000 new cases and 5,575 deaths were reported globally with the highest occurrences in the US, Brazil and India, followed closely by large swathes of Asia, the Middle East and South[Read More…]

by 10/07/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Lamberto Zannier: “Global Problems Need Global Solutions”

Lamberto Zannier: “Global Problems Need Global Solutions”

Ambassador Lamberto Zannier of Italy took up the mandate of OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities on 19 July 2017. Before taking up the position of High Commissioner, Zannier was OSCE Secretary General for two consecutive three-year terms, from 1 July 2011 until 30 June 2017. He spoke online at the “FROM VICTORY DAY TO CORONA DISARRAY: 75 YEARS OF[Read More…]

by 06/07/2020 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Barcelona’s Brave Struggle To Advance The Commons

Barcelona’s Brave Struggle To Advance The Commons

On a visit to Barcelona last week, I learned a great deal about the City’s pioneering role in developing “the city as a commons.”  I also learned that crystallizing a new commons paradigm – even in a city committed to cooperatives and open digital networks – comes with many gnarly complexities. The Barcelona city government is led by former housing[Read More…]

by 30/11/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
 The Search For Radical Alternatives: Key Elements And Principles

 The Search For Radical Alternatives: Key Elements And Principles

  Can there be a collective search for paradigms and pathways towards a world that is sustainable, equitable and just? How can such frameworks and visions build on an existing heritage of ideas and worldviews and cultures, and on past or new grassroots practice? How can they be fundamentally different from today’s dominant economic and political system, which has brought[Read More…]

by 03/11/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
The Elephant In The Room Is Capitalism. Maybe.

The Elephant In The Room Is Capitalism. Maybe.

I’d been hoping to pay another visit to the Peasant’s Republic of Wessex, but red tape has been holding me up at the border so it’ll have to wait probably for another couple of weeks. Instead, I thought I’d offer a few top-of-the-head thoughts on Felicity Lawrence’s recent article about agricultural pesticide use in The Guardian – or, more specifically,[Read More…]

by 11/10/2016 6 comments Counter Solutions
The Atmosphere As A Global Commons

The Atmosphere As A Global Commons

We are only gradually beginning to realize that global common-pool resources are assets to humankind that should be managed as commons. Wasting them would be disastrous. We are trustees of these assets and thus, trustees for future generations. We have the duty to invest so as to increase or at least maintain these assets

by 03/10/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
El Buen Vivir And The Commons

El Buen Vivir And The Commons

Buen Vivir is a proposal aimed at making visible and expressible aspects of reality that are ignored by the dominant paradigm. It is a proposal from a radical and spiritual perspective of ecology, and is logically incompatible with development and industrialization. It speaks of the possibility of living in common, for which the very concept “development” is not only insufficient but mistaken.

by 27/09/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Dear Humans, How Long Will You Live?

Dear Humans, How Long Will You Live?

The truth is we don’t know. We pretend that we can continue to dodge the mass terrors like the one a generation ago, where we eluded a nuclear annihilation. It is now more often that we find asking ourselves, that for how long the Earth will last, when we have poisoned the water and soils and trampled thousands of creatures[Read More…]

by 27/09/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Self-Sustainability Of Community Radio: Stories From India

Self-Sustainability Of Community Radio: Stories From India

The legalization of setting up a Community Radio Station came after a long and voiced revolution from various grass-root organizations, individuals and communities. Community Radio is not just something which is feeding the people’s mind with few people’s choices, interests and beliefs, its inception goes back to the logic of providing Voice to the Voiceless, Being A Tool of Development[Read More…]

by 25/08/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Wild Democracy: A Biodiversity Of Resistance And Renewal

Wild Democracy: A Biodiversity Of Resistance And Renewal

Introduction With characteristic insight, the great American philosopher, John Dewey, once wrote: ‘Every generation has to accomplish democracy over again for itself.’[1] His point was that, at each moment in history, citizens and nations inevitably face unique challenges and problems, so we should not assume the democratic institutions and practices inherited from the past will be adequate for the conditions of[Read More…]

by 23/08/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Photo by Daquella manera

Let’s Build A Regenerative World

The current state of American politics must make us question whether any of our leaders in the Beltway can be described as “grown-ups”, i.e., fully mature and sane individuals. Between the endless war crimes, corporate corruption, lobbyists who bribe congressmen and write legislation, and the ineptitude of federal entities who are supposed to protect our health such as the FDA,[Read More…]

by 20/08/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Photo by runneralan2004

Four Important Lessons From Cuba’s Urban Food Survival Strategy

Cuba has come a long way since the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the loss of imports crucial for the island nation’s industrial agriculture system—such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers—left Cuba with a severe food crisis in the 1990s. Today, Cuba has become a regional leader in sustainable agricultural research. Within its practices and institutions lies a model for[Read More…]

by 19/08/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
“It All Turns On Affection”

“It All Turns On Affection”

Land and people have suffered together, as invariably they must. Under the rule of industrial economics, the land, our country, has been pillaged for the enrichment, supposedly, of those humans who have claimed the right to own or exploit it without limit. Of the land-community much has been consumed, much has been wasted, almost nothing has flourished. But this has not been inevitable. We do not have to live as if we are alone.

by 13/08/2016 1 comment Life/Philosophy
John D. Liu On Regenerative Ecology And Naturalized Economies

John D. Liu On Regenerative Ecology And Naturalized Economies

 “If we say that money comes from ecological function instead from extraction, manufacturing buying and selling, then we have a system in which all human efforts go toward restoring, protecting and preserving ecological function. That is what we need to mitigate and adapt to climate change, to ensure food security, to ensure that human civilizations survive. Our monetary system must[Read More…]

by 01/08/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Keep It Local! The Complementary Currency Alternative

Keep It Local! The Complementary Currency Alternative

New alternative and complementary currencies are a growing worldwide trend, and many states in the US have created their own local curriencies. Our local alternative currency, the Hudson Valley Current, has members in several counties straddling the Hudson River, just above New York City. It began with just a few of us; each coming to the idea from very different places

by 23/07/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Bologna, Emilia Romagna. Photo by Tomas Kohl.

The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce A Third Of Its GDP

Emilia Romagna, a region with nearly 4.5 million people whose capital is the medieval university city of Bologna, has one of the densest cooperative economies in the world. About two out of every three inhabitants are co-op members, together producing around 30 percent of the region’s GDP…

by 16/07/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
What We As A People Can Do

What We As A People Can Do

  Co-Written by Richard Heinberg, David Fridley Ed. note: This is Chapter 10 of Richard Heinberg’s and David Fridley’s new book, Our Renewable Future, now available from Island Press. Post Carbon Institute’s companion website,ourrenewablefuture.org has also just been launched and contains additional content not in the book. Sound national and international climate policies are crucial: without them, it will be impossible to[Read More…]

by 15/07/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Another Exit Strategy?

Another Exit Strategy?

The Brexit earthquake, possibly the biggest since the 2008 financial collapse, provides another opportunity to question the economic and political structures that cause such quakes. I’ve heard only a handful of voices amidst the high-pitched cacophony of the Brexit debate that have gone beyond the the narrow and racist nationalism of the dominant ‘leave’ voices, and the free-trade nationalism of[Read More…]

by 15/07/2016 2 comments Counter Solutions
Undoing The Ideology Of Growth

Undoing The Ideology Of Growth

With climate change, resource limits, and secular stagnation, this make-believe “resolution of real contradictions” reveals itself as clearly “imaginary.” Consequently, in order to dismantle the hegemony of growth, degrowth has to develop a profound and critical understanding of the real societal contradictions, hierarchies and power dynamics shaping capitalism and transform them in new ways

by 12/07/2016 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
30 Ways Cities Can Prepare For Global Warming

30 Ways Cities Can Prepare For Global Warming

There’s a good reason (actually, 30 good reasons covered here, plus at least 90 others to be discussed in later issues) why no-one has been able to come up with a better term for what’s called “urban agriculture.”

by 08/07/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Feminist Socialism And The Commons

Feminist Socialism And The Commons

Hilary Wainwright, of the Transnational Institute and co-editor of Red Pepper magazine, made a lasting impression on the Commons Transition/P2P Foundation team with her panel presentation at the recent Commons Collaborative Economies event in Barcelona. During her presentation, Wainwright shared her insights on the hidden commons of care. “Women have been creating a Commons for a long time: the domestic[Read More…]

Community members working in the La Columna community garden, Merida, Venezuela. by Tamara Pearson

In Venezuela’s Difficult Times The Grassroots Are Stronger

It’s been three years now of food shortages, inflation, and queues in Venezuela, and the millions of people involved in community and movement organizing have been the most affected. But they’ve also defied right-wing and general expectations, and even perhaps the expectations of the Maduro government, and have become stronger and better organized as a result of the hardships. ‘We can[Read More…]

by 07/07/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Another Side To Food Waste

Another Side To Food Waste

The food waste debate has gone mainstream. People at every level from individual consumers to national governments are beginning to pay attention to the issues which lead to a third of food produced for human consumption being wasted every year. However, there is one side to the story that is often overlooked: the impact of food waste in the Global[Read More…]

by 06/07/2016 1 comment Counter Solutions
Equality And Sustainability: Can We Have Both?

Equality And Sustainability: Can We Have Both?

An equal level of consumption for everyone around the world at the level of today’s Cuba offers the possibility of substantially lowering human impact on the biosphere while at the same time maintaining a rather decent standard of living for all.

From Livelihoods To Deadlihoods

From Livelihoods To Deadlihoods

  In India, economic development and modernity have transformed livelihoods into deadlihoods. They are wiping out millennia-old livelihoods that were ways of life with no sharp division between work and leisure, and replacing them with dreary assembly line jobs where we wait desperately for weekends and holidays. Economic progress, we are told, is about moving from primary sector jobs to[Read More…]

by 04/07/2016 4 comments Counter Solutions
Mozambique: Looking For Food In All The Wrong Places

Mozambique: Looking For Food In All The Wrong Places

Like many of the grand schemes hatched in the wake of the 2007-2008 food price spikes, this one was a bust, by any measure. Still, ProSAVANA remains the Mozambican government’s agricultural development strategy for the region. While farmers defend their hard-won land rights, it seems they will have to look elsewhere for agricultural development.

by 30/06/2016 2 comments Counter Solutions
Beyond Development: The Commons As A New/Old Paradigm Of Human Flourishing

Beyond Development: The Commons As A New/Old Paradigm Of Human Flourishing

A proverb of the indigenous people of southwestern Colombia warns: “The word without action is empty, action without the word is blind, and action and the word outside the spirit of the community is death.” Of course, many of us are on the quest to figure out precisely the opposite — how to integrate word, action and community, and thereby create flourishing commons that can unleash cascades of creativity, aliveness and innovation. That is precisely what we need right now.

by 30/06/2016 3 comments Counter Solutions
Energy And Justice

Energy And Justice

The equity and justice questions won’t go away. From the perspective of global elites, something must be done to level the playing field and take everyone’s interests into account (whether through an overarching global framework or through piecemeal national and regional efforts), or those who feel excluded will disrupt efforts toward an orderly energy transition. From the perspective of those with far lower levels of power and wealth, there is no reason to support efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption if those efforts only preserve or exacerbate economic inequality.

by 30/06/2016 Comments are Disabled Counter Solutions
Renewable Energy

Our Renewable Future

Ed. note: This is the introduction to Richard Heinberg’s and David Fridley’s new book, Our Renewable Future, now available from Island Press. Post Carbon Institute’s companion website, ourrenewablefuture.org has also just been launched.The book is available to order and also to read on the website as a complete set of online chapters. By Richard Heinberg & David Fridley The next[Read More…]

by 18/06/2016 Comments are Disabled Alternative Energy, Counter Solutions