Inspiration

Ridley Road Market

Why Food Markets Need to Stay Open to Help us Through this Crisis

By Ben Reynolds, Sustain

As the country faces both a health and economic crisis, we need to support small food businesses providing healthy food that reach places others can’t, writes Sustain’s Deputy Chief Executive, Ben Reynolds. It started, as many things seem to in this lockdown, with a couple of emails. I received the story of a market that was closing in Southwark. Then came another email about markets closing in Hackney. Then Liverpool, Gloucester, Oxford, Islington, Stockport, Cardiff. Up and down the country the story was the same. Whilst low turnout may in the weeks to come force many to shut, or traders decide it’s not worthwhile to turn up, these closures were mainly because of landowners not allowing markets to continue trading on the grounds of potential risks related to people gathering. This is an understandable reaction in the current crisis, and the landowners, many of which are local authorities, are right...

  • April 8, 2020
Reset button

Not Just Restart but Economic Reset

By Cylvia Hayes, 3E Strategies

So now that the spread of coronavirus is slowing a bit in China, the Chinese government is beginning to ramp back up its manufacturing facilities. However, given the shutdowns in the largest exports markets in Europe and U.S., the demand for Chinese products is still way down. Right now, while factories have slowed or shut down in China, Europe, the U.S. and other places, would be a perfect time to put a lot of people to work upgrading and improving energy efficiency and pollution control measures, and installing renewable energy options in the furloughed factories around the world. This should be a component in any economic stimulus package and it should be acted on right now while people desperately need jobs and the factories are in time out. In addition, though we are still in the acute crisis and that must be the primary focus of action just now, it...

  • April 8, 2020
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Novus Food Forest

Building Community Resilience: Before, During, and After COVID-19

By Don Hall, Transition US

But even as our own physical and economic health are being threatened like never before, the health of our planet and our society as a whole have been declining rapidly for decades now. So we need everyone who can to join the fight. This applies equally during this crisis as it will long after it has receded.

  • April 8, 2020
Brew Dog hand gel

Converting Industry – How Rapid Transition Happens in Crises and Upheavals

By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance

It is worth noting that globally, some 11 million people are already employed in the low carbon and renewables sector, but the numbers of people and resources currently focused on fossil fuel industries and their dependent products and services remain vast.

  • April 7, 2020
Veg box

The Coronavirus Pandemic and Future Food Security

By Patrick Holden, Sustainable Food Trust

The key point is this: at a time when there is an unparalleled threat to the future health and wellbeing of citizens throughout the world, we must turn this potential catastrophe into an opportunity manifesting as a renaissance in the production, distribution and consumption of healthy, seasonal and local food.

  • April 7, 2020
Closed for cleaning sign

No More Business as Usual – Rethinking Economic Value for a Post-Covid World

By Inez Aponte, P2P Foundation Blog

This crisis must be an opportunity to challenge what we have allowed corporations around the world to do with the natural environment (conveniently referred to as resources) and people (labour) in the name of economic growth. Thatcher was wrong: there are alternatives.

  • April 7, 2020
FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina

Resettlement in Place: A New Model for COVID19 Recovery

By Ameya Pawar, Charna R. Epstein, Resilience.org

This national crisis calls for a new model for economic disaster recovery. We propose a new strategy ‘resettlement in place’ – it is based on best practices in refugee resettlement and social intelligence, a model to harness local data and lessons learned from previous disasters, including Chicago’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

  • April 6, 2020
activism

Exploring Transformative Change on the Brink

By Stefan Cristoff, Uneven Earth

Highlighting the term careful is important here: we can view the response of the state to this pandemic with care, we can be careful to see the gaps and address the ways that the state response is lacking. Careful in this context also means taking care and directly engaging with the crisis on a community based level in a safe way.

  • April 3, 2020
new world

John’s Interim Program for a New World

By John Foran, Resilience.org

Since April 1 in some parts of the world is a traditional day for playing tricks and elaborate jokes (mostly on one’s friends), I found myself musing about the world I would like to see and had some fun taking about five minutes to jot down the following list (without rethinking it and in no particular order, except for the final line) in about five minutes.

  • April 3, 2020
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