Inspiration

By Melissa de Raaij, Ecosystem Restoration Camps

What if we transform refugee camps into regenerative camps? The first weekend of June was special for many reasons. Not only was it World Environment Day, but also the official launch of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. Land degradation is a major challenge the world has to deal with nowadays, and is already undermining the livelihoods of 1.5 billion people worldwide. Following the consequences of climate change, it is likely that more and more people will be affected and will be confronted with forced displacement as a result, in which finding shelter in refugee camps will be their only option. Their stay is often longer than anticipated and so they find themselves stuck in a permanent form of temporariness in often harsh environments. But… What happens if we combine the efforts of ecosystem restoration with humanitarian aid and development, empowering refugees with the tools and the knowledge to build...

September 7, 2021

Permablitzing Our Way to Community

By Mark Juedeman, Shawn McFarland

Transition Houston had its origins in a permaculture class offered by the Permaculture Guild of Houston and Urban Harvest in 2007-2008. Mark Juedeman, a member of the class, had discovered the Transition movement online. He was so excited when Rob Hopkins’ The Transition Handbook was published that he bought a number of copies and gave them away to others he thought might be interested. Shawn McFarland, a teacher in the class, also purchased a copy and was likewise smitten. Mark’s design project for his Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) was to organize Transition Houston. The first organizational meeting was held in March of 2008, and Transition Houston became an official Transition Initiative in September 2009. Several action groups formed early on, with one of the most successful being the Permablitz group. Marybeth Seligmann, another member of the permaculture class, took on organizing permablitzes as her PDC project, mentored by Shawn. Permablitzes grabbed the...

April 19, 2021

Finding the Mother Tree: Review

By Eliza Daley, By my solitary hearth

We must live within nature. We will all be winners when there are no losers. We will all thrive when we recognize that competition will lose to cooperation in every challenge.

September 20, 2021

The Afghan Correction

By Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee

But America’s disastrous intervention and ignoble retreat illustrates some uncomfortable if not random truths that are left out of the chatter.

September 17, 2021

The Case for Cooperative Business Ownership

By Geoffrey Holland, Anu Puusa, MAHB

A cooperative is a business enterprise and a social group of members and as such has both business and member community roles.

September 16, 2021

Democratizing Access To The Tools For Transformation

By Otto Scharmer, Medium

In the face of accelerating social and environmental breakdowns, how can we build our collective capacities for transformation to bring about a just, inclusive, and regenerative society for all?

September 16, 2021

Nozibele Mbeleki of uPhakanini Community Kitchen

Transforming Cape Town’s Covid soup kitchens into spaces of dignity – a community vision

By Sanelisiwe (Mimi) Nyaba, Haidee Swanby, Stefanie Lemke, Agroecology Now!

User-workers of the community kitchen contribute by volunteering, while also dishing up in the process. This way, community members believed, the kitchens are not just giving handouts but also creating a space where people can be empowered to become active agents in this process.

September 16, 2021

Sensitivity to scale, uniqueness of place and local culture

By Daniel Christian Wahl, Medium

One way to avoid — or at least minimize — the risk that new ‘solutions’ will result in catastrophic and widespread unintended consequences is to limit the scale of experimentation.

September 16, 2021

India’s Natural Farming Revolution Shows Bold Food Systems Change Is Happening Now

By Lauren Baker, Resilience.org

Community Managed Natural Farming (CMNF) eschews the use of synthetic chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides, catalyzing a radical paradigm shift from conventional chemical based farming to agroecological-based natural farming methods across the state.

September 15, 2021

Treaty People Walk for Water demo at Minnesota Capitol

Indigenous Resistance Instrumental in Stopping High-Profile Fossil Fuel Projects, Says Report

By Nick Cunningham, DeSmog Blog

The efforts of Indigenous peoples in North America have helped block or delay a long list of major fossil fuel projects over the past decade, successfully leading to the avoidance of a massive amount of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report.

September 15, 2021

7 Aspects of Civilizational Transformation

By Victor M. Toledo, Esperanza Project

In her maturity, the true environmentalist visualizes the seriousness of the current situation and assumes the need for a radical and profound change, for a civilizational transformation.