Resilience Reflections with Rahul Goswami
By Rahul Goswami, Resilience.org Staff, Resilience.org
What keeps me going is the desire to put this accumulation of experience, however rude and mis-shapen it might be in parts, to good use, so that one less field becomes pavement, so that one less stream dries up, that one less meaningful cultural practice fades away in an urban slum, and so that one less barrel of oil is burned just because a way of life deems that burning as inevitable.
Living with High Water in the Himalaya
By Rahul Goswami, Resilience.org
The fabled Valley of Kashmir, encircled by the mountains of the Western Himalaya, is a high-altitude wetland in northernmost India. Battered by record floods in 2014, its people must renew their knowledge and practices, of craft and seasonal sustenance in a unique hydraulic environment.
Gauging the urban appetite
By Rahul Goswami, Resilience.org
The agendas that are set so solemnly for international (or global) food and hunger problems cannot be used at the sub-national or local administrative level, which must analyse its own problems and find practical solutions, All too often, catering sensibly to the food needs of urban populations is ignored by policy makers, while economic 'development' (more infrastructure, more financing, more consumption, more personal mobility at the cost of public transport) is welcomed. The provisioning of food and the planning for shortening and localising food supply chains is usually abandoned by public administrators to the ruthless methods of the market
Carving up Africa’s hunger markets
By Rahul Goswami, Energy Bulletin
In mid-May 2012, the United Nations Development Programme (the UNDP) released its Africa Human Development report for 2012. Entitled 'Towards a Food Secure Future', the report is unremarkable for its assessments and language - these have changed but little where Africa is concerned over the last 30 years - and is remarkable for the implications it contains concerning the agriculture and food focus to human development.
In field and for food, the return of structural adjustment
By Rahul Goswami, Fahamu, South Africa - Emerging Powers in Africa Programme
Africa is being measured for its land profitability potential. So are other regions in the political South. This process is part of the new structural agri-food adjustment programmes that are already in place in the developing South. It includes agri-investor friendly new industrial policies, the disinvestment by and withdrawal of government equity in profitable public sector enterprises, financial sector 'reform' that ushers in private banking and asset management.
By lanternlight in rural Asia
By Rahul Goswami, Energy Bulletin
How do 'developing' countries prioritise energy goals? How should they in the face of climate change? These countries, with per capita energy consumption and CO2 emissions which average one-sixth those of the 'industrialised' world, are not primarily responsible for climate deterioration, but on the other hand they are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts because, says the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) they have fewer resources to adapt – socially, technologically and financially. For the majority of the populations in these countries climate change issue is not a priority concern compared with problems of poverty, natural resource management, energy and livelihood needs.
Knowledge and change, the intangible and development
By Rahul Goswami, UNESCO
Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is a body of knowledge that has been nurtured and built upon by groups of people through generations of living in close contact with nature. It is usually specific to the local environment, and therefore highly adapted to the requirements of local people and conditions. Three examples illustrate the value of intangible cultural heritage to the evolving crises of our times: food, energy and climate change. The 'transition' movements in North America and Western Europe, which are contributing greatly to a wider and participatory understanding of sustainable societies, now embody ideas and practices that have been at work for centuries in the rice-growing communities of Sri Lanka (as also elsewhere in South and South-East Asia). The water tribunals of Valencia and Murcia (which is on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity) serve as an inspiring testament to the strength and validity of an ancient system of adjudicating rights and resources.
At the Café del Tercer Mundo in Berlin
By Rahul Goswami, Energy Bulletin
"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls And tenement halls..." They also emerge among refugees and Third Worlders arguing their visions in a scruffy Berlin café,