How Could Permaculture Assist International Development Workers? A New Opportunity

Permaculture for Development Workers invites practitioners working at all levels in development to consider incorporating permaculture into their approach and demonstrates how doing so could increase the suitability and sustainability of their programmes – as well as supporting development workers’ personal resilience.

What Standing Rock Gave the World

Jannie Staffansson, a representative of the Saami Council, wants what Chief Deskaheh had petitioned to the League of Nations nearly a century earlier: sovereign recognition for Indigenous Peoples on an international scale. It would allow equity at the negotiating table—a level playing field to fairly deal with the consequences of a warming planet in the face of land grabs and natural resource extraction.

Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn on ‘The Bank Job’

When I was recently at the #CTRLshift conference in Wigan, one project that many people were talking about was Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn’s ‘The Bank Job’, currently underway in a former bank in Walthamstow.  It had just been featured in The Guardian under the headline ‘The rebel bank, printing its own notes and buying back people’s debts’, and was generating a real buzz.

Garden Organic

Tucked away along a country lane just outside Coventry is Ryton Organic Gardens and home of a charity, Garden Organic, which brings together thousands of people who share a common belief that organic growing is essential for a healthy and sustainable world. Open to the public, it’s a place more than worth a visit.

“Utopia is All Around Us”

I think we now need utopian thinking more than ever. The mistake people often make with utopia is to see it as a destination, a fixed end point. Instead, utopia is the process of first imagining, and then believing that we can organise the world differently, which empowers us to take steps towards it

Insects are Disappearing. Why Should We Care? What Can be Done?

The sudden loss is a sign of ecosystem health, or should that be illness? A warning sign. So, why should we care? Plain and simply, as far as we know, this planet is the grand sum of life in the universe. We have a duty to cherish and nurture it.

GREEN Foundation is Reversing Negative Effects of the Green Revolution

The GREEN Foundation is working to slow the rate of farmer suicides in India and improve conditions for farmers—especially women—whose traditional agricultural methods were stripped away by the Green Revolution.

Carbon Cool

These stories have three things in common. They reverse climate change by gaining new respect for the element carbon upon which all life depends. They are powered by human ingenuity, working as part of, not against, nature. They are driven and emboldened by the astonishing, illimitable, force of youth.