Featured

Want to Change the System? ‘Become the System’

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We live in turbulent times: many certainties are disappearing and changes are difficult to understand. Can transition management help us to explain where the world is heading? Derk Loorbach, director of the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT) at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, talks about the mechanisms, risks, and trends necessitated by transitioning towards a more sustainable world. “If you want to change the system, you should eventually be willing to become the system,” he says.

Pessimism, Optimism, and Opportunity beyond Brexit

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I am in no position to understand contemporary high level Brexit debate, argument and ultimately the compromises that will need to be made, but I do want to spend a little time drawing together some thoughts, reflections and evidence on the place of farming and gardening in feeding us into the future as our government negotiates on our behalf in these central areas of policy making.

The History and Evolution of the Commons

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The commons have been defined as a shared resource, which is co-owned and/or co-governed by its users and/or stakeholder communities, according to its rules and norms. It’s a combination of a ‘thing’, an activity, commoning as the maintenance and co-production of that resource, and a mode of governance. It is distinguished from private and public/state forms of managing resources.

Dispatches from Hemp Research: Setting up an Organic Field Trial in North Carolina

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Industrial Hemp is being grown in North Carolina for the first time in nearly 80 years. For the land, its farmers, and its people, this is good. The first — to our knowledge — organic variety trial of the crop in the state, this hemp trial has set ground in Northeastern North Carolina next to a field of fresh tobacco.

When you Get a Front Door, remember to Leave it Open

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The savings groups they nurture are encouraged to federate, enabling them to have more influence over city and national governments in ways that are grounded in real experience. Members survey, map and profile their neighbourhoods, turning invisible challenges into concrete evidence and locally-proposed solutions.

Will Public Banking Bring More Clean Energy Programs to California?

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At a recent forum at Oakland City Hall, experts from the public banking and community energy sectors explored how the creation of a public bank could help communities transition to clean energy while creating economic opportunities.

Tropical Forests are ‘No Longer Carbon Sinks’ because of Human Activity

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Tropical forests now emit more carbon than they are able to absorb from the atmosphere as a result of the dual effects of deforestation and land degradation, a new study says. The research challenges the long-held belief that forests act as “carbon sinks” by storing more carbon than they emit due to natural processes and human activity.

How Poverty Impacts our Brain, Health and Imagination

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[Jamies’] paper suggested that growing up in poverty can result in decrements in attentional processes, working memory, and a measurably smaller hippocampus.  In an exploration as to the reasons why, as a culture, we might be less able to constructively imagine the future, Jamie felt like an important person to talk to.

After the Flood: Lessons from Occupy Sandy

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As a volunteer you were asked to see the hurricane as something that could happen to anyone, could happen to you; to see people you help in life not as victims you’ve saved, but people like you — someone you should care for as you would want others to take care of you.

An Orchard from a Single Tree

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If you want to try grafting yourself, it’s best to take a course or talk to an expert first, or at least look at a lot more detailed information in books and the Internet; gardening centres around you might have courses available. Once you get it right, though, you can start experimenting with turning a single tree into an orchard.

The Socialist Experiment: A New-Society Vision in Jackson, Mississippi

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“The reason I started off with that little prelude,” he told the Neighborhood Funders Group Conference attendees, “is that I wanted to say that what has not changed is the vision of that new society, that new way of thinking. That new way of engineering and governing a society, where everyone would be treated with dignity. Where there would be no class, no gender, or color discrimination. Even though it didn’t happen in that little community which we called El Malik, now it’s about to happen in Jackson, Mississippi. And would you believe it?”