Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We must use this moment as crucial leverage to push the planet in a new direction. Let us try. If we succeed, then we have risen to the greatest crisis humans have ever faced and shown that the big brain was a useful evolutionary adaptation. If we fail—well, we better to go down trying.
The efforts made by the environmental offices of the municipalities or departments to remedy a situation which in some places verges on the catastrophic can clearly be noticed. The fact remains that a lot of work remains to be done and the internationalist Commune of Rojava is aware that it will have to explore many more fields of activity.
For more than two thousand years, windmills were built from recyclable or reusable materials: wood, stone, brick, canvas, metal. When – electricity producing – wind turbines appeared in the 1880s, the materials didn’t change.It’s only since the arrival of plastic composite blades in the 1980s that wind power has become the source of a toxic waste product that ends up in landfills.
It’s an amazing experiment to leave a lawn alone for a couple months and to watch what happens. Nature comes back fast. Trees, flowers, and all the critters return.
If policymakers continue to drag their feet, the impetus for real change in the way we conduct global trade will have to come from peoples’ movements working together to make their voices heard.
In other words, making business cases for better behavior around climate change won’t evoke the amount of change needed; but engaging people’s sacred values first – and then showing that there might be resulting economic benefits – will.
Agroecology is a transformative approach that can galvanize a just transition away from a destructive conventional agriculture and food system to one that builds agricultural resilience, rebuilds ecosystems, supports localized, fair food systems and strengthens local communities.
The Totnes pound is just one example of the kind of outside the box thinking that has kept this local community resilient in the face of austerity. Since 2010, the pressure on local authority budgets across England has been intense, with a 50% decline in central funding support.
The report, “Land for the Many: Changing the Way our Fundamental Asset is Used, Owned and Governed,” lays out a rigorous, comprehensive plan for democratizing access and use of land.
It’s been said before, but these are truly the best of times and the worst of times. More frequent natural disasters, supercharged by climate change, as well as the ongoing circus in Washington, are waking more and more people up every day to the realization that we can no longer afford to be merely passive consumers of somebody else’s products.
Van Noordwijk is one of the foremost researchers when it comes to investigating the interplay between climate change and human movements, oftentimes through the lens of agroforestry.
Supporting a mosaic of land uses across a landscape and across agroforestry systems can improve water and soil quality, reduce pests and stem land degradation.
