Act: Inspiration

GRAIN calls for end to land grabbing at Swedish Parliament

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On 5 December 2011, GRAIN received the 2011 Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, at the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm. GRAIN was awarded “for its worldwide work to protect the livelihoods and rights of farming communities and to expose the massive purchases of farmland in developing countries by foreign financial interests”. GRAIN seized on the opportunity to demand an immediate end to land grabbing and a restitution of lands to local communities. The following speech was delivered to the Swedish Parliament by GRAIN coordinator Henk Hobbelink during the Awards Ceremony.

‘Net Energy’ ignorance reigns on Capitol Hill

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If there is one unshakable belief in America today it’s that the U.S. economy can and must continue to grow. That’s why the messages delivered in November in Washington D.C. at a gathering of oil geologists, scientists, economists and others challenging that core belief went largely unheeded in the nation’s capital. The approximately 300 people who attended the 7th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil–USA (ASPO-USA) in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol were told that economic growth is no longer possible as oil production flattens and declines, that U.S. energy independence is impossible and that domestic shale gas will fall far short of fueling American prosperity even while polluting the nation’s vital aquifers.

The justice of eating: food, fairness and the Fife diet

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The problem for the NGOs, and for all of us, is that they are trying to modify a system at a time when that system is buckling; nobody really knows what to do next. Governments are paralysed and people feel powerless. No wonder then the attraction of initiatives that are community led and inclusive such as these food projects. They promote notions of resilience and sufficiency and at the same time offer opportunities for meaningful political engagement.

Policies for a shareable city #11: Urban agriculture

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Cities should be doing everything in their power to facilitate localized food production, and a key component of that is enabling urban agriculture and community gardening. Peak oil, the breakdown of our industrial food system, the high cost of sustainably produced food — these and other factors lend to an urgent need to use every plot of available city land for food growing.

Creating Wealth

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In Extraenvironmentalist #29 we speak with Gwendolyn Hallsmith and Bernard Lietaer about Creating Wealth: Growing Local Economies with Local Currencies, their recent book on how to implement complimentary currency systems while creating intentional cities with money ecosystems. We cover examples of complimentary currencies in Brazil (saber), the United States (time banking), Switzerland (WIR), Belgium, Lithuania and Uruguay (C3) to demonstrate how alternative forms of money can help to enhance our education, business and sense of community. Could the WIR be the reason for Switzerland’s stability? Are there ways to retool education funding that could help us realize our dreams?

Forging Alliance – Transition Themes Week #10

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But it is one thing voicing a spiritual idea and another undergoing it in the real world. One thing to breezily state: well hey, we’ll just go into our cocoon and dissolve!, and another actually allowing those old caterpillar forms to break down, uncomfortably, inside ourselves and our social groups, to forge alliances without allowing our own allegiance to the ancien regime to destroy us from within.

Getting it together: The Empowerment Manual (review)

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Released in 2011, with an introduction that references this year’s dramatic Tahrir Square and Wisconsin protests, Starhawk appears to have anticipated the broad and unabashed presence of public group processing endeavors in the social movements shaking up the “world order” today.