Mandela Day 2021
The Mandela Day has inspired me to reflect on two things: the importance of collective leadership and the need to heal from the traumas of our history.
Martin Kalungu-Banda
Citizens’ assemblies and independent politics
The second alternative that is widening the boundaries of democracy is even more transformative, which does not exclude participatory processes such as the Citizens’ Assembly, on the contrary, it is nourished by them, which is the rise of independent politics.
The Transformative Cities People’s Choice Award and the Atlas Of Utopias
The Transformative Cities People´s Choice Award and the Atlas of Utopias are intended as a process and a tool to give greater visibility and resources to local practices that preconfigure post-capitalism, thus facilitating its spread and prosperity.
Collective Farming, Community and Connection
In France, collective farms are quite common (known as a Groupement Agricole d’Exploitation en Commun, or GAEC). Social issues on the farm are central to farming in a collective set-up. But these farmers are also keen to look beyond the farm to build community and connection.
Emissions should fall ‘twice as fast’ in case negative emissions fail
Many model pathways designed to meet the climate goals of the Paris Agreement rely heavily on large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR), also known as “negative emissions”.
Courting rapid change – the rise of holding polluters to account
The number of climate litigation cases around the world has more than doubled since 2015 – the year the Paris Agreement was signed.
Review – The Shadow of the Mine: Coal and the End of Industrial Britain
The Shadow of the Mine about the long history, a serious piece of writing that assesses the political, cultural and social ramifications of deindustrialisation in South Wales and County Durham.
Juliana v. the US, the Climate Case of the Century: When Reality Bites
The 21 young plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States will mark their six-year anniversary just days from now. They first petitioned the federal District Court for the District of Oregon on August 12, 2015.
Some comments on Rutger Bregman’s book Human Kind
What a marvellous book! A powerful refutation of one of the most deeply entrenched and mistaken assumptions built into our taken-for-granted world view, and thus leading to many wrong-headed practices.
Afghanistan: The Twilight of the Global Empire
Of course, Afghanistan has no oil, and this much was known. But in the 1990s the oil reserves of the Caspian region, adjacent to Afghanistan, had been the object of a game of aggrandizing that led to exaggerating their extent at least of an order of magnitude.
Speaking for the Old Growth
Intact old-growth forests remain our best natural defence against dangerous climate volatility because they have witnessed the greatest climatic variations overtime.
Biography of an island: multifaceted Sicily
“All of Sicily is a dimension of the imagination,” wrote the novelist Leonardo Sciascia. Indeed, the island has always emanated a slightly mythical air, neither quite real, nor quite imaginary, like a kind of Mediterranean Shangri-La.
