Topic: Environment
How to kick the growth addiction
Article / 3rd May 2017The hegemony of the growth-based model often prevents people from questioning its core assumptions. But the building blocks of a new economy are within reach, central to which is the need to decouple growth from prosperity, explains Tim Jackson in an interview with Allen White. Reposted from the Great Transition Initiative.
On April 29, we march for the future
Blog / 22nd April 2017This Peoples Climate Mobilization (#ClimateMarch) will be the big sequel to the massive protest that filled the streets of New York in September of 2014. And these marches continue to matter for demanding action that is commensurate with the problem: namely, a World War II–scale mobilization for clean energy, and justice for those communities hit first and hit hardest by global warming. By Bill McKibben.
The Monsanto tribunal’s legal opinion reinforces movements’ struggle for basic human rights
Blog / 21st April 2017The advisory opinion of the Monsanto Tribunal reinforces what grassroots movements all over the world have been contending for decades: that the future of our food lies in the hands of small farmers, and it is the ecological model of agriculture which offers the solution to poverty, hunger and malnutrition in the world and to the crisis of climate change. By Ruchi Shroff of Navdanya International.
Gates Foundation’s rose-coloured world view not supported by evidence
Article / 21st April 2017For all its candor and color, here is what the annual Gates letter doesn’t tell you: that our global economic system is designed in such a way as to channel our planet’s wealth into the hands of a tiny elite. And changing that system at its root would require those with power to dismantle the very machine that created their privilege, writes Martin Kirk and Jason Hickel.
The commons of humanity
Report / 12th April 2017We are unable to seriously envision a new economic paradigm for managing the earth’s shared resources, unless we first contemplate the need for a psychosocial transformation across the world, whereby the awareness of the average person is expanded to embrace the common good of humanity as a whole.
Seven ways to think like a 21st century economist
Article / 8th April 2017It’s time to write a new economic story fit for this century – one that sees the economy’s dependence upon society and the living world, writes Kate Raworth for openDemocracy’s Transformation.
How the United Nations should respond in the age of global dissent
Article / 8th April 2017The peoples of the world need the United Nations more than at any time since 1945. It must not allow itself to remain mainly as a vehicle for the aggregation of national interests, or worse, as an instrument of power to be deployed by the geopolitical giants - especially the United States.Three UN veterans make their case for reforming and reempowering the world's most ambitious organisation, by Hans-C. von Sponeck, Richard Falk amd Denis Halliday.
Social justice for the sustainability of life: on the need for a global social pact
Article / 24th March 2017We now need transformative policies able to open a new horizon, without poverty, with less inequality, without destroying our natural environment. Our new situation requires an urgent reflection on power relations and concrete alternatives, central to which is the reconceptualisation of social protection in terms of commons.
Corporate influence on the G20
Report / 24th March 2017Take a closer look behind the flowery language, and it reveals that corporate influence on the G20 discourse entails considerable risks and side-effects. It's time to the imbalances in G20 policies, and the double standards in its openness towards business and civil society - for which substantial reforms are necessary. A new report by Jens Marten for Heinrich Böll Stiftung and Global Policy Forum.
The decoupling delusion: rethinking growth and sustainability
Article / 21st March 2017Most economic policy around the world is driven by the goal of maximising economic growth, but if you think we have limitless solar energy to fuel limitless clean, green growth—think again. Rather than fighting and exploiting the environment, we need to recognise alternative measures of progress for a sustainable future in which equity considerations are primary. A co-authored case for a new economics, by James Ward, Keri Chiveralls, Lorenzo Fioramonti, Paul Sutton and Robert Costanza.