Publications by: Guest content
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.
UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet
Article / 3rd May 2017A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.
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.
Demonstrations matter – they create the kind of power politicians despise
Blog / 21st April 2017The point is not that ‘mass action works’ – it rarely does, on its own. But mass gestures of peaceful protest create their own dynamics that can be massive and far-reaching, writes Paul Mason.
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.
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.
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.
UN, partners warn 108 million people face severe food insecurity worldwide
Article / 8th April 2017Despite international efforts to address food insecurity, around 108 million people worldwide were severely food insecure in 2016, a dramatic increase compared with 80 million in 2015, according to a United Nations-backed report on food crises that offers benchmark for action needed to avoid catastrophe.
Commoning governance: a shift in the value regime
Article / 24th March 2017Today, a new value regime is being born, one that is not based on surplus value created in the market through capital and labour, but through contributions that are recognized as such by ‘sovereign value communities’. The question is: how can we, ourselves, create and control the surplus value that we create through our work, and reinvest it in autonomous peer production communities?