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You are here: Home / Archives for economics

COVID-19: An Opportunity for Localisation

Prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was believed that globalisation would lead to development and prosperity. However, the whole scenario has changed now with almost every part of the world under some form of lockdown, which has posed a major challenge to the fulfillment of the demand for various goods and services. […]

Filed Under: Coronavirus, Environment, Food and Farming, Free Trade and Globalization, Health Tagged With: economics, farming, global food, globalization, happiness, health, local food

What Indigenous Wisdom Can Teach Us About Economics

This blog is also available in Dutch, Greek, Italian, Russian and Spanish. The crises of the modern world verify what indigenous cultures have always known: that all phenomena are inextricably interconnected. As the Amazon – one of the most vital organs of the Earth – is razed to fuel the global economy, a virus borne […]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Coronavirus, Environment, Free Trade and Globalization, Indigenous worldview Tagged With: climate change, consumerism, corporations, development, economics, globalization, indigenous, localization, trade agreements

Adopt a Local Business

Many of us show our compassion and generosity through acts of adoption. Adopt a tree, adopt a baby giraffe, adopt a schoolchild, etc. For the last two weeks, my partner Audrey and I adopted a lovely four-legged pooch named Annie. Her “person,” a close friend, had to travel to Western Massachusetts to be with her dying mother. I’m not exactly a dog person – […]

Filed Under: Community, Coronavirus, Local finance, Localization Tagged With: community, economics, jobs, livelihoods

Comparative Resilience: 8 Principles for Post-COVID Reconstruction

This past weekend, a bright Georgetown undergraduate asked me how I squared my passion for localization with the theory of comparative advantage. For economics newbies, he was referring to David Ricardo’s argument that every community should find one product to specialize in and trade for everything else. I gave my usual response that the theory […]

Filed Under: Community, Free Trade and Globalization, Localization, New economy Tagged With: corporations, economics, globalization, livelihoods, localization, new economy

Coronavirus and the Death of ‘Connectivity’

The Covid 19 pandemic is the second major crisis of globalization in a decade. The first was the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, from which the global economy took years to reach a semblance of recovery. We did not learn our lessons from the first, and this is perhaps why the impact of the second […]

Filed Under: Coronavirus, Free Trade and Globalization, Localization Tagged With: degrowth, economics, globalization, health, localization, well-being

We Can’t Do It Ourselves

How to live a more sustainable life? This question generates a lot of debate that is focused on what individuals can do in order to address problems like climate change. For example, people are encouraged to shop locally, to buy organic food, to install home insulation, or to cycle more often. But how effective is individual […]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Environment, Inner transformation, Livelihoods and jobs Tagged With: climate change, consumerism, economic growth, economics, sustainability, systems thinking

The Real Economy

An essential element of a functioning community is that all roles are filled, that people individually and together do what is necessary for the success of the community. In this era of climate change and contracting energy resources, one important and potentially divisive issue is household roles. Many American households these days are just fueling […]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Food and Farming, Livelihoods and jobs, Localization Tagged With: community, consumerism, culture, economics, happiness, health, livelihoods, localization, well-being

Local is Our Future

[The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of Local is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness, a new book by Helena Norberg-Hodge, published by Local Futures in July 2019.] For our species to have a future, it must be local. The good news is that the path to such a future […]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Community, Development, Economic Growth and Degrowth, Environment, Food and Farming, Free Trade and Globalization, Health, Livelihoods and jobs, Localization Tagged With: agriculture, climate change, community, corporate control, democracy, economic growth, economics, globalization, livelihoods, local food, localization

Economics 101 and Ecological Collapse

“The collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” – David Attenborough Today’s economics, especially Economics 101, is a major source of humankind’s denial of the possibility of the calamity of all calamities, which our economy is engineering. Annually, millions of students around the world are […]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Economic Growth and Degrowth, Environment Tagged With: climate change, degrowth, economic growth, economics, sustainability

The Farms of the Future

This blog is also available in Russian and Spanish. Hou Xueying, a mother from Shanghai, was tired of food safety scares and of a city life disconnected from the land. So she moved her family to the country to learn about sustainable farming. Her parents disapproved; they had struggled to give her a comfortable life […]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Community, Environment, Food and Farming Tagged With: agriculture, climate change, community, corporate control, economics, farming, global food, industrial agriculture, livelihoods, local food, Planet Local

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