Resistance and Renewal
Taking Back Our Future: Why Localization Matters
Who decides what happens to your community? Who decides whether farmland becomes subdivisions? Whether forests are logged or protected? Whether your drinking water remains clean? Whether local businesses survive or disappear? Whether your children can afford to live where they grew up? Whether your community produces its own food and energy or becomes dependent on…
Read MoreBeyond Growth: A Mountain Community Rewriting the Future of Climate Resilience
Perched on the upper slopes of Mount Halimun–Salak in West Java’s Sukabumi region, the cultural landscape of Kasepuhan Gelar Alam is easily misread by modern rationality as a sociological fossil, trapped in the romanticism of the past. Behind the thatched ijuk roofs and agrarian rituals, however, lies a progressive political laboratory. Omah Gede – Indonesia…
Read MoreLocal Food: More Than a Nice-to-Have
While this Sustain report focuses on the UK, many of its findings are relevant to communities everywhere. — Local Futures Local food isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s an essential ingredient of UK economic resilience. Food prices in the UK are rocketing, showing just how exposed our food economy is to global shocks – from geopolitical…
Read MoreFrom Hollowed-Out Communities to Resilient Local Economies
A Far North Response to Global Fragility Across the Far North of New Zealand, there is a growing sense that something fundamental has been lost. Towns that once supported thriving local economies now struggle to retain young people. Main streets have emptied and small farms have disappeared. Locally owned businesses have been replaced by distant…
Read MoreEcological Resistance and the Politics of Regeneration in Kurdistan
Across Kurdistan, the village has not been just a place of settlement; it has been a living ecological system, a web of deep interconnections among people, land, seeds, animals, water, and culture. Today, industrial agriculture drives urban expansion and centuries of political violence continue to weaken rural life. Yet a growing grassroots movement is regenerating…
Read MoreIs a Mass Revolt Against Technocracy Starting to Happen?
Ted Gioia has a popular Substack called “The Honest Broker.” Although, as an author, his books tend to focus on music and popular culture, he writes eloquently about a wide range of topics and offers insightful commentary about the global forced march toward technocratic lifestyle and governance that we’re now immersed in. In one posting,…
Read MoreWhat I Saw Outside the Blue Zone in Belém
I am Thais Mantovani, co-founder of EcoUniversidade, and for the past six years I have also been working with Local Futures, helping to strengthen the localization movement in Brazil and supporting grassroots initiatives that defend territory, rebuild food systems and imagine ecological futures from the ground up. I went to COP30 in Belém not only…
Read MoreHe Who Feeds You, Controls You
Thomas Sankara. Photo by Yendifa, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons In 1984, a young African president stood before his people and asked: “Where is imperialism? Look at your plates when you eat. The imported grains of rice, corn, and millet – that is imperialism.” He knew that no flag, no anthem, and no constitution…
Read MoreGlobalising Hope – the Courageous Journey of La Via Campesina
Collective work cannot succeed in homogeneity —the foundations for a better world lie in the power of plurality; of thought, of cultures, of perspectives. La Via Campesina, the world’s largest peasant and social movement, with over 200 million members across the globe, has demonstrated for the past 30 years that unity is key to advancing…
Read More50,000 People Say Another World is Possible
World Social Forum Nepal 2024 – Local Futures reports from the World Social Forum, Nepal 2024: From the 15th to the 19th of February, some 50,000 people and 1,400 organizations from 98 countries converged in Kathmandu, Nepal, for the World Social Forum (WSF), reaffirming the central conviction that gave rise to the original WSF in…
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