[Walden Bello, 2002] The crisis that is wrenching the current system of global economic governance is a systemic one. It is not one that can be addressed by mere adjustments within the system, for those would be merely marginal in their impact or they might merely postpone a bigger crisis. To borrow the insights of Thomas Kuhn’s classic Structure of Scientific Revolutions, when a paradigm … Continue reading The Alternative: Deglobalization
[Peter Rosset, from Promised Land, 2006] “Food sovereignty implies the implementation of radical processes of comprehensive agrarian reform adapted to the conditions of each country and region, which will provide peasant and indigenous farmers—with equal opportunities for women—with equitable access to productive resources, primarily land, water, and forests, as well as the means of production, financing, training, and capacity building for management and interlocution. Agrarian … Continue reading Moving Forward: Agrarian Reform as a Part of Food Sovereignty
[Tim Jackson] Society is faced with a profound dilemma. To resist economic growth is to court economic and social collapse. To pursue it relentlessly is to endanger the ecosystems on which we depend for long-term survival. For the most part, this dilemma goes unrecognised in government policy. It is only marginally more visible as a public debate. When reality begins to impinge on the collective … Continue reading Escaping the ‘iron cage’ of consumerism
[Raj Patel, Journal of Peasant Studies 36:3, 2009] Hannah Arendt observed that the first right, above all others, is the right to have rights. In many ways, Via Campesina’s call for food sovereignty is precisely about invoking a right to have rights over food. But it’s unclear quite how to cash out these ideas. This Grassroots Voices section examines some of the difficulties involved in parlaying … Continue reading What does food sovereignty look like?
[Maria Mies, Roar Magazine] Recently, the UK-based publisher Zed Books launched its Critique Influence Change series, which “brings together pivotal texts by notable academics and activists from Zed Books’ publishing of the last thirty-five years”. Over the coming weeks ROAR will publish a series of interviews with some of the authors from this varied and inspiring collection of critical analyses and theories. We will look … Continue reading ‘Ecofeminism’: a talk about hard work and great joy
[Jose Briceño Ruiz, 2007] Alternatives to neo-liberal globalisation are needed that not only change people-to-people and South-South relations and situations, but also South-North relations and inter-actions to the benefit of all of humanity and our common planetary home. The new “alternative regionalisms” being promoted by social movements are, on the one hand, ‘alternative’ to the increasingly neo-liberal directions being taken, and the regional trade and investment … Continue reading Alternative Regionalisms: Alternatives to Neo-liberal Globalisation
[David Harvey] Thomas Piketty has written a book called Capital that has caused quite a stir. He advocates progressive taxation and a global wealth tax as the only way to counter the trend towards the creation of a “patrimonial” form of capitalism marked by what he dubs “terrifying” inequalities of wealth and income. He also documents in excruciating and hard to rebut detail how social … Continue reading Afterthoughts on Piketty’s Capital
[Pepe Escobar, TomDispatch.com] Hong Kong—A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass—at the expense of the United States. And no wonder Washington is anxious. That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: through the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, … Continue reading The Geopolitical Earthquakes Reshaping Eurasia’s Economy
[Thomas Berry, October 24, 1975] A Statement of the Occasion of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the United Nations at the Spiritual Summit Conference V On this thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations we wish to indicate to you our esteem for the work you have accomplished. For thirty years this body has carried within itself many of the larger hopes and destinies … Continue reading Catching the Power of the Wind
[Ariel Salleh, 1997] Ecological crisis displaces modernist political analyses – liberalism, socialism, feminism. It provokes us to re-frame our history, to inscribe a new understanding of ourselves in relation to Nature, so called, and to ask how can we get to live this new sensibility in practical ways.1 That political moment is long due. The bourgeois and proletarian revolutions evaporated before realising their full potential; feminists … Continue reading Ecology Reframes History
[Frei Betto and Michael Löwy, 2009] We would like to start our conference here at the World Social Forum of Belem with a homage to two personalities of high human quality, which gave their lives for the defense of the Amazonian forest, and the Peoples of the Forest: Chico Mendes and Dorothy Stang. They are the best known, the visible tip of the iceberg, of … Continue reading Ecosocialism and Spirituality
[Walden Bello, lecture, 30 April 2014] Let me place my coming remarks in context, and the global context has among its key features the following: Long-term stagnation in the United States. Depression in Europe. Increasing gap in wealth in nearly all countries and globally: the richest 1% of the global population owns 40% of total assets, and the richest 10% accounts for 85%. Financialization has … Continue reading What Is to Be Done? The Six Pillars of Deglobalization
[Eduardo Gudynas] Buen Vivir or Vivir Bien, are the Spanish words used in Latin America to describe alternatives to development focused on the good life in a broad sense. The term is actively used by social movements, and it has become a popular term in some government programs and has even reached its way into two new Constitutions in Ecuador and Bolivia. It is a plural concept … Continue reading Buen Vivir: Today’s tomorrow
[Aseem Shrivastava] In his victory speech President Obama spoke of a planet in peril. In doing so he fell prey to the cognitive lapse that pits us against the environment, rather than part of it, and miscommunicates the nature of the ecological threat as just another problem to be fixed with more technology. “We should fear the consequences of changing the composition of the atmosphere.” James … Continue reading The planet – and we – are in peril
[Versión en español] Brief Background: This living document is a result of an extensive process led by the Social Movements for an Alternative Asia (SMAA), Gerak Lawan, La Via Campesina and the supporters of the #EndWTO Campaign. A draft document was written and circulated online before the #EndWTO Week of Action parallel to the 9th Ministerial of the World Trade Organization in Bali, Indonesia last … Continue reading Economy for Life in our Earth community
[Tim Jackson] Economic growth is supposed to deliver prosperity. Higher incomes should mean better choices, richer lives, an improved quality of life for us all. That at least is the conventional wisdom. But things haven’t always turned out that way. Summary Economic growth is supposed to deliver prosperity. Higher incomes should mean better choices, richer lives, an improved quality of life for us all. That … Continue reading Prosperity without growth?
[Aseem Shrivastava] Policymakers say that the size of the pie in developing countries has to be enlarged before it can be distributed more equitably. But the way a country’s economy grows will determine whether there is anything left to distribute at the end of the growth process. “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” Albert Einstein Three closely related … Continue reading Sharing the pie
[Leonardo Boff, 20 April 2014 ] One of the more fertile legacies of Francis of Assisi, actualized by Francis of Rome, is the Prayer for Peace, which is so urgent at the present. Saint Francis initially greeted those he saw by wishing them, “Peace and Good,” which corresponds to the Biblical Shalom. The peace he longed for was not limited to interpersonal and social relations. … Continue reading Everlasting peace with nature and with Mother Earth
[István Mészáros] 1. Once upon a time the capitalist mode of production represented a great advance over all of the preceding ones, however problematical and indeed destructive this historical advance in the end turned out—and had to turn out—to be. By breaking the long prevailing but constraining direct link between human use and production, and replacing it with the commodity relation, capital opened up the dynamically unfolding possibilities … Continue reading The Only Viable Economy
[Nnimmo Bassey] Eti uwem is a concept in Ibibio, one of the several languages in Nigeria, which literally means good life or good living. Within it is the idea of living in harmony with nature and all peoples. It incorporates dignity, respect, rectitude, integrity, solidarity and contentment. Within this concept are the key principles of social justice, power relations and citizens’ and communal ownership and control of local resources. It … Continue reading Between Eti Uwem and Green Capitalism (Green Democracy)
Systemic Alternatives 
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