By Pablo Solón Deglobalisation does not promote isolation or autarchy, but rather a different kind of global integration that is not dominated by capital. Deglobalisation is about thinking and building alternative integration models with people and nature at the centre. Globalisation is not a process in which growing interdepen-dence and integration have been made possible thanks to advances in communications and the internet. In this … Continue reading Deglobalisation
By Pablo Solón The rights of Mother Earth are a call to abandon the existing dominant anthropocentric paradigm and to imagine a new Earth society. For anthropocentrism, human beings are at the center of everything and are superior to all other beings and elements that are part of the Earth. Humans are the only ones who possess consciousness, values and morals. Humanity and nature … Continue reading The Rights of Mother Earth
By Elizabeth Peredo Beltrán Ecofeminism is a critical theory, a philosophy and an interpretation of the world that seeks to transform it. It brings together two emerging currents of political theory and practice into one approach that aims to explain and transform the current system of domination and violence by focussing on the critique of patriarchy and the overexploitation of nature and their impacts on … Continue reading Ecofeminism
By Pablo Solón, 25 February 2016 [Español, Français] What has happened? How did we come to this? What occurred in the process of change that more than 15 years ago won its first victory with the water war? Why is it that a conglomeration of movements that wanted to change Bolivia ended up trapped in a referendum to allow two persons to be re-elected in … Continue reading Some thoughts, self-criticisms and proposals concerning the process of change in Bolivia
By Christophe Aguiton[1] In academic and activist circles today, there is a lot of discussion on the “common goods” or the “commons.” What are the commons? Is it right to talk about common “goods” as physical or natural resources or knowledge? Or, on the contrary, are the commons a kind of social relation or a way of collectively managing the different elements and processes that … Continue reading The Commons
By Geneviève Azam The economic growth paradigm is central to the representations of the world and the economic policies that have emerged since 1945. However, the notion of economic growth as a regular, ongoing, self-sustained process – which reached its peak during the so-called “Glorious Thirty”[1] years – has fallen apart. This post-World War II period, in which growth became a necessary condition for social … Continue reading Degrowth
The premise of this publication is that we are living a systemic crisis that can only be solved through systemic alternatives. Humanity is facing a complex set of crises from environmental, economic, social to civilizational crisis. All of these crises are part of a whole. We cannot solve one of these crises without addressing the others. Each one is constantly receiving a strong feedback from … Continue reading Introduction
[Versión en español] by Pablo Solón Vivir Bien or Buen Vivir is a concept that is under construction and that has passed through many different moments. There is not just one single definition of Vivir Bien and today this term is under dispute. At present, there are institutions linked to big business that now speak of Vivir Bien, but in an understanding that is very … Continue reading Vivir Bien
[Versión en Español] The premise of this publication is that we are living a systemic crisis that can only be solved through systemic alternatives. Humanity is facing a complex set of crises from environmental, economic, social to civilizational crisis. All of these crises are part of a whole. We cannot solve one of these crises without addressing the others. The construction of complementarities between Vivir … Continue reading Book: Systemic Alternatives
Originally posted on Fundación Solón:
Ecuadorians clash with police 30km from Quito in 2010 in a protest over proposed water privatisation. Photograph: Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images [John Vidal, The Guardian, 01/03/2017] In Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador disputes over water shortages are part of a wider fight for equal access and shared responsibility. Bolivia was shaken to its roots in the spring of 2000, when… Continue reading As water scarcity deepens across Latin America, political instability grows
[ETC Group, 30/01/2017] ETC Group’s Long-Awaited 2016 Year-in-Review So you say you want a (fourth) revolution, well you know… Fashionably late and just in time for the Chinese New Year of the Rooster, ETC Group once again offers a tonque-in-cheek wake-up call and look-back at the last thirteen months (spoiler: despite our best hopes, waiting the extra month didn’t make the news any cheerier) Brexit … Continue reading 2016: The Year that Wasn’t Normal
[Labor Network for Sustainability] Donald Trump and his congressional Republican allies have taken control of the U.S. government. The result threatens to be devastating for both labor and the climate – not to mention immigrants, African Americans, Muslims, women, children, the elderly, the disabled, LGBTQ people, and many others. The Trump regime is potentially vulnerable because it only represents the interests of the top 1% … Continue reading How Labor and Climate United Can Trump Donald Trump
[Sharon Ede, December 2016, Complementary Currency Resource Center] How Relocalising Production With Not-For-Profit Business Models Helps Build Resilient and Prosperous Societies This Commons Transition Special Report was written by Sharon Ede, a sustainability ideas transmitter, writer and activist working in Adelaide, Australia. Ede is also a co-founder of the Post-Growth Institute, one of Commons Transition’s most esteemed Partner Projects. We feel that the Post-Growth Institute’s … Continue reading The Real Circular Economy
By George Zornick and Zoë Carpenter – The Nation It’s been a dizzying week—but it’s crucial to keep an eye on what’s really happening. The first week of Donald Trump’s presidency has been overwhelming—a flurry of executive orders, appointments, bizarre tweets, even stranger press conferences, and public appearances and interviews from the president that generated massive attention and controversy. Whether by design or accident, this … Continue reading Everything Donald Trump Did in His First Week as President
Español We are experiencing a systemic crisis that can only be solved through systemic alternatives. What humanity is facing is not only an environmental crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis or an institutional crisis. It is a crisis of humanity and of the Earth system. This systemic crisis has been triggered by the capitalist system, whose relentless pursuit of endless growth and profits at … Continue reading What is Systemic Alternatives?
[Christiane Kliemann, 23/01/2015, The Guardian] The new year has just begun and we’re already inundated with horrible news: two new reports have collected further evidence that human economic activity puts life on Earth at risk, and another shocked us with the fact that the 85 richest people on the planet are as wealthy as the poorest 50% – and that the gap between them is … Continue reading Let’s face it: we have to choose between our economy and our future
[02/01/2017, Walden Bello, Rappler – Philipines] ‘Like the anti-Marcos resistance 4 decades back, the only certainty members of the anti-fascist front can count on is that they’re doing the right thing. And that, for some, is a certainty worth dying for’ Fascism, someone wrote, comes in different forms to different societies so that people expecting fascism to develop in the “classic way” fail to recognize … Continue reading Rodrigo Duterte: A fascist original
[Giorgos Kallis, feb/2015, Great Transition Initiative] Both the name and the theory of degrowth aim explicitly to repoliticize environmentalism. Sustainable development and its more recent reincarnation “green growth” depoliticize genuine political antagonisms between alternative visions for the future. They render environmental problems technical, promising win-win solutions and the impossible goal of perpetuating economic growth without harming the environment. Ecologizing society, degrowthers argue, is not … Continue reading The Degrowth Alternative
[William I. Robinson, 12/12/2016, Alainet] There is more than meets the eye in President-elect Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general, is a notorious climate change denier. He is part of a coalition of public figures suing over EPA programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boasts that he is “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist … Continue reading Climate Denial, Trumpism, and Neo-Liberalism
[August 23, 2016, The Conversation] What is so refreshing about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is that they recognise the inherent tension between economic development and the ecology of our planet. Or so it seems. The preamble affirms that “planet Earth and its ecosystems are our home” and underscores the necessity of achieving “harmony with nature”. It commits to holding global warming below 2℃, and … Continue reading Time for degrowth: to save the planet, we must shrink the economy
Systemic Alternatives 
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