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Sustainability

Education/Awareness

Mihir Mathur: Local Exchange Systems

3rd May 2015

Local Exchange Systems: Designing Community Initiatives A discussion paper on Alternate Economics to Strengthen Local Economy and Facilitate Sustainable Adaptation Mihir Mathur & Mithika D’Cruz – Watershed Organization Trust, Pune Abstract Economic Globalization in its current form is a centralising juggernaut which often causes large-scale resource depletion in remote eco-systems, unpredictable price variations in essential commodities…

Education/Awareness

Three Leading Think-tanks Studying Global Crises

30th April 2015

The Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University The Future of Humanity Institute is a leading research centre looking at big-picture questions for human civilization. The last few centuries have seen tremendous change, and this century might transform the human condition in even more fundamental ways. Using the tools of mathematics, philosophy, and science, we explore…

ALTERNATIVES

Badanavalu Satyagraha – A Report

23rd April 2015

Vijay Kundaji, Bangalore Notes Badanavalu is 10 kilometers from Nanjangud along the road to Chamarajnagar in Mysuru (Mysore) District of Karnataka. In 1927, a Khadi and Gramodyog Center was established here by Dalit women and Gandhian activists, which later grew to enlist many hundred workers, producing close to 50,000 lbs of handspun cotton yarn by…

Development/Growth

Sustainable Lifestyles: Pathways and Choices for India and Germany

21st April 2015

Harry Lehmann, Sudhir Chella Rajan Co-authors: Sneha Annavarapu, Claudia Kabel, Christian Löwe, Astrid Matthey (Indo-German Expert Group on Green and Inclusive Economy) Green Economy has been recognized by the Rio+20 Summit as “one of the important tools available for achieving sustainable development”. It is emphasized that Green Economy should “contribute to eradicating poverty as well as sustained…

Education/Awareness

The International Journal of the Commons (IJC)

16th April 2015

The International Journal of the Commons (IJC) is an initiative of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). As an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed open-access journal, the IJC is dedicated to furthering the understanding of institutions for use and management of resources that are (or could be) enjoyed collectively. These resources may be part of the natural world…

Pollution/Toxicity

Video: Lord Man Parable

24th March 2015

This video uses images and text from the book Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot which speaks to how man once lived peacefully with all of the Earth’s beauty but has quickly taken-for-granted all the resources and animals causing great environmental and sustainability issues. Hieronymus Bosch’s ghastly depictions of hell meet their match in many of the real-life images collected…

ALTERNATIVES

Report: A New Alignment of Movements?

19th March 2015

New Report Explores The Commons as a Paradigm to Align Movements David Bollier, Shareable.net The proliferation of activist initiatives calling for systemic change around the world has never been more impressive. Yet collaborations among like-minded organizations, projects and movements have been disappointingly modest. As neoliberal economics and policies tighten their grip on American society—notwithstanding the dismal…

Bookshelf

Book: Ecological Agriculture in India

17th March 2015

Ecological Agriculture in India – Scientific Evidence on Positive Impacts and Successes Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) Note on the book by by Kavitha Kuruganti of ASHA: Very often, when ecological agriculture (whether it goes by the name of organic farming or natural farming or bio-dynamic farming) approaches are advocated for large scale replication…

Ecologise Events

Bangalore meeting with Naresh of Transition Town Totnes

24th February 2015

Transition Towns is a world wide living experiment in how to shift our current system of unequal, growth based consumption, to one where all are living well in times of change and within our planetary boundaries. The transition movement now has many examples of how local, small scale change can influence social and political systems. Naresh Giangrande, co founder of…

GREEN POLITICS

The Sharing Cities Toolkit

17th February 2015

Shareable.net Responding to the calls from organizers in the SCN who articulated the need for a cohesive repository of the tools and resources necessary to support their cities on the path to becoming a Sharing City. To meet this need we are creating the Sharing Cities Toolkit; an evolving compilation of resources comprised of a mix…

ALTERNATIVES

T. Vijayendra: Post Carbon Society And Transition

The Industrial Society or the Carbon Society The present social system that we are living is called Industrial Society. It began with the Industrial Revolution (1760 -1830) in the West and was followed by social revolution in various countries – Holland, France, England and the USA, ending the age old feudal society and ushering in…

Arayil/Flickr

Development/Growth

Negative entropy and sustainability

16th February 2015

When we talk of sustainability, we often hear terms like eco-friendly technologies, appropriate technologies etc. To this, critics often say that we’re talking of going back to nature, we are being primitive, unscientific and that this is not possible. This article tries to provide a logic for eco-friendly, appropriate technologies using human and animal power….

Ecologise Events

Living in a World with Limited Resources – Sirsi, Feb 21

2nd February 2015

Date: 21 Feb 2015 , Time: 3.00pm-6.00pm Venue: A.V Hall, Don Bosco High School, Sirsi Speakers: Mansoor Khan and Sagar Dhara Growth is considered to be the fundamental characteristic of any healthy economic system. This growth is fuelled by the easy availability of fossil fuel, which is a limited natural resource formed over millions of years. We have now reached a stage where half…

GREEN POLITICS

Digital Pamphlet: Do We Live on a One Party Planet?

26th November 2014

Introducing a new digital pamphlet designed to connect the dots on advanced-stage, 21st Century neoliberalism /The Rules We now all live on a One Party Planet. This is a provocative claim, pregnant with meaning and implication. If it’s true in the way we believe it to be, it means there is an identifiable form of totalitarianism…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Two Talks with Bill McKibben – 7th November, Hyderabad

3rd November 2014

Bill McKibben, American environmentalist, author and journalist who has written extensively on the impact of global warming, heads 350.org, which recently organised the People’s Climate March in New York, attended by an estimated 400,000 people. McKibben is the winner of the 2013 Gandhi Prize, Right Livelihood Award or the Alternative Nobel, and the Thomas Merton Prize….

ALTERNATIVES

Thrissur Declaration: Alternative technologies and organisational forms for social transformation

20th October 2014

Excerpted from the Thrissur Declaration, of 16 October 2014: We are in an era of systemic crisis – of economy, food, energy, climate and livelihoods. In India this is characterised by a deep agrarian crisis, declining social indicators, unemployment and underemployment, environmental degradation, lack of access to basic services and distress migration especially in rural…

Development/Growth

Sagar Dhara: A.P. needs smart governance more than a smart capital

9th October 2014

Sagar Dhara (Note: An edited version of this article appeared in The Hindu, dated October 9, 2014, under the title ‘Including people in governance‘) The soul of India lives in its villages, Gandhiji said 100 years ago. London governed India’s soul then, which it perceived as unjust and so revolted. Delhi and the state capitals now govern…

GREEN POLITICS

Ted Trainer: The Simpler Way

6th October 2014

Ted Trainer, Social Work, University of NSW (Editor’s Note: Below is a summary of Ted Trainer’s ‘The Simpler Way‘, which he defines as “Working for transition from consumer society to a more simpler, more cooperative, just and ecologically sustainable society”. In the web page linked above, Trainer provides more information and an exhaustive set of documents arguing how environmental…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Report: Common Cause – The Case for Working with our Cultural Values

26th September 2014

(Editor’s Note: This 2010 article (full text below) by well-known columnist George Monbiot says provides a summary of Common Cause: The Case for Working with our Cultural Values, a paper by Tom Crompton of the environment group WWF. The paper uses the latest research in psychology as a prism to understand why progressive causes, even the most urgent…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Melbourne University research on Energy, Climate Change, Collapse, Resilience and Transition

15th September 2014

(Editor’s Note: Some of the most important academic research into mankind’s present and future is being conducted at the Melbourne Sustainability Society Institute at the University of Melbourne. Here are links to some of their most important papers) Is Global Collapse Imminent? by Graham Turner. Dr Turner gathered data from the UN (its department of economic and social…