Local Futures Podcast

Episode 12 - Not-for-Profit Businesses

From social enterprises to credit unions, a new wave of not-for-profit businesses is pushing back against the assumption that consumerism and competition must drive the economy. In this episode, we speak with Jen Hinton of the Post Growth Institute, co-author of a forthcoming book about how the line between businesses and not-for-profit organizations doesn’t have to be as rigid as you might think.
 
 
Related links:
- How On Earth - the website for the forthcoming book.
- 'Beyond capitalism: not-for-profit business ethos motivates sustainable behaviour', by Jen Hinton and Donnie Maclurcan, Oct 2014.
- Community-Wealth.org's factsheets about worker cooperatives, social enterprises, municipal enterprises, community development corporations, and community financial institutions.
 
Photo: Goodwill Industries, one of the first entities to blur the line between business and nonprofit.
Music by: Gillicuddy (CC BY-NC 3.0), Chris Zabriskie (CC BY 3.0), and Podington Bear (CC BY-NC 3.0).
 
Please write to info@localfutures.org with any comments and ideas for future topics/guests.

Episode 11 - Love, Values, and Wellbeing Economies

In this episode, we chat with Diego Isabel La Moneda of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WE-All), a growing group of people and organizations around the world focused on co-creating a new economic system. The goal of WE-All is to bring businesses, NGOs, policymakers, faith-based groups, academics and citizens all together into a coherent global new economy movement, with a vision for change and a set of strategies for how to achieve it.
Related links:
- The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WE-All) website
 
Photo by Pierre Ferron. Music by Chris Zabriskie (CC BY 4.0).
 
Write to info@localfutures.org with your comments and ideas for future topics/guests.
 

Episode 10 - Growing a Farmers Market from the Ground Up

Francisco Grau is a co-founder of Feria Verde, one of the largest and oldest organic farmers markets in Costa Rica. In this episode, Local Futures' Associate Programs Director Anja Lyngbaek, sits down with Francisco to talk about how the market got started, how it’s kept itself running and thriving for nearly a decade, and what lessons Feria Verde has to offer for people thinking about starting farmers markets in their own communities.
Related links:
- Feria Verde's website (in Spanish)
- Feria Verde on Facebook
 
Photo by Francisco Grau. Music by Chris Zabriskie (CC BY 4.0), Doctor Turtle (CC BY 4.0), and Gillicuddy ("Jupiter the Blue" & "Springish"; CC BY-NC 3.0).
 
Write to info@localfutures.org with your comments and ideas for future topics/guests.
 

Episode 9 - Beautiful Places: A Conversation with Wendell Berry

Listen to a conversation between two giants of the local economy movement in this extended episode. Helena Norberg-Hodge founded Local Futures, produced the film The Economics of Happiness, and wrote the book Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh. Wendell Berry is a poet and activist, an author of over 40 books, and a lifelong advocate for ecological health, the beauty of rural life, and small-scale farming. Their far-reaching discussion touches on human nature, technology, experiential knowledge, agriculture policy, happiness, wildness, and local food systems.
Related links:
- Helena's biography
- Wendell's website and biography
- 'In Distrust of Movements'
- Wendell’s article on the 50-Year Farm Bill
- Wendell’s newest book, The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings, published in 2017 just after this conversation was recorded
 
Music: "Is That You or Are You You?" by Chris Zabriskie (CC BY 4.0). Photo by Guy Mendes (CC BY-SA 3.0).
 
Write to seankeller@localfutures.org with your comments and ideas for future topics/guests.
 

Episode 8 - Creating the Framework for a New Economy

In this episode, Jay Tompt tells the story of the REconomy Centre. A little bit startup incubator, a little bit co-working space, and a little bit gift-economy networking hub, this "new economy wing of the Transition movement" emerged from an abandoned office building in Totnes, England to bridge political divides and help create the conditions needed for holistic local economies to emerge around the world.
Related links:
- REconomy Centre Totnes
- The REconomy Project
- How to start a REconomy Group in your community
- The CTRL-Shift Summit (March 27-29, 2018)
- Planet Local: our library of inspiring grassroots projectsMusic used:Chris Zabriskie: "Is That You or Are You You?" (CC BY 4.0); Kevin Macleod: "Sonatina" (CC BY 3.0); Sean Keller: "Air"

Episode 7 - From GDP to GNH

Countries around the world are fixated on growing their economies - but is growth doing more harm than good? In this episode, Richard Heinberg discusses the history behind how GDP growth came to be used as a measure of success, why GDP can't continue growing indefinitely, and why it's time to transition to a better metric - one that better reflects human and ecological well-being.
Related links:- On our blog: 'Life in a degrowth economy, and why you might actually enjoy it'- On our blog: 'From growth to degrowth: a brief history'- Richard's articles on the Post Carbon Institute website- Richard's articles on Resilience.org- Much more detail about the Jevons Paradox- A PDF version of Limits to GrowthMusic used:Chris Zabriskie: "Cylinder Three", "Is That You or Are You You?", "Readers! Do You Read" (CC BY 4.0); Kevin Macleod: "Windswept" (CC BY 3.0); Tri-Tachyon: "Edge of the Wastelands" and Circus Marcus: "Beethoven - Bagatelle op.119 nº9" (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Episode 6 - Rebuilding Healthy Communities: The Growing Ecovillage Movement

Societies and communities everywhere are under threat from an increasingly corporatized global economy that is shifting power and resources from the many to the few and separating us from one another and from nature. Around the world, however, an increasing number of people are actively looking to re-establish the bonds of interdependence and recreate community living in tune with nature. In this episode, Anja Lyngbaek interviews Kosha Joubert, the Chief Executive Officer of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), about the rapidly growing ecovillage movement, which sees the ecovillage concept being adopted and adapted by a multitude of people and diverse cultures across the globe. Kosha speaks of the multiple social and environmental benefits of ecovillages, including the mitigation of climate change. We hear of a host of inspiring initiatives, including rural villages in China choosing to transition to ecovillages, Senegal´s national ecovillage strategy, tried and tested ecovillages in Asia and emerging initiatives in Palestine and Gambia that offer youth an alternative path to the migration to big cities.

Episode 5 - Seeds of Resilience, Seeds of Sovereignty

Humanity has lost nearly three-quarters of its agricultural biodiversity in the last century. Now, in the face of an increasingly volatile climate, conserving the remaining seed diversity is a matter of survival. In this episode, Local Bites interviews ecologist and renowned seed conservationist, Dr. Debal Deb on the value of traditional seeds in an unstable world. Deb argues that traditional seeds are vitally important, not just to ensure food security, but also for protecting local food sovereignty against the corporate control of food systems around the world. Deb shares insights from his work conserving and sharing over 900 indigenous seed varieties in eastern India, and he talks about why ecological farming, a communitarian ethos, and localization are all key components of his conservation efforts.For more information about Dr. Deb's work, read Seed Savior, or watch one of these short films by Jason Taylor of The Source Project: "The Farmer, the Architect and the Scientist" (made for The Gaia Foundation), and "Food Web Theory".  Image credit: Jason Taylor

Episode 4 - Why Local Ownership Matters

In this episode, Local Bites interviews Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance to talk about the multiple social, economic and environmental benefits of local business ownership and community-scaled financial institutions. Mitchell lays out the evidence for why local ownership matters, and provides a thorough debunking of the idea that large, global corporations are more efficient or create more jobs than smaller-scale, community-rooted enterprises. After warning listeners about the growing consolidation of economic power in the hands of fewer and fewer global corporations, Mitchell exposes the policy decisions that have led to such concentrated ownership. She concludes by highlighting several promising initiatives from the growing localization movement, and articulating the key components of a 'localist policy agenda'.

Episode 3 - Local Alternatives to Globalized Development: A View from India

In this extended episode, Local Bites interviews scholar/activist, Ashish Kothari about his book, Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India, co-authored by Aseem Shrivastava. During the first half of the interview, Kothari provides a sobering account of the social and environmental impacts of globalized development in India, arguing persuasively that the costs outweigh the benefits, and calling into questions a number of taken-for-granted assumptions about "economic growth", "progress", and the so-called inevitability of urbanization. In the second half (28:24), Kothari highlights a diverse range of localist alternatives taking place in communities throughout India, forerunners to what he calls 'radical ecological democracy', that can "take us all to higher levels of well-being, while sustaining the earth and creating greater equity."