It’s time to come to the understanding that small is powerful, cooperation is key, and as author Helena Norberg Hodge states, local is our future.

HUMAN SCALE ENTERPRISE & THE FLOURISHING CONNECTED LIFE

Generally new paradigm living will move towards small scale and human centred enterprise with the basics of food, energy generation and shelter being met locally, wherever possible. It will involve the use of a combination of intermediate technologies supported by our sophisticated communications technology that is geared towards a flourishing connected life. These priorities will replace the flawed aims of growing the GNP economy or supporting big business aims.

Larger scale facilities will have a place, but they will be secondary to human scale structures that provide a sense of place with meaningful community participation. Their purpose will need to be realigned as they shift towards building the small within the larger sized institutions – institutions that have tended, in the past, to favour a minority elite.

SHIFTING FROM GLOBAL TO LOCAL ECONOMIES WILL BE CHEAPER:

 It’s madness to do otherwise

Local Futures founder Helena Norberg Hodge writes, “As big and as overwhelming our globalised world system seems to us, shifting direction (towards localised economies) would actually be easier, cheaper and more practical than continuing to globalise.” She continues: “In order for globalisation to continue, local councils, hospitals and schools would have to be further amalgamated; businesses would have to merge with ever larger ones to survive (with less employees and more jobless); cities that are already bursting at the seams would have to grow still larger; and the massive infrastructure for global trade would have to be expanded still further. The global economy would have to be continually re-engineered to facilitate ever more centralised control of democratic institutions. Immense investments of money and natural resources would be required to continue along this path of ‘bigger’ all the while ripping apart the fabric of ecosystems, societies and cultures.”

We can’t let this happen!

Localization is a process of economic decentralization that enables communities, regions, and nations to take more control over their own affairs. As we have seen, global banks and corporations actively shape our societies and our political institutions (to meet their own needs). Localization is a way of reversing this trend. Instead of business determining the rules for society, citizens – through the (participatory) democratic process – ought determine the rules for business

Local is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness, Helena Norberg Hodge

SHIFTING DIRECTION REQUIRES EFFORT ON TWO FRONTS

Local Futures founder Helena Norberg Hodge writes, “While localization offers a systemic solution to globalization and the global economy,” (thus reinforcing the need to widen local governments sphere of activity and deepen their powerbase), “shifting direction requires efforts on two fronts”. At the grassroots front massive change will come with the localization movement, however we need ‘top down’ changes at the policy and regulatory levels to reverse the structural forces that promote the large and the global.

“Millions of local and regional enterprises are already demonstrating that they can do a better job providing for basic needs” Norberg Hodge states “including the fundamental need for community – than the handful of giant corporations that currently dominate the world’s economy. Whilst “community based projects will reweave the social and economic fabric of society in ways that meet the needs of nature, both wild and human.” Hodge elaborates, “We need to pressure our governments to shift taxes and subsidies, and to modify food, health, and land-use policies so that they support local enterprise”.

Some of the other policy shifts needed at the ‘top end’ the Local is Our Future author advises, might include:

• The revisiting of trade treaties along with holding corporations accountable to the social, environmental and economic impacts of their businesses

• The review and overhaul of the financial industry globally, and taxation nationally

• The decentralization of renewable energy and the

• Localization of food and agricultural practices.

With our newly localised economies in which each community manages its own power generation, and food is grown locally and organically, we will have lifestyles that are closer to nature with families less stressed about meeting their basic needs. Inexpensive housing options for the general population will be vital to this. Communal living in the multilevel CBD buildings for the young and school leavers as mentioned earlier would help activate cities and provide connection and facility for our young adults.

Bringing in the use of local and alternative materials, such as promoting the local hempcrete industry in my home state of West Australia would be worthwhile, along with the up-scaling of other local (state) manufacturers and growers of sustainable building materials.

As we focus on the healing of individuals and their families, we will begin to recognise that the family structures of modernity and the industrial age were ill equipped to meet many of our core needs. As a result, many of us carry the deep wounds of intergenerational trauma and the deprivations that caused them.     

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