resilience and community
Promote the relocalisation of economic activities
An economy which attempts to maximise local trade, minimise long-distance trade, and ensure a diversified and sustainable local production, de-globalized, re-regionalized and slowed down. Goods are produced and consumed locally where this is ecologically logical. The focus is on sustainability and resilience of communities, avoiding nationalistic or xenophobic tendencies. Self-management, self-emancipation, solidarity and social interaction in harmony with nature are the drivers of the economy. Trade is about cooperation and international solidarity, not competition or self-sufficiency.
Proposals for structural change (
set of policies, practices and investments)
Develop policies to promote and support local consumption, based on environmental rationale, including tariffs, quotas, and public procurement rules. Policies should focus on replacing imports (where it makes ecological sense) rather than encouraging exports.
No subsidies for export-oriented (mainly, but not only, food) production.
Policies should encourage diversification and discourage (through competition laws) monopolies to help ensure sustainable production. Promote the idea of “stability in diversity”.
Lower VAT for goods when they fulfill certain criteria, such as being produced for their own local populations, in an environmentally friendly way, upholding workers’ rights, etc.
Stop corporate-subsidized commodities with artificially low prices.
Encourage and support production at the community level and source parts and materials locally, while recognising that it can make environmental sense to produce some things elsewhere
‘Design GLOBAL, manufacture LOCAL’, combining globally shared production knowledge, with distributed manufacturing closer to the place of use and demand. What is light can be global, what is heavy must be local.
Provide grants for personal and community rebuilding and resilience, such as renewable infrastructure, transport electrification, better food production, energy efficiency and improved local social care systems.
Increase of X% urban and peri-urban farming with direct links to farmers markets and the public, to help make cities more food resilient and independent.
Investments in local quality of life, nature restoration, upgrading local infrastructures, and improving wages and working conditions for critical sectors (health, social care, education, culture, cleaning, public transit, etc..).
Stop free trade and investment deals that encourage export/import-led growth at all costs.
Local isn’t always good. Focus also on small (see food sovereignty above), on rights (how workers are treated) and on ecological production. The concept of ecological foodsheds should be one of the key working principles here.
The commons is the wealth that we inherit or create together and that must remain intact to pass onto future generations. That includes nature, culture, knowledge, city infrastructure and traditions.
Promote a Slow Circular Economy
Refuse- Reduce -Reuse and only then recycle and dispose. The Slow Circular Economy must, in the first place, reduce the consumption of any type of goods, especially objects and single-use containers. It must also scale back overproduction, much of which takes place in the Global South, through adopting best practices as an alternative to the unacceptable pressure on suppliers and workers to deliver ever faster at increasingly lower costs.
Proposals for structural change (
set of policies, practices and investments)
Policies and practices to eliminate all toxic chemicals and waste by putting reduction and reuse at the top of the waste hierarchy.
Promote mindful and ecological design to enable long lasting, reusable and repairable products and services - away from planned obsolescence - that facilitate this, for the present and future generations and unknown future actors. Design that is simple, input oriented, with purpose, for multi use.
Withdrawal of public support from economic activities that encourage overproduction and overconsumption.
Reduce demand on raw materials by promoting less consumption, efficiency, sufficiency, substitution and recycling, in particular to mitigate the impacts of fossil fuels, mining, forestry and farming activities.
Invest in R&D to extend the useful life of materials by developing technologies for the reduction, reuse and as a last step the recycling of materials.
Build the capacity of the workforce and incentivise the creation of meaningful jobs that make a positive contribution to society and nature.
Prioritize Energy Sovereignty
Energy needs to be understood as a natural commons and individuals, communities and peoples should have the right to make their own decisions on renewable energy generation, its distribution and consumption. Generation, distribution and control of energy sources, by ecologically and culturally grounded and mobilized communities, both urban and rural, is possible in ways that do not affect others negatively and with respect for ecological cycles. This alternative makes the dominant energy paradigm controlled by centralised powers obsolete, with just and universal access, fair prices and secure, unionised and well-paid jobs.
Proposals for structural change (
set of policies, practices and investments)
Regulations and incentives to retrofit and increase energy efficiency across key sectors i.e housing, transport, manufacturing, construction.
Stop subsidies for fossil fuel based industries.
Shift public and private-sector financial support for polluting industries to clean renewable energy.
Divest and end financing linked to all fossil fuel industries.
Create job guarantee schemes to transition and expand renewables and energy efficiency.
Regulations to control the electricity market, including the mandatory horizontal separation of processes (generation, distribution, and marketing).
Create a legal and infrastructure framework to boost community and personal energy production while promoting prosumerism and the right to produce energy.
Include policies that favour cooperative and collective/ community-led production models in contracts for public tender, and give access to projects based on this model in public biddings.
Community centric system/ approach
A system based on sharing knowledge and material resources for a collective goal is a system that is more likely to achieve it. Collective wealth of the present and future generations (rather than individual wealth) favours traditions and knowledge, culture, nature and public resources (civic infrastructures) over private growth.
Proposals for structural change (
set of policies, practices and investments)
A shift in the use of public spaces towards arts, culture and activities which bring us together, and protection for public spaces that prevents their sale to corporations.
Investment in infrastructures that bring communities together such as cultural and sports centres, theatres, and community centres.