5. EcoEconomy & Transition

direct mini-link >> http://bit.ly/EcoEconomy

The part that maybe we least understand & least think we can change in our world, is the economy.

But, infact, the majority of us are actively supporting & voting for, each day, for an un-sustainable & unjust economic system.

The central message of Permaculture tells us that it is possible that each of us stops doing that and collaborate, together with colleagues across the planet, to build the alternatives.

This course supplies the information, tools & the basic support for this, starting (Permaculture principle) very small, from your own home, your work & social environment as a way of influencing the global.

This module consists of 10 classes or chapters:

You can see the subjects covered in each class in the programme of the slide show at the top on the first page of each chapter.

Some of the additional materials available in this manual for each chapter are detailed here in the menu to the right >>>

Below are some more general introductory materials for this chapter.

A Design Approach to Economy

takes into account the energy flows and values of the whole system

Someone who studied & created this great pattern language

for the economics of Nature was Howard Odum (whom we already met in Module2)

Money & Life

From the documentary Money & Life: www.moneyandlifemovie.com

Elisabet Sahtouris is an evolution biologist, futurist, author and consultant. In her unique approach, called "Living Systems Design," she applies the principles of biology and evolution to organizational development so that organizations may become more functional, healthy living systems, with increased resilience, stability, and cooperation. She wrote "Earth Dance: Living Systems in Evolution."

ENOUGHNESS: Restoring Balance to the Economy

How we see the world determines how we act. Western thought sees us at war with each other over resources. Indigenous philosophy, we are all related as individuals in balance with nature.

This is a series of 3 videos we produced in October 2010 by the Integral Permaculture Academy as an introduction to EcoEconomics.

Part 1

Hunger is rising, absolute hunger is rising,

food is badly distributed, not distributed at all often.

The waste of food, the whole deal of it….

it’s eh, a shocking situation, it’s just inhuman.

It’s what nobody would intend,

and somehow what we’ve arrived at,

and we arrived at it by the erection of financial structures,

totally divorced from resources.

So that the fiscal economy has been a runaway system.

We’ve gotta tackle that head on.

That is, what I’m trying to tell you,

it’s no good any longer just being an organic gardener or farmer,

we have to be effective financial and political units.

And we’re gonna have to face that.

Just as it was very hard for us to learn to garden,

then hard for us to learn to collect seeds,

once the multinationals took over the open-pollinated seed market;

we had to become seed growers.

Now it’s very difficult,

we have to become bankers.

There’s no good trying to pretend we don’t have to.

We can run away to the bush,

build a mud hut and grow ducks in the garden,

it’s not gonna do it.

The coals will still be burnt, the land will still be eroded,

and the forests will still be cleared for newsprint

if we run away to the bush.

So, there’s no escape,

we’ve just gotta stop running away,

stay where we are and start to face up and fight.

Good, as long as you’re fully persuaded of that

we can get on with the course…

Bill Mollison,

1983 PDC

How to design an EcoEconomy?

More and more people are realising that no truly sustainable activity can survive in an economy which is inherently exploitative. What's more now we understand that there is a basic and serious fault in how current money is designed. But exactly how does money work? and - especially - where can we start, ourselves, as ordinary people, to change it?

Part 2

Part 3

And this video made by our friends in Brixton

(backed currencies are ONE type of differently-designed money)

A good article by Bernard Lietaer - What is Money?

A Future of Money video &

Recordings from the

Future of Money & Technology Summit

Sustainable Economics for the 21st Century

A Five Part Teleseminar Series

by The Earth Rights Institute,

http://www.earthrights.net

Co-Hosts:

Alanna Hartzok and Wendell Fitzgerald