Through the support of ever-growing subsidies, trade deals, and taxes global corporations have ballooned, creating a highly violent, exploitative, and absurd global trade system. So absurd, that often we fixate on the hypocrisy of how it became possible that food packaged and processed on the other side of the world is somehow “cheaper” than that which is grown by our neighbors. In this week’s episode, we learn about what continues to strengthen and uphold the wastefulness of our global trade system and how global corporations decimate diversity in terms of species, livelihoods, and identities with guest Helena Norberg-Hodge. 

In lieu of globalization, we are offered localization, which Helena points out is about bringing the economy back to us; no longer does it have to revolve around the whims of transnational corporations, instead it can nourish human health and wellbeing at the community level. Additionally, we recognize that the movement for localization can happen now, it does not need to be necessitated by financial, climate, or political collapse. In conversation, we dream into what sort of global ethics we need to put into place as we restructure the global trade network, how localization is a wealth-building strategy, and the importance of all movements for life, dignity, and reverence to begin seriously looking at the economic trajectory we are on.

Helena Norberg-Hodge is an innovator of the new economy movement and recipient of the Alternative Nobel prize, the Arthur Morgan Award and the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.” She is author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures, and Local is Our Future. She is co-author of Bringing the Food Economy Home and From the Ground Up, and producer of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness. Helena is the founder and director of Local Futures and The International Alliance for Localisation, and a founding member of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Ecovillage Network.

♫ Music featured in this episode is “Time to Think” and “Ocean Moon” by Dana Anastasia and “Where the Wild People Go” by Chloe Levaillant.

Episode References

World Localization Day 2021 

The Overworked American by Juliet B. Schor

The Growth Illusion by Richard Douthwaite

Helena’s Recommendations

Small is Beautiful by  E.F. Schumacher

Ancient Futures by Helena Norberg-Hodge

Going Local by Michael Shuman 

The Small-Mart Revolution by Michael Shuman

Local Dollars, Local Sense by Michael Shuman

Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture by Juliet B. Schor 

The Overspent American by Juliet B. Schor

The Overworked American by Juliet B. Schor

Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Todd Merrifield, and Steven Gorelick

From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Peter Goering, and John Page

Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature, and Community

Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture by Stuart Ewen

Take Action

Register for World Localization Day 2021 

Join the International Alliance for Localization

“What You Can Do to Localize Right Now”

Local Future’s “Action Resources”

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