Info, news & debate
Commoning
How superstores destroy jobs and local resilience
A report by the National Retail Planning Forum (partly financed by supermarkets) found that in a catchment of 15km around 93 new superstores, around 10,000 new retail jobs were created and 35,000 destroyed – a net loss of 25,000 retail jobs (full-time equivalent).
Review: Julius Nyerere’s ‘Ujamaa’, why a beautiful idea went wrong and how it can be adapted for the 21st century
This is a book that I discovered in my twenties, and it impressed me so much that I ended up making my way to Tanzania in 1991, and staying for a couple of months on two ujamaa villages. Ujamaa means ‘familyhood’, a concept that Nyerere wanted to extend to encompass the whole of humanity,
Join the people who are fighting back against corporate control of global food production
There’s something seriously wrong with the way most of our food is produced and sold. The corporate sector is gaining control of more and more of global food production, shifting the focus from nutrition, flavour and nature towards profit and profit only.
Beware the ‘sharing’ economy – back door for a more rapacious form of capitalism
Something that’s been troubling me for a while. The ‘sharing’ economy must be a good thing, right? I’ve been trying to see the good in it for a while. Sharing anything must mean that fewer resources are used, less waste produced, people get to know each other in their communities. All sounds great, doesn’t it?
The Yamagishi Association: successful, moneyless, leaderless network of communes in Japan and elsewhere
In the 1990s I visited the headquarters of the Yamagishi Association in Mie-ken in Japan. It’s a federation of intentional communities that is still going strong – but even then it comprised 3000 people in 30 villages all over Japan
Global Redesign Initiative: how banks and corporations are planning to become global governors
This report is really something that everyone in the world should understand, because it spells out precisely what the corporate sector intends to do.
Why does the planning system make it so difficult for people who want to live on the land sustainably?
Being able to go through the process of making a planning application for a low impact development may be a sign that there has been some progress for those of us who have hitherto lived, to paraphrase, as outlaws on the planning frontier.
Communities in Scotland may soon be able to purchase land even if the landowner doesn’t want to sell; where do you stand?
There are radical changes on the table when it comes to land ownership in Scotland. The Land Reform Scotland Bill is intended to address the huge disparity in land ownership in Scotland – but there is one clause that is making some people extremely hopeful, and other very worried.
More details of the ujamaa collective village system in Tanzania (from first-hand experience)
This is an account of my visit to two ujamaa villages in Tanzania in the early 1990s, plus a lot more background information on the system itself. The ujamaa system has since been dismantled after pressure from the World Bank, but at its height, 20 million people out of a total population of 24 million …
10 reasons we need a non-corporate system as well as a sustainable one (and there are many more)
Like all environmental / social change organisations, we’d like humans to live in a sustainable system. But unlike many other organisations, we clearly state that we’d like that system to be non-corporate. What do we mean?
Why land, on which to build a home and grow food, is our ultimate security
There’s a general feeling – and a growing one I think – that we’re headed for disaster, and that no-one is in control or able to steer us away from the precipice. Here are four categories of reasons that people give for pessimism about the near future:
Low-impact & the city 1: introduction – how possible is it to live in a sustainable, non-corporate way in a city?
I lived at Redfield Community for 13 years – it’s where Lowimpact.org was born – but now I live in London, and so I’m assessing my options for living as low-impact a life as I can.
Help save Apple Island from development by becoming a part-owner and maybe even building yourself a sustainable home
We are asking for your help to support a great example of a sustainable enterprise, not by merely donating to it, but by becoming an investor in a unique piece of nature. See here.
How Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa idea could form the basis of a new global political system
In 1991, I spent a couple of months in two Ujamaa villages in Tanzania. The Ujamaa system was introduced by Julius Nyerere in the early 1960s, and the World Bank effectively killed it as a system in the late 80s, although a few independent Ujamaa villages survived into the 90s. I’m going to briefly describe …
What’s the ‘next system’ going to look like?
I want to bring your attention to this group, if you don’t know them already. They’re called ‘The Next System Project‘ – very slick, very American and very new (founded in March this year), but what they’re saying is rare and, I believe, essential.
Protest to save food-growing land in Bristol
Protestors are occupying trees in Bristol, UK, on food-growing land threatened by a controversial road-building scheme. Evictions started yesterday, after Bristol City council won a High Court possession order.
Polish family farms criminalised for local food sales
Dear Friends/Drodzy Przyjaciele, Polish Embassy protest at 2:30 on 20th February. Please circulate! Get your banners together! We hope to see as many of you
Eigg: community-owned island & the 1st completely wind, water and sun electricity grid in the world
Sometimes a story will remind us that things can be done differently. The Isle of Eigg story is one of them. For more details of exactly what happened on Eigg, see Alastair Mcintosh’s book Soil and Soul (available here).
Help stop giant supermarkets taking over community assets
The lease has come up for renewal for a very popular pub called the Wheatsheaf in Tooting, south London, in a prime location opposite Tooting Bec tube station.
Low-impact living opportunities in Argyll & Bute
We’ve had a bit of a heads-up from a Lowimpact.org partner (who wants to remain anonymous) and family who have been looking for land to start a smallholding for years, and are finally buying a bit of Scotland on the Cowal peninsula in Argyllshire.