Sustainability

The Missing Link In Europe’s Sustainable Food Future

November 25, 2024 Anna Scavuzzo and David Dessers, Resilience.org. Create! European Union (EU), Food and Agriculture, Sustainability, Urban Design

As we face increasingly urgent global challenges, including climate change, urbanisation and growing inequality, Europe must transform its food systems to ensure resilience, sustainability and inclusivity. The Strategic Dialogue for Agriculture, convened by President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was designed to depolarise the contentious debates surrounding food and agriculture. It brought together a wide range of stakeholders who unanimously adopted a comprehensive set of recommendations for the future of Europe’s food systems.

Bioregional Fibersheds And New Fashion Commons

November 3, 2024 David Bollier. Create! Commons, Fashion, Sustainability

Look behind the glitz and glamour of global fashion, and you will find an ecologically harmful, anti-social industry largely unable to shed its capitalist dynamics. Its factories generate huge amounts of pollution and rely on underpaid, abused sweatshop labor. Fast fashion fills up landfills with mountains of cheap clothing discarded after a few uses. To keep consumption and sales going, fashion's relentless marketing machine peddles fantasies of luxury, rail-thin bodies, and sex appeal.

Coming Soon To A Country Near You: The Not-So-Subtle Shift To Adaptation?

October 24, 2024 Erik Assadourian, Resilience. Strategize! Adaptation, Capitalism, Environment, Resilience, Sustainability

he shift to adaptation is coming. And when it comes it will be Earth-shaking—where collectively, those with resources start to give up the struggle to stop climate change, and instead focus primarily on protecting their own proverbial asses. Fortunately, we’re not quite there yet. In fact, returning to the report The Wall Street Journal mischaracterized, mitigation finance is growing far faster than adaptation finance, reaching $1.3 trillion annually in 2021-2022, double the $653 billion averaged in 2019-2020. Adaptation finance, on the other hand, grew to $63 billion, a 28% increase year-on-year, but because mitigation finance grew much more, adaptation finance dropped from 7% to 5% of the total.

Degrowth: Beyond Education For Sustainable Development

October 15, 2024 Amerissa Giannouli, Resilience. Create! climate crisis, Education, Environment, Sustainability

Large-scale development projects, innovative green technologies, artificial intelligence, and trips to Mars are often seen as central solutions to the climate crisis leading to diverse socio-ecological and economic implications. Despide their inconsistencies and conflicted outcomes, their influence is so strong that our present approaches and vision for the future seem constrained by them. This short essay aims to explore opportunities and entry points that could mobilise personal and collective transformations in how we think and act, with the goal of fostering a more ecological and socially just response to the climate crisis.

Beyond Hegemony

September 29, 2024 Jeffrey Sachs, Scheer Post. Create! International Law, Summit of the Future, Sustainability, United Nations

We are at a new phase of human history because of the confluence of three interrelated trends. First, and most pivotal, the Western-led world system, in which countries of the North Atlantic region dominate the world militarily, economically, and financially, has ended. Second, the global ecological crisis marked by human-induced climate change, the destruction of biodiversity, and the massive pollution of the environment, will lead to fundamental changes of the world economy and governance. Third, the rapid advance of technologies across several domains—artificial intelligence, computing, biotechnology, geoengineering—will profoundly disrupt the world economy and politics.

Earth Is Close To Passing Seven Of Nine Planetary Boundaries

September 26, 2024 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Educate! climate crisis, Environment, Planetary capacity, Report, Sustainability

Scientists have found that Earth may soon pass another planetary boundary, meaning it could be operating outside of the safe limits for seven of the nine defined planetary boundaries. The Planetary Health Check report, prepared by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), is a new assessment that determines the state of the planetary boundaries. For its first edition, the report found that Earth is near the boundary for ocean acidification. “Our updated diagnosis shows that vital organs of the Earth system are weakening, leading to a loss of resilience and rising risks of crossing tipping points,” said Levke Caesar, scientist at PIK and a lead author of the report.

A Radical Way To Change The UN Security Council, Including Its Name

September 16, 2024 Stephen Crilly, Scheer Post. Create! Peace, Sustainability, United Nations (UN), UNSC

What conditions might compel the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to relinquish their veto power? In exchange, what conditions might the other member states agree on to make it happen? These are important questions to pose to the public as the 193 member states negotiate a Pact for the Future for the upcoming Summit of the Future to ensure the organization’s usefulness for generations to come. Let us hope that the P5 — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — as well as other member states have the wisdom to institute reforms as soon as possible. Some Council reform proposals consider adding individual countries as permanent members, such as India or Brazil.

Young People Will Save The World; We’re The Last Generation That Can

September 14, 2024 Keara Sosa, Counter Punch. Strategize! climate crisis, Higher Education, Sustainability, Youth Activism

The past 20 years have been critical in the fight for bold and sustainable climate solutions. The next five years will be even more vital — and young people like me are fighting hard to make sure our leaders get it right. Research shows we have about five years left to avert global warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, the tipping point when even more severe climate disruptions could exacerbate hunger, conflict and drought worldwide. Climate change — long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil — impacts our livelihoods and our lives. It harms our health and well-being and threatens our access to vital resources, from water to food to housing.

A Tale Of Two Yarn-Makers Reviving The Local Mill

September 3, 2024 Marissa Tiel, Resilience. Create! Local Economy, Small Business, Sustainability, Textiles

For nearly a decade, the Spinsters were a fixture at the Bellingham Farmers Market. Their booth was easy to find: market goers just needed to look for their brightly coloured yarns in vibrant cyan and deep magenta. Founders Kate Burge and Rachel Price commuted to the market by bike — neither one owned a car at the time — and set up most Saturdays. The duo, who named their company Spincycle, specialized in a type of craft practised by few others in the early 2000s: kettle-dyeing and hand-spinning wool into beautiful skeins. Unlike most commercial yarns, which are spun and then dyed, the yarn Burge and Price create is dyed first, before it’s spun into yarn.

Human Rights Abuses In $40 Billion Tuna Industry Still A Major Problem

September 1, 2024 Greenpeace USA. Educate! Fishing, Human Rights, Oceans, Sustainability, Tuna, Worker Rights

Fourteen out of 16 major US grocery retailers received failing grades in Greenpeace USA’s latest scorecard on tuna supply chain practices, highlighting ongoing issues in human rights and sustainability on the high seas. The new report, The High Cost of Cheap Tuna 2024, 3rd Edition, finds that while some retailers have made improvements in sourcing tuna, U.S. retailers’ current human rights and sustainability practices are failing. Of the 16 retailers, only Aldi and HyVee passed the scorecard and Trader Joe’s finished last, with a 12% score. Trader Joe’s score reflects the retailer’s failure to respond or complete a survey and its website providing almost zero transparency on its sustainability and human rights practices.

‘Sustainable Square Mile’ Tests Power Of Biden’s Billions For Climate Justice

August 28, 2024 Adam Mahoney, In These Times. Educate! Child Poverty, climate crisis, Climate Justice, Joe Biden, Sustainability

Two days after a series of tornadoes ripped through Chicago’s South Side, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity, Naomi Davis and Suzanne Waddell met in the front yard of Emmett Till’s childhood home to assess the damage. Fencing had been blown down. Their organization, Blacks in Green, founded by Davis in 2007, owns the historic landmark. It will open as a playhouse, community farm and museum in 2025, honoring the life the 14-year-old deserved to have. Even in 92-degree heat, people stopped by to take photos, a regular occurrence that reminds Davis of the larger duty marginalized people in America have “to remind each other of our greatness.”

Degrowth Aims To Achieve ‘Frugal Abundance’

August 26, 2024 Adrien Plomteux, Resilience. Strategize! Degrowth, New Economy, Prosperity, Sustainability

Degrowth is about building societies in which everyone is rich – without much material. It is a desirable project to strive for. For critics, degrowth is not very appealing. According to them, it means impoverishment, restraint, scarcity, austerity or recession. It is seen as a project to reduce the overall prosperity of individuals and societies. In contrast, in a recently published academic article, I argue that degrowth aims to achieve abundance, prosperity and richness. Other degrowth advocates have reached a similar conclusion, but here I claim that it first requires rethinking the dominant meaning of abundance. It is impossible to promise everyone to achieve high levels of consumption.

The Messy Middle Paths Through Climate Breakdown

August 7, 2024 Jamie Bristow and Rosie Bell, DeSmog. Strategize! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Optimism, Realism, Sustainability

In the escalating drama of climate breakdown — especially as we navigate the apparent crossing of the 1.5C warming threshold — a binary is emerging that wastes a huge amount of time, energy and passion, needlessly limiting our vision to confront and adapt to our situation at all levels of society: Are we (optimist) solutionists or (realist) doomers? As “optimists” we’re committed to the idea that it’s not too late to fix things (think ever steeper net zero pathways dependant on direct air capture). As “realists,” we’re committed to telling “the truth” of just how bad things are already (think cascading tipping points and trajectories towards Hothouse Earth).

Cry, The Beloved World

August 5, 2024 Gus Speth, Resilience. Strategize! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Environment, Sustainability

Here is a topic miles away from the 2024 elections, though it should not be. Its political salience is just about zero, but it concerns the future of life on Earth. I could be referring to the recent surge in spending on nuclear weapons, but the devastation I will write about is slower yet no less problematic. If you are of a certain age, you may remember the children’s book, The Wump World. It first appeared in 1970, the year of the first Earth Day. Its message was clear. The bountiful, bucolic world of the Wumps, with its lovely bumbershoot trees and plentiful grasses for grazing, was denuded and impoverished by the Pollutians, who had colonized the Wump’s planet because they had destroyed their own.

Repair Café And Darning The Planet

July 26, 2024 Anahi Martinez Encinas and Dora Napolitano, Resilience. Create! Clothing, New Economy, Repair Cafe, Sustainability

Getting dressed is a universal human trait, but the textile industry is collapsing environmental systems everywhere. Relearning basic skills and taking back the agency in what we wear and how we wear it is an act of resistance and an invitation to reimagine ways to inhabit the planet. Repair Café & Darning the Planet practice will help you learn specific skills for visibly mending your own clothes and textiles in community. It will also encourage you to reflect about what making an item of clothing means. Zurciendo el planeta (Darning the Planet) creates spaces to learn and practice various mending and recreation techniques, responding to the specific needs of the garments that participants want to mend.

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