Post-growth Localisation

Post-growth
Localisation

Helena Norberg-Hodge&
Rupert Read1

Post-growth Localisation

Published by Local Futures and Green House 2016
Design by John Blewitt and Kristen Steele
Cover photo by Nil Alt© Local Futures© Green House think tank.
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Contents
Introduction							5Diagnosis: Eight Features of Globalisation			6

Eight Features of Localisation				

8

The Emerging Localisation Movement			

10

Policy Recommendations					10New International Institutions				12A Key Obstacle: the enclosure of our minds		

14

Conclusions							16Further Reading						17About the Authors						18

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Post-growth Localisation

Is ever more economic activity agood thing at all, in a world where
what is scarce is nature, and time,and peace and quiet?
Rupert Read
“The most effective way to alleviate
a whole range of seemingly disparate
symptoms — from deforestation topollution, from poverty to ethnic
conflict — is to change the dominanteconomy. Most important of all,countering the pressures that separate
us from one another and the natural
world would resonate with our
deeper human needs. At the mostfundamental level, localisation is the
economics of happiness.”
Helena Norberg-Hodge

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IntroductionM

any of us around the world are broadly agreed on the fundamental challenges we face,which include:• deadly environmental degradation• increasing, extreme inequality• the erosion of democracy• a bloated and reckless financial sector

We can make these problems worse by continuing to hand over power to a volatile global
market dominated by unaccountable banks and corporations. Or we can start moving in the
opposite direction by re-establishing more accountable and democratic structures, and drawing
on ancient wisdom and on simple common-sense, creating a society that works at a more humanscale.
This boils down to a choice between:• continuing a process of economic ‘globalisation’ (in reality, this means: corporatisation)
driven primarily by the deregulation of trade and finance through free trade treaties; or• supporting a systemic shift towards localisation — working together to provide aframework that will allow the secure re-establishment of national, regional and local
polities and economies that meet real human needs without compromising the natural
world on which all life depends.
In the pages that follow we will outline the fundamental features of these two paths. We
will argue that the globalisation path is not only ecologically suicidal, it also has a wide rangeof social, economic and psychological costs; conversely, we will show that the localisation path
has multiple social, economic and environmental benefits. Finally, we will describe how a shift
towards the local might be accomplished, and what it demands of us in terms of action.
We will argue that we need to relocalise in order to avert potentially extreme social andenvironmental breakdown. Rather than having corporations run roughshod over our societies— over our future — we need to put them back on some kind of leash. And, although this task
appears daunting at first, localisation is actually an easier path to follow than the impossible roadto ‘economic-globalisation-with-a-human-face’.  
Before we begin, it is important to emphasise that localisation does not mean isolation
or nationalism. In fact, international collaboration will be imperative if we are to successfully
relocalise. Scaling down economic activity to a more local level will be less capital-intensive andwill work with, rather than against, the real needs of both people and planet. And, encouragingly,
there are countless localisation initiatives around the world that are already demonstrating its
multiple benefits.
We will begin with a diagnosis of the most fundamental problems we face under the current
system; and then move on to outline our response — the systemic solution that is localisation.

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Diagnosis: Eight Features of Globalisation
Globalisation is a product of government policy
Although often described as ‘inevitable’ or ‘evolutionary’, globalisation is actually the product ofpolicy choices; in particular, the deregulation of trade and finance through ‘free’ trade treaties.
These trade agreements allow corporations to move freely in and out of national economies seeking
the cheapest labour force, the lowest tax rates, and the least stringent environmental regulations.

Globalisation leads to a ‘race to the bottom’With every nation vying for the favours of footloose corporations and financial institutions, theresult has been downward pressure on wages, benefits, and corporate tax rates, and government
reluctance to enact strict environmental, health and safety standards and banking regulations.

Globalisation enriches global corporations and financial institutions
Having shifted many of their costs to taxpayers and the natural world, global corporations havebeen able to grow steadily larger, wealthier and more powerful. Most national, regional, and local
governments, meanwhile, have been impoverished: with a shrinking pool of tax receipts they mustfoot the bill for corporate subsidies, for the infrastructures needed for global trade, and for social‘safety nets’ to support under-paid workers and the newly unemployed.

Globalisation is built on phantom wealth
The deregulation of finance has flooded the growth economy with debt-based money, whichbanks and financial institutions can create out of thin air through their loans. This phantom wealthprovides cheap capital for corporate expansion, while luring in-creasing numbers of people andwhole nation states into a debt spiral from which many cannot escape.

Globalisation subverts democracy
Corporations and financial institutions use their wealth to purchase political power: they hirearmies of lobbyists, make huge political campaign contributions, and fund think-tanks to influence
public thinking on issues important to them. Free trade treaties include Investor-State Dispute
Settlement (ISDS) clauses that allow corporations to sue governments if laws or regulations might
impinge on expected profits. The end result is a subversion of democracy: interlinked multinationalbanks and corporations now constitute a ‘de facto’ global government that is unaccountable toany electorate.

Globalisation widens the gap between rich and poor
While we often hear about the new millionaires created in Silicon Valley, Shanghai and Bombay,
globalisation is impoverishing the vast majority, especially once one thinks seriously about the vast
escalation of inequality in most societies. The gap between rich and poor is widening dramatically,
exacerbating social conflict both between and within nations.

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Globalisation is unsustainableAs globalisation proceeds, an unsustainable consumer monoculture is being spread worldwide.
Throughout the less-developed parts of the world, people are being bombarded with media
images that present the Western urban lifestyle as the ideal, while implicitly denigrating local
traditions and land-based ways of life. The implicit goal is for all 7 billion inhabitants of Earth toconsume at the level currently found in Western Europe or the United States. But this is a physicalimpossibility: to do so would require roughly four additional planets.  

Globalisation damages us psychologically and spiritually
Globalisation systematically separates people from each other and from the natural world,
breaks down communities and replaces meaning and worth with manufactured substitutes. Thisphenomenon affects people not only in the less-developed nations, but in the more affluent North
as well. Children are particularly vulnerable: targeted by advertisers from the age of two, they are
told that they need the latest toys, gadgets and clothes to gain the approval of their peer group.
But acquiring new possessions doesn’t lead to love and connection, it leads to envy, competitionand separation — resulting in a vicious cycle of further insecurity and consumption. This is goodfor global marketers, but is intensely damaging to people’s psychological and spiritual wellbeing.

Responding to the problems of globalisationB

ecause the global economy has eroded democracy in most nation states, many well-intentioned
individuals and organisations believe the best response is to scale up government, even to
create a global government. Yet this is likely to amplify the control already exerted by corporations
over the global economy. Democratic institutions need to be comprehensible and accessible topeople: in other words, human-scale. Rulers in a global government would be so distant from theirconstituents that it would be virtually impossible to respond to their diverse voices and needs. The
large-scale structure, meanwhile, would more easily dominated by the rich and powerful. Whenpresented with problems caused by global businesses and untrammelled markets, the solution is
not to scale up government, but to scale down businesses and markets.
Rather than trying to reform a fundamentally flawed economic model, we believe that a far
better solution to the problems created by economic globalisation is to shift direction, supporting
economic localisation instead.

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Eight Features of Localisation
Localisation shortens the distance between producers and consumers
Localisation means encouraging diversified production for domestic needs, instead of specialised
production for export. It does not mean eliminating international trade, nor does it mean reducing
all economic activity to a village level. It’s about shifting the power from transnational corporations
to nation-states, and further, to more democratically robust local communities. It’s ultimately
about providing people with power over their own lives.

Localisation rebuilds community and increases wellbeing
When the scale and pace of economic activity are reduced, anonymity gives way to face-to-facerelationships, and to a closer connection to Nature. This in turn leads to a more secure sense of
personal and cultural identity.

Localisation grounds economics in reality
In contrast with the make-believe of derivatives and debt-based money, localisation is founded
in real productivity for genuine human needs, with respect for the rich diversity of cultures andecosystems worldwide.

Localisation reduces our ecological footprint
By shortening the distance between production and consumption, localisation minimisestransport, packaging, and processing — thereby cutting down on resource use and pollution. This
simultaneously strengthens resilience, which is increasingly needed in a time of environmental
crises and financial instability.

Localisation provides fuller employment
Localised economies rely more on human labour and creativity and less on energy-intensive
technological systems. This increases the number of jobs while reducing CO2 emissions.

Localisation drastically reduces the power of global corporations and banks
Shifting from global to local means re-regulating (and, often, breaking up or taking into public
ownership) global businesses, making them accountable to the places they operate. At the sametime, it involves reducing the red tape that often strangles smaller-scale, more localised businesses.
This would help to shift power radically away from global corporations and banks, towards moreplace-based businesses.

Localisation strengthens democracy
By spreading economic and political power among millions of individuals and small businesses
rather than concentrating it in a handful of corporate monopolies, localisation can help revitalisethe democratic process.
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Localisation is based on collaboration at the local, international, and intervening
levels
The steps needed to shift from globalising to localising economic activity require international
collaboration. Binding treaties are needed to protect the environment, rather than ‘free’ tradetreaties that protect the profits of global banks and corporations. Even at the grassroots there is anurgent need to share information and to collaborate with others — within communities, within
nation states, and internationally.

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The Emerging Localisation MovementAt the grassroots, a powerful localisation movement is emerging worldwide. At the centre is the
local food movement, which is already demonstrating that shortening the distance between
farmers and consumers creates a multitude of benefits.

Local food:• creates jobs and puts money in the hands of farmers rather than corporate middlemen,
thereby strengthening local economies• lessens the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides• increases biodiversity, both agricultural and wild• provides consumers with fresher, tastier, healthier food• reduces the need for packaging, refrigeration, and transport, thereby shrinking energy use
and pollution• most importantly, small, diversified and locally adapted farms produce more food peracre than large industrial monocultures, and far more food per unit of total fuel-input
There are numerous threads in the tapestry that makes up the local food movement — from
CSAs and farmers’ markets to Permaculture and the Slow Food movement — and its logic applies
not only to farming but to fisheries and forestry, to fibre and building materials.
Localisation initiatives in many other spheres are also underway, from small business networks
to local banking and investment, from bioregionalism to the ecovillage movement. Thousandsof communities are attempting to lower their carbon footprints by shortening the distances that
goods travel, installing decentralised renewable energy systems, and rethinking transportation.
In the UK, over ninety communities are now actively part of the Transition Town movement.
One of its central thrusts is to rebuild the skills required to develop flourishing, sustainablecommunities without the waste of materials and energy so characteristic of the global economy.
In North America, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) is bringing together
small businesses to resist the pressures exerted by giant corporate chains. The Global Ecovillage
Network links communities that seek to move away from the consumer culture and toward a wayof life that supports spiritual and ecological values. Via Campesina, the largest social movement in
the world with over 200 million members, opposes economic globalisation and works to support
small farmers who produce for themselves and local markets.

Policy Recommendations

W

hile these grassroots initiatives have made impressive strides, they need to be accompanied
by changes at the policy level in order to flourish and expand. Among the shifts needed are:Replace GDP as an indicator of progress
GDP does not measure what we actually value; a measure of commercialisation andcommodification, it actually increases with social and environmental breakdown. It is high time
GDP was rejected as a yardstick of progress and societal wellbeing.

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Re-regulate global trade, with the goal of making businesses place-based
Local needs need to be put first, not the needs of rootless capital. So-called ‘free’ trade treaties
have given global corporations the ability to pit nation against nation and region against region,
leading to the gutting of laws and regulations protecting jobs, resources, and the environment.
There needs to be a radical reversal of WTO rules, of existing trade treaties and free-trade areas,etc., (along with a relaxing of regulations that currently stifle local trade and finance). This is achallenging goal, and will require a powerful, economically literate movement. Businesses need tobelong to a place, which would allow nation-states, localities, and regions to regulate businesses
effectively. Gigantism must be opposed. ‘Subsidiarity’ — locating power at the lowest level atwhich it is viably practicable — will encourage businesses to replicate rather than scale-up.  ‘Site
here to sell here’ laws should apply.

Reduce the scale of our techno-economic structures
More decentralised, smaller-scale economic and technological systems are needed in order tobetter reveal their impact on the inter-linked and complex processes of the living world. Our
extraction of resources and use of labour also need to occur at a level at which they are lessliable to produce cataclysmic outcomes. The general aim should be: local production for local
needs first, then regional markets, and finally, only true surplus or specialised goods for the global
market. Small really is beautiful. These changes are a precondition for — though not a guaranteeof — accountability and genuine democracy.

Shift taxes and subsidies that currently favour the large and global
Rather than tax labour heavily while subsidising the use of energy and technology, policies needto promote the creation of jobs and livelihoods, while minimising the wasteful use of energy andother resources. This would help achieve the crucial ‘keep it in the ground’ vision for fossil fuels,
and a shift in investment towards decentralised, place-based renewable energy systems.

Shift public investments in infrastructure that currently favour the large and global
Billions in taxpayer dollars are still being invested in creating and improving trade-based
infrastructures — superhighways, shipping terminals, airports — while the needs of local economies
are being neglected. Billions more are spent on R&D to advance large-scale monocultural
production and high-tech living, while the needs of smaller-scale producers and low-impact waysof life are ignored.

Take the creation of money and debt out of private hands
Leaving these key elements of modern economies in the hands of unaccountable banks andfinancial institutions has led to reckless speculation and financial collapse, as well as a widening
abyss between rich and poor.

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Post-growth LocalisationT

ogether, the localisation initiatives and policy steps outlined above offer us our best chanceof surviving the actual and metaphorical storms that globalisation is creating. Rather thanintegrating more fully into a profoundly unsustainable global system — scaling up the economy
still further in the hope of creating enough ‘wealth’ to repair a fast-collapsing biosphere — wecan localise, decentralise, and scale down our economies, thereby substantially reducing our
ecological footprint. Far from costing jobs, threatening the social fabric, or reducing government
effectiveness, this path would increase employment, heal our communities, improve well-being,
and restore democracy.
Is there any chance of policies like these being implemented while the world is in the gripof the trade treaties that currently enforce neoliberal globalisation? Perhaps not. If not, then wesuggest it is time for a ‘breakaway strategy’, in which a small (and subsequently growing) groupof nations collaborate to forge new trade treaties that allow the use of tariffs to limit the import ofgoods that could be produced locally. Such protectionism would not be targeted against fellow
citizens in other countries; rather, it would be a way of genuinely safeguarding — protecting —jobs and local resources against the excessive power of transnational corporations and banks. It
would allow societies to determine the rules for business, and prevent governments from being
overrun by unaccountable corporations and investors.
Such a group of breakaway nations would be working co-operatively to reduce theirdependence and to diversify their home economies, rather than specialising their economies forthe convenience of multi-national capital. They could sign an Agreement on Sustainable Trade,building in step by step reductions in levels of trading, as economies became much closer tobeing self-sufficient, again, trading mainly in those things they were not capable of producing forthemselves.

New International Institutions

Although global governance is not the solution, some new international institutions that focus
on the protection of the environment and human rights are needed. Rather than international
institutions that promote growth while fragmenting society and destroying the natural world, weneed institutions with the mandate to reverse economic globalisation while encouraging global
collaboration to protect people and the planet. This will only be possible if civic society is fully
informed and closely involved with such institutions.
Key examples of such institutions and rules include:

A World Environment Organisation (WEO)
Some environmental problems know no frontiers (think of chemicals, that travel the world’s
currents; or of carbon, moving through our shared atmosphere). They are above all the problems
that need addressing globally, and the WEO would exist to address them. In order to createsuch an organisation, civic society would need to be given the mandate to establish a basic
ecological umbrella under which diverse cultures and economies would operate. So, because
grave threats like CO2 emissions, polluted water, toxic waste, GMOs, etc., transcend politicalboundaries, they would be proactively regulated or banned. The WEO could also be the venue
where cases brought under the law of ecocide (see below) are tried. The WEO would not be topdown, monocultural ‘global government’. On the contrary, it would seek to guard against justsuch corporate monoculture. Monitoring of environmental problems should occur primarily atnational and community levels, with international collaboration where appropriate.
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Entrenchment of the Precautionary Principle in the articles of association of global,
national and local institutions
The Precautionary Principle would state that, when there is a threat of serious and irreversible
damage, we don’t need to wait for ‘all’ the evidence to come in before acting; we are justified
in acting to protect because, it might well be too late by the time ‘full evidence’ was available.
This Principle would protect society and the natural world from risky, untested practices andtechnologies. The creation and reckless implementation of these life-destroying technologies
emanates from a system of reductionist blindness, linked to speed and large scale. Precautionary
thinking provides us with a bulwark against over-hastiness, gigantism and monoculture.

A Law of Ecocide as a new international crime against peaceThis Law would, quite simply, prohibit the destruction of ecosystems. This would provide a final
recourse to protect our threatened ecosystems — and thus ourselves.
‘Rights of nature’, as per the model of the recent constitutions of some South Americancountries, would provide the natural world with legal standing. Granting ‘rights’ to nature (asopposed to just human beings, let alone corporations) would correct the currently anthropocentricemphasis of our legal systems.

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A Key Obstacle: the enclosure of our minds

A

major obstacle to halting the destructive process of globalisation and implementing localisationis the lack of genuine democracy and citizen power — problems exacerbated by a lack ofawareness of the workings of the global economy. National politics have become, by and large,
little more than a theatre, as the channels of information have been enclosed and commodified by
the corporate-controlled media and internet platforms.
We have little chance of bringing about meaningful political change until we educate ourselves
effectively and begin to build coalitions to take back the power of the 99%. This means proactively
challenging the widespread assumptions that have been shaping our intellectual landscape overthe last three decades. In this period, corporations have massively increased their wealth andpower, and have influenced thinking at every level, from schoolbooks to scientific research andglobal media. As a consequence, we have been immersed in well-funded, foggy thinking that
prefers to focus on symptoms rather than root causes.
A good example of this is Al Gore’s framing of the climate issue, heralded by mostenvironmentalists as a great contribution. Al Gore promoted globalisation which was creating a
massive surge in CO2 emissions through increased global trade as corporations shifted heavy, CO2
polluting industry to low-wage countries with low-environmental standards. Global corporations
also actively encouraged the spread of consumerism to the global South. Yet in Gore’s descriptionof the problem there was no mention of the major cause of increases in CO2 emissions: dramaticchanges in production. Instead his framing put the responsibility for tackling dangerous climatechange onto the shoulders of individual consumers in the global North. We were told that changing
our light bulbs and driving less was the way to save the planet. There was no mention of the needto reverse corporate-led globalisation.
People need to be genuinely informed that the problem rests largely with producers, withadvertisers, and with the unfairly stacked political and legal frameworks that give free rein tocorporations and banks, while making it hard for more ecological practices and local businesses tosurvive. People also need to be reminded that it is not individual greed that created this economic
system. None of us voted to put in place an economy that uses subsidies, regulations, and ourtaxes to work against both personal and planetary well-being. Providing a bigger picture thatconnects the dots can forge a powerful movement to transform the economy.
Here are some of the other assumptions that need rethinking:Is economic growth necessary?
It has now become clear that as the economy grows, jobs and financial security are becoming
more elusive for the majority. The growth that’s being pursued is wealth-creation for global
corporations, and poverty that’s trickling upwards to the middle classes. In fact, most growth
is now uneconomic: it leaves us worse off, rather than better. Built on a carbon bubble and on
money created through debt, it has expanded into an unsustainable financial casino. We needto raise awareness of the possibility, desirability and necessity of achieving a post-growth future.
Biodiversity and ecological health need to be placed at the centre of all economic thinking. And,
we need to ask what the economy is for, and have it serve people rather than the other way around.

Should we ‘let the market decide’?
Corporate-funded think tanks have succeeded in spreading the myth that there is a market-based
solution for every problem: with enough wealth and the correct market signals, poverty andenvironmental problems can be overcome. So in spite of our escalating social and environmental
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crises, most policy choices aim at ‘growing the economy’ by spurring consumption, exporting
more goods, lowering barriers to trade and investment, encouraging innovation, and unleashing
the power of the market. Far from a solution, this is like putting your foot on the accelerator whenyour car is headed for a precipice. Even the more ‘alternative’ solutions rely on the market:  ethicalconsumerism, ethical investments, carbon-trading, carbon offsets, micro-credit, fair trade, etc.
Some of these have something to offer, but they are not solutions, and do not address systemicroot causes.

Is ‘comparative advantage’ a valid principle?
The principle of ‘comparative advantage’ has been used to destroy regional self-reliance for
centuries. Any rationale that may have supported it is now outdated, both because of the hypermobility of capital and because of the great need today for resilient, non-polluting local economies(which are not dependent on long, inefficient supply lines). Comparative advantage needs to be
replaced by a general presumption that societies should have the right to provide for their own
basic needs.

Is more technology always beneficial?
Human beings must decide where technology is going; it is an inextricable part of the economy andneeds to serve us. This crucial truth has been forgotten, and needs resurrecting. Energy-intensive
technologies that are polluting, that separate us from each other, and that make us dependent on
distant profit-driven corporations, do not further human health and happiness. They could be
replaced by appropriate technologies that strengthen community ties and create real well-being
for people, without compromising that of the living planet.

Does high technology create jobs?
In the Western world we have become so industrialised that even many ‘ecological economists’assume that high technology creates jobs, leading them to prioritise industrial rather than artisan
production. Taking off our techno-economic blinders would allow us to focus on the productionof basic needs from within a framework of meaningful, sustainable livelihoods and healthy
ecosystems. It would also enable us to see that high technology destroys livelihoods faster than it
creates them.

•••
To allow for a meaningful discussion of these issues, we need information campaigns, as well as
strengthened efforts to establish alternative media (including investigative journalism). We needto spread awareness through ‘education as activism’. In that way, wisdom, common sense andgoodwill may start at last to overcome the current, failing system. Pursuit of the new democraticcompacts, institutions and rules outlined above can go hand in hand with the returning of power
to localities, and the chance for people at last to govern themselves.

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Conclusions
Joining up movements
Increasing numbers of people are waking up to the fact that virtually every issue of concern —climate chaos, toxic pollution, poverty, unemployment, loss of democracy, species extinction,
GMOs – is either caused or amplified by the economic system

We need both ‘resistance’ and ‘renewal’
We need to resist further globalisation and deregulation, in order to build up a movement fora fundamental system change. At the same time, starting right now, we also need a process ofrenewal: trying out and sharing human-scale, place-based, localised solutions. While millions
of people in the global South still retain some of these structures, these renewed ways of living
represent a relatively small part of our economies and societies in the global North. Nevertheless,the localisation movement is gaining momentum worldwide. We need to support, make visible
and strengthen the connections within this movement.

A shift towards ‘big picture’ activism
Now, more than ever, there is the potential for fundamental change. Never before have there
been so many losers and so few winners. People are already making change at the community
level. And as the evidence of the multiple benefits of localisation grows, we have further reason to
demand systemic change. But it is only by connecting the dots — seeing the big picture — that
we can move beyond addressing symptoms and begin to effect systemic change.

•••
Localisation is a process. We need to start moving away from dependence on the global system
to source resources closer to points of use. Truly localised systems are no guarantee of social orenvironmental protection but they are inevitably more benign, more convivial. They also allow us
to see more clearly the impact of our decisions and actions on the real world.
We can work together to transition to this necessary new future. Bold, joined-up, big-picture
activism provides a positive, hopeful framework that can unite people across and beyond singleissue campaigns: indigenous people, farmers, environmental and social activists, labour unions,brave politicians. Rather than competing to position one of the above issues, institutions or
solutions as the most important, we have outlined how these issues are interconnected.
In order to encourage collaboration we need to make it easier to see the connections fromindividual ecological and social flash points to the overall economic system. We need eco-literacy;by that we mean both economic and ecological. We can deconstruct the myths that underpin the
global growth economy, thus undoing and laying bare the hegemonic corporate monoculture —to see it as it really is, without anger, without assigning blame. This possibility of vision lies at thebase of the process of democratic empowerment.
We are recipients of a great gift: we have the chance (which subsequent generations may nothave) to steer towards a different future. We have the chance...and the responsibility…

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Further Reading
Climate Change or System Change (Local Futures special report)
www.localfutures.org/wp-content/uploads/Climate-Change-or-System-Change-1.pdf
Local Futures publications
www.localfutures.org/store/
Articles, blogs and interviews (Local Futures)www.localfutures.org/media-room/
Green House publications
www.greenhousethinktank.org/books.html
Green House Post-Growth Project
www.greenhousethinktank.org/post-growth-project1.html
Via Campesina
viacampesina.org
Article in The Guardian: Small is Beautiful-an economic idea that has sadly been forgotten
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/10/small-is-beautiful-economic-idea

What can I do?
There is so much that you can do - alongside others. For starters, please join us:
Go to www.localfutures.org and click the ‘Get involved’ button.
Follow Green House and Local Futures on social media:• twitter.com/GreenHouse_UK• twitter.com/EconofHappiness• www.facebook.com/TheEconomicsofhappiness17

Post-growth Localisation

About the Authors
Rupert Read is a Reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia. He is a contributor toGreen House’s first book The Post Growth Project, and has previously written on post-growtheconomics and critiques of Rawlsian liberalism. Aside from this, Rupert is also a prominent Green
Party politician, having sat as a councillor for two terms and stood in both national and European
elections.
Helena Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of Local Futures. A pioneer of the ‘neweconomy’ movement, she has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecologicalwell-being for more than thirty years. She is the producer and co-director of the award-winningdocumentary The Economics of Happiness, and is the author of Ancient Futures: Learning from
Ladakh, described as “an inspirational classic”. She has given public lectures in seven languages,
and has appeared in broadcast, print, and online media worldwide, including MSNBC, The London
Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Guardian. She was honored with the Right Livelihood Award (or ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’) for her groundbreaking work in Ladakh, and received
the 2012 Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity,and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.”

About Local Futures
Local Futures/International Society for Ecology and Culture is a charitable organisation whose
mission is to promote systemic solutions to today’s environmental, social and economic crises. Ourin-depth educational work seeks to reveal the root causes of those crises — from unemployment
to climate change, from ethnic conflict to loss of biodiversity — while promoting grassroots andpolicy-level strategies for ecological and community renewal.
For over three decades Local Futures, and its predecessor, The Ladakh Project, haveorganised, hosted and delivered hundreds of lectures, film screenings, workshops and international
conferences across the world — from the Tibetan plateau to the UK, from Australia to South Africa,
Japan and the USA.
We regularly participate in events ranging in size from informal community meetings to large
international gatherings. We also produce books, articles, pamphlets and films. Our materials areused in high school and university classrooms internationally and have been invaluable resources
for individuals and NGOs in every corner of the world. In total our books and films have beentranslated into nearly 50 different languages.
www.localfutures. org

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About Green House
Green House is a think tank founded in 2011. It aims to lead the development of green thinking
in the UK.
Politics, they say, is the art of the possible. But the possible is not fixed. What we believe ispossible depends on our knowledge and beliefs about the world. Ideas can change the world,and Green House is about challenging the ideas that have created the world we live in now, andoffering positive alternatives.
The problems we face are systemic, and so the changes we need to make are complex andinterconnected. Many of the critical analyses and policy prescriptions that will be part of the newparadigm are already out there. Our aim is to communicate them more clearly, and more widely.
We will publish a series of reports and briefings on different subjects. We do not intend tohave a party line, but rather to stimulate debate and discussion.
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www.greenhousethinktank.org

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Post-growth Localisation

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