SHIFTING DIRECTION: FROM GLOBAL TO LOCAL

Presentation by Helena Norberg-Hodge

February 27, 2005
Summary by Phoebe Hoss

On Sunday, November 13, 2005, Helena Norberg-Hodge spoke at All Souls under the auspices of the Peace Task Force and Adult Education. Ms Norberg-Hodge, a leading analyst on the impact of the global economy on cultures around the world, is founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture. ISEC has successfully promoted sustainable alternatives to conventional development on four continents.

Ms Norberg-Hodge began by saying that conventional development has brought us to a crisis, one worse than we realize. Thirty years ago, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring awoke us to the ecological dangers caused by our industrial practices. As a result, the government had a strong mandate to limit economic growth.

But this mandate infuriated many governments and corporate elite, who successfully promoted the counter idea that we must continue to grow. "People need growth" was the mantra from the mid-1980s to 2000. In fulfilling it, giant Western corporations moved into third world countries to set up production – not, as it turned out, to benefit the people, but to introduce pollution and fuel envy, greed, and divisiveness. Furthermore, while deregulation of trade and finance has allowed businesses to expand their activities around the world, it has also given them little choice but to grow or die. This is one of the “rules of the game” that affects even tiny mom-and-pop shops and small farmers, millions of whom are as a result going bankrupt.

The aim has been to homogenize, centralize, and urbanize cultures. In respect to sustainable food production and shelter, all governments, regardless of whether they are capitalist, communist, or socialist, have been against diversity – despite any professions of multiculturalism.

Global trade – and the loss of jobs, the pollution, and the poverty it causes – are massively subsidized by our taxes. Subsidies, trade rules, regulations, and tax policy all steer the economy in a particular direction – which right now is toward an ever larger scale in every business. The resulting practices are not only unecological but economically inefficient as well. Among the most glaring -- and one that routinely occurs in the global economy -- is the simultaneous import and export of identical products. This is the reason that people in New Zealand, Kenya, and Costa Rica don’t eat their own butter or drink their own milk, but instead consume dairy products transported from thousands of miles away. There is also the UK's inefficient practice, which is totally wasteful of energy, of flying “local” apples to South Africa to be washed and waxed before they are returned for sale in UK supermarkets! Additionally, while industrialism produces more food with less human labor than do diversified small-scale operations, it has never proven to be more efficient than these.

Such practices lead to cultural breakdown. It is the children of developing countries who effect this destruction. Development brings to their countries tourism, urbanization, and subsidized food. Looking for models, these children learn from the media that in the modern Western world people don't have to work, and want such freedom for themselves. Also, wanting to be "fair and lovely," as the media promise if they buy lightening cream, they deny their skin color and the shape of their eyes. It is a consumer system based on self-hatred.

In spite of this bleak picture, Ms. Norberg-Hodge was optimistic about today's many inspiring efforts to heal the planet and to heal society. A high proportion of these projects include community-building and are based on a deep spiritual respect for the living earth. This coming together of a love and respect for nature along with the rebuilding of community is what she means by localization.

Specifically, ISEC was able to get India to refrain from similarly undermining the spiritual culture of Ladakh, a society in the Kashmir region, often referred to as “Little Tibet." Ladakh has a remarkably high standard of living: none of the comforts we in the West are used to, but none of the poverty that is all too common here; also, no hunger and no obesity. Instead, its people have great joie de vivre and are individualistic, sharp, and intelligent.

We need to educate ourselves to the complexities of the global economy and work to enhance life rather than let our corporations destroy it. We can educate ourselves for action through community-based study-for-action groups of 8-15 people. ISEC has materials that can be used by these study groups. (A member of the audience was in one and recommended it highly.)

For more information, see the Web sites: for ISEC (www.isec.org) and Just Food (www.Justfood.org), an organization that connects with local farmers. A film on ISEC’s work in promoting sustainable alternatives in Ladakh is also available through the society's web site.