Exclusive: The Grand Botanical Chess Game
From Puerto Rican social ecologist Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero: All over the world, debates on the future of food and agriculture are dominated by one supreme subject: the seed. Its importance cannot possibly be overstated. Seed is, after all, the beginning of the human food chain. In the words of University of Wisconsin professor Jack R. Kloppenburg: […]
New SEEDS newsletter
ISE Board member and SEEDS co-founder Bob Spivey writes: We would like to announce the premiere issue of the new quarterly SEEDS newsletter, Broadcast. Our first issue includes an article on the future and promise of the Occupy movement by noted author Brian Tokar, an interview with frontline activist Swaneagle Harijan about her experience within […]
New book: Food Movements Unite!
From Food First Books in Oakland. Brian Tokar’s essay, “Food Sovereignty and Climate Justice,” is included: Food Movements Unite! Edited by Eric Holt- Giménez Examining the power of the people in transforming our food systems, this book argues that the global food movement is as creative and powerful as it is diverse and widespread. The […]
GRAIN wins Right Livelihood Award
The Right Livelihood Award, commonly described as the “alternative Nobel Prize,” has granted one of its 2011 awards to the international research group, GRAIN. GRAIN has been in the forefront of international efforts to protect traditional agricultures and access to seeds, and describes itself as “a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small […]
Toward a “Green New Deal”?
My friend and colleague Richard Greeman, now living in France, has recently added some provocative and forward-looking comments to the ongoing discussion of whether a “Green New Deal” — centered in publicly funded expansion of renewable energy and other “green” technologies — can provide a necessary opening toward a more ecological future. Appropriately for a […]
New review of “Remaking Society”
From U. of Toronto information & library science graduate student Ian Reddy. Interestingly, he describes first discovering Murray Bookchin’s writings after reading some of his 1990s critics. The review offers a fresh look at a classic work in social ecology: http://contratexts.blogspot.com/2011/06/book-murray-bookchin-1989-remaking.html.
Eco-Cultural Restoration in Colorado
by Eric Toensmeier The Woodbine Ecology Center is a unique educational center in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, offering courses, workshops, and events inspired by social ecology. Woodbine’s goal is eco-cultural restoration, bringing back the traditions of indigenous management that shaped the landscape for thousands of years. Their goal is to use these traditional […]
Social Determinants of Health
by Peter Prontzos (Langara College, Vancouver, BC)
Research has now clearly established that economic, and social variables – more
than individual or family behavior – are the most salient factors overall in
determining a child’s well-being […]
North & South, Ecology and Justice, Part 3
by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero (Last of 3 parts) New beacons Fortunately, there are a fair number of beacons in the quest to form and inform a reconciliation of “progresismo” with ecology and thus carry out the unfulfilled mandates of 20th century “tercermundismo”- these include eco-socialism, social ecology, the global climate justice movement, and “décroissance”, which translates […]
North & South, Ecology and Justice, Part 2
by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero (Second of 3 parts) Beyond sustainable development Sustainable development as defined by the Brundtland Commission and the documents that came out of the Earth Summit did not question the basic assumptions of Western-style development, it merely offered some policy safeguards and technological fixes. According to Chatterjee and Finger, “none of the (Earth […]
