Following the motto “education for action”, the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC) has developed several educational programmes that pursue a twofold objective. The first is to show how the economic globalisation process is detrimental for the natural environment. The second is to persuade people that, to quote Steven Gorelick, US Programme Director, “the current direction we are headed in is not inevitable, and there are ways to steer onto a different path that is healthier for both people and the planet”.
Even though ISEC also organises workshops and conferences, its main activity is that of producing educational material that supports teachers, lecturers and activists, and provides a source of information for individuals in general. Through its books, articles, reports, films, factsheets and web-based materials, ISEC highlights the necessity of revitalising cultural and biological diversity.
As Mr Gorelick says, “We believe that the solution to most of the crises we face today – social, ecological, economic, and even spiritual – lies in shifting away from the globalising direction we have been taken by our political leaders, towards economies that are more localised, smaller in scale, place-based, diverse, and ecological.”
“Food”, he points out, “is perhaps the most important of our needs to localise, since it is something everyone, everywhere, needs every day”. Hence, many of ISEC’s projects and programmes emphasise the localisation of food production.
ISEC does not try to tell people what their local food system should look like, as “the details of what any local food system will look like – the foods grown or the methods employed – will vary widely from place to place”. ISEC tries instead to focus on those forces that impede peoples’ ability to be self-reliant in food; forces that are largely the same everywhere.
“There’s a need”, Mr Gorelick says , “for widespread educational campaigns that spell out how ‘free’ trade treaties free up big agribusinesses to invade local markets everywhere; or how subsidies make food from the other side of the world cheaper than food grown next door”.
The International Society for Ecology and Culture is a non-profit organisation operating since the late 1970s. Information about the programmes it offers can be found on its website (www.localfutures.org) or requested via e-mail: infousa@isec.org.uk.
ISEC presents specific examples and individual experiences from all around the planet to show the catastrophic outcomes of globalisation, the necessity of a paradigm shift, and proof that such a shift is possible and desirable.
This is seen in the story of an Australian farmers shared by Helena Norberg-Hodge, ISEC’s director. Having worked for many years as a grower for the industrial food system, this farmer told her he had felt like a serf, with little control over his own life. Everything changed when two years ago he decided to sell locally. “Rather than shipping his products to a faceless corporation, he now meets his customers face-to-face. Rather than the two or three foods he produced for the global market, he now grows close to 20 different products, and his land is healthier for it. Overall, he is much, much, happier now that he has ‘gone local’”.
Text: Nicola Piras