Local Economy or Local-Washing?
“Local” has become a buzzword. Today there’s eco-localism, local food and local farming, local media movements, as well as regional, state, and even national ad campaigns urging us to “eat local” and “buy local.”
Local’s gone global, but what exactly does the term mean anymore?
David Levine, of the American Sustainable Business Council, discusses the “triple bottom line” of social, environmental, and economic impacts. “Local by itself is not enough,” he tells Yes! Magazine. Levine does not want, for example, people buying “local first” from a locally owned sweatshop, toxic chemical plant or dirty manufacturing facility.
Add some democracy to your localism
The goal is having community-led, community-controlled economies where the decision-making is by those who are feeling the effects of the decisions that are made. This type of development comes under the rubric of what is becoming called Commonomics — economic democracies that foster local self-reliance.
Farmer-philosopher Wendell Berry defines economy this way
I mean not economics but economy, the making of the human household upon the earth; the arts of adapting kindly the many, many human households to the earth’s many eco-systems and human neighborhoods.
By now, we all know the signs of a human household that’s been hollowed out.
We’ve seen the food deserts and the chronically vacant homes, the ghostly downtown storefronts and the municipalities being courted by sweet-talking corporations that suck up public resources and then run away. We’re familiar with the tension in towns where the only thing that the rich and poor have in common are the roads. We know what it’s like to be close, everywhere, to the same chain coffee shop and two hours away from the “local” hospital. We see the sprawl that’s eating the woodlands.
– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/08/local-economy-or-local-washing/#sthash.TzCsMNug.dpuf
