Should future societies be more local, self-organised and focused on contributing to commonly shared wealth? If goods and services a community needs are produced locally and regionally, can this lead to more resilient communities, reduce inequality and improve environmental health?
The pandemic and geopolitics have demonstrated vulnerabilities of communities that are heavily dependent on global supply chains. Join us to hear from Helena Norberg-Hodge, a pioneer of the localization movement on whether ‘going local’ can be a key strategy for restoring ecological and social wellbeing. What if more of our needs were met through common goods created from a peer-to-peer production system? Michel Bauwens will share about the significance of self-organising communities focused on the production of common goods that freely share with one another. Together they will discuss whether such a myriad of diverse initiatives by local citizens and enterprises can achieve trans-local impact by being open and connected to one another, thereby acting as ‘solution-multipliers’.
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Programme
Welcome Remarks
Dr Justin Lee
Senior Research Fellow and Head, Policy Lab
Institute of Policy Studies
How Local Action can Lead to Systematic Change: Localisation as a Solution-Multiplier
Ms Helena Norberg-Hodge
Founder and Director
International Alliance for Localization
Local Futures
Resilient Communities are Local, but Open and Connected
Mr Michel Bauwens
Founder
The Foundation for P2P Alternatives
Sharing by discussants
| Associate Professor Ijal Navqi Associate Dean (Curriculum and Teaching) School of Social Sciences Singapore Management University |
Ms Dawn Yip Coordinating Director SG Partnerships Office Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth |
Question and Answer
Speakers’ profiles
HELENA NORBERG-HODGE is a pioneer of the new economy movement and recipient of the Alternative Nobel prize, the Arthur Morgan Award and the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.” She is author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures, and Local is Our Future (2019) and producer of The Economics of Happiness and Planet Local. Helena is the founder and director of Local Futures and The International Alliance for Localisation, and a cofounder of the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Ecovillage Network.
Listed at #82, on the Post Growth Institute (En)Rich list, MICHEL BAUWENS is the founder of the P2P Foundation and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has (co-)published various books and reports such as P2P, A Commons Manifesto (Westminster Un. Pr. 2019). Michel currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand and in 2017, has crafted a Commons Transition Plan for the city of Ghent in Belgium, after a similar project for Ecuador in 2014. He has consulted with the labour mutual SMart, co-designed the commons strategy of One Project, and currently works on commons-centric solutions to solve global catastrophic risks.
Discussants’ profiles
DAWN YIP is Coordinating Director of the Singapore Government Partnerships Office, at the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth. The office spearheads the Singapore Together movement in partnership with public agencies and the people of Singapore. Dawn has previously consulted and taught in the fields of foresight, public engagement and organisation development. She has also been visiting faculty with the Singapore Management University’s Master of Tri-Sector Collaboration.
IJLAL NAQVI is Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean (Curriculum and Teaching) at the School of Social Sciences of Singapore Management University. He studies governance and development in the Global South, using infrastructure as a lens on state-building and the citizen’s engagement with the state on an everyday basis. He also studies participatory engagements on public issues and the structures which help or hinder such engagement. His book Access to Power: Electricity and the Infrastructural State in Pakistan was published by Oxford University Press (2022). Ijlal’s research has been published in Energy Research and Social Science, Journal of Development Studies, Urban Studies, Journal of Democracy, and Current Sociology. Ijlal earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
