Reflections on the 2023 Planet Local Summit, Bristol, UK
I am proud and grateful to have been invited as a speaker to the Planet Local Summit 2023 in Bristol. The Summit, a project of Local Futures, an international nonprofit and pioneer of the localisation movement, gathered cutting-edge thinkers, writers, policy makers, movement builders and activists. I found myself in beautiful company including Lyla June Johnston, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Charles Eisenstein, John Perkins, Bayo Akomolafe, Iain McGilchrist, Vandana Shiva, Satish Kumar, Jyoti Fernandes, Daniel C. Wahl and Rob Hopkins, many other speakers as well as a few hundred beautiful participants. The days were filled with rich connections, powerful conversations and change making stories. I was part of an international panel on food sovereignty with Nelson Mudzingwa from Zimbabwe, Ryuhei Kawada from Japan and Margarita Barcena Lujambio from Ethiopia, gave a 2,5 minute on-stage ‘fire talk’ about ALPA’s mission and held a ‘Conversation for Change’ with young farmers activist Ele Saltmarsh about Small Farm Revolution, moderated by Manish Jain. For ALPA it is important to be part of this movement, the network and the systemic change we together work for.
About Local Futures
Local Futures is dedicated to renewing ecological and social wellbeing by strengthening communities and local economies worldwide. Local Futures work is helping to map out a realistic path towards a more truly sustainable future.
Localisation is bringing the economy home, back to a human scale. It is the process of building economic structures that allow the goods and services a community needs to be produced locally and regionally whenever possible. It is about shortening the distance between producers and consumers by encouraging diversified production for domestic needs, instead of specialised production for export.
With ALPA we also have the same truly sustainable future in mind and strive for this by assuring access to land for agroecological farmers and by localising the food systems. By bringing back small scale ecological farmers in the landscape, we create opportunities for people to consume high quality products without taxing the environment, create many job opportunities within the local food systems and facilitate the important connections between people and the land.
We are excited and proud to be one of the many projects which are part of the global localisation movement and to be connected with all the energy that Local Futures is building up.
On www.localfutures.org you can find a wealth of information in articles, podcasts, video’s and interviews and dive into the global movement of localisation.
Further resources:
Local Food Can Save The World(video)
All recordings from the 2023 Planet Local Summit