Consumer culture & economic globalisation are failing us, yet we continue to be brainwashed with the belief that there is no alternative to the global growth model. How short our collective memory, before globalist economics, we had local economies ( producing closer to home) which may not have accumulated excessive wealth for those desiring it in the ways which globalist economics can. However as advocates of localisation argue: local, doesn’t make money the master as does globalisation, rather it puts finance back into its box, so that money becomes our servant once more.
Here in the Upper Clutha its communities are in the throes of the globalist takeover. Evidenced by the strategic placement of Mayor Jim Boult, whom makes no secret where his loyalties lie. A front man for globalist culture accelerating the advantage of large global corporates & elite. Assisted by government trade agreements, which allow the creation of atypical growth that extracts wealth from targeted communities & countries.
The implications for the global growth agenda have tentacles reaching into the communities of the Upper Clutha & Queenstown, as it stretches into the community, so has the consolidation of power to corporations forging advantageous alliances with governments decimating participatory democracy. Growing not just bank accounts but, over-tourism, division, dog-eat-dog competition and generally negative implications for eco-systems. Examples of this include: the insidious airport saga, the disheartening creation of government SHA legislation designed to override community democracy, the constant bankrolling of extensive property development consuming rural and outstanding landscapes. And most recently the inappropriate placement of cellphone radiation towers by Spark due to weak regulations.
Then there is the wastebusters exploit, which saw a community initiative established to resolve its own waste management problems an ethos of community first, team up with a global corporate, Beijing industries (waste-management) just to win a local recycling contract. An endemic pattern highlighting the many problems created by globalisation.
None so despairing as the ways it extracts the essence of what makes a unique community liveable, leaving in its tracks the pressing issues our communities now face. Conformity, urban sprawl, loss of rural lands, unaffordable housing, relative poverty, roadways clogging, pollution of water and airways, inadequate infrastructure, increased waste and lack of diverse local production and industry.
For an ever-increasing number of people all over the world life has become stressful, people are feeling the tangible and real experience at the loss of home – as once familiar landscapes are consumed for the growth imperative at alarming rates. People cannot emotionally keep up with the rapid pace of change, a major cause for cultural rejection.
Most folks have to work longer hours, two parents working, just to live, unable to really enjoy life. Less time for friends, family and all of the things that contribute to our well being that don’t involve spending or making money. For these reasons alternatives are being sought, which stand up to the unfair policies of global trade and regulation, calling out the injustice which has worsened all the complex issues we face as communities.
The concept of Localisation is one such alternative, hailed as the antidote that offers the prospect of real & lasting prosperity. Helena Norberg-Hodge, filmmaker of the 2011 award-winning documentary (The Economics of Happiness) says; ” Localisastion is a systematic, far-reaching alternative to corporate capitalism. fundamentally, it’s about reducing the scale of economic activity. That doesn’t mean eliminating international trade or striving for some kind of absolute self-reliance: it’s simply about creating a more accountable and more sustainable economies by producing what we need closer to home”.
Helena continues ” The wonderful thing is that as we decrease the scale of economic activity, we actually increase our own well-being. That’s because at the deepest level, localisation is about connection, re-establishing our interdependence with others and the natural world. And this connection is a primary human need.”
