New Sprouts On The Ashes Of Spain's Crisis-Stricken Economy

"Barcelona is a laboratory for such experimenting with alternative, solidarity-based forms of economy. While many of the city’s businesses are closing, hundreds of cooperatives are being launched there. At the same time, initiatives to recycle equipment and materials are blossoming. In courses financed by the municipal administration, people are learning to sew, restore furniture, and repair household appliances. Neighbours cooperate in urban gardens to raise vegetables for their own consumption. Forms of collaborative consumption are also on the rise. Car sharing is very popular; people are bartering goods and services and jointly organizing children’s day care. Consumers are joining forces to buy directly from farmers in the region, bypassing middlemen. The growing popularity of this "consumo de proximidad (regional consumption) supports organic agriculture at the regional level. The crisis seems to have brought about a new awareness – a growing appreciation of raw materials and resources. But that is not all: the need for structures of solidarity and a fundamental social transformation is on the rise."

Forest fires renew the land, they say. Maybe the collapse of the global system based on consumerism brings a new era of vivid local communities? Spanish society shows signs that could very hardly be described as... decline, desolation, disintegration... much rather like, say, renewal?

Read the full article at the Böll Foundation's website, here. 

Flashlight of the CAP

All Plants Bulletin is deeply interested in how the Common Agricultural Policy 2014-2020 is shaping up.

It's not just the fact that we have some rural development communication background. It's easy to see, that EU funding is deeply affecting the food we eat, the countryside we walk on, the livelihoods of people living still outside the urban areas. The air, the waters, the animals, the plants. It's extremely important, yet, the debate is raging on largely outside the public's attention.

The new CAP is almost done, here is how Friends of the Earth describes the situation:

• Members of the European Parliament voted to reject attempts to scrap most of the European Commission’s wish to ensure that farmers carry out some basic environmental measures in order to get public subsidies;
• The rotation of crops, crucial to protect soil and water, reduce emissions, and preserve wildlife, and beneficial for both farmers and the environment, is not included. This will lead to the further expansion of monoculture farming practices and an increase in accompanying pesticides use;
• Large industrial farms will continue to receive the lion’s share of the subsidies while small farmers will find it harder to survive;
• Developing countries will still be expected to deliver cheap raw materials for the European food industry and will not be protected from the dumping of Europe’s surplus production on their markets.

We will be back with more updates on the subject soon. Meanwhile, direct your hardest questions to your MEPs!

Ecovillage Day

Ecovillages are living workshops, testing grounds for the next evolutionary phase of human society. These communities are experimenting with food- and energy independence, and local authority  models often based on non-violent communication, gift economies, timebanks, and other socio-psychologic tools for a peaceful, equal, and just coexistence.

Some might say that on a planet where the dominant, intelligent species lives mostly in cities (a bit more than 50% of humans are living in cities now, this important borderline, historic milestone has been reached only very recently), urban sustainability issues are of utmost importance, and moving back closer to nature does not help in solving the greatest challenges humanity as a whole ever faced: changing our global way of life, so it stops ravaging the ecosystem it is part of. If you run to the woods, the zombies surviving the collapse of the urban-industrial society will eventually crawl out after you, first eating your crops, than eating you, they say.

But you have to start somewhere, and it's certainly easier to create something new in a more natural environment, than try to modify an infinitely elaborate system running at high RPM, from the inside. There are citydwellers who do try to do that of course, one example is the now-global Transition Towns movement. City sustainablity is a key issue, and many interesting and promising best practices are already in place. But for now, we focus on what's going on at the rural areas.

Global Ecovillage Network is, well, a global ecovillage network. 0422 is global Earth Day, and the media is always chock full of "green" events at that time of the year, like Critical Mass. It's also usually Car-Free Day in Europe, so the media-noise is extreme, and thus, overly uneffective, but anyway, the good people of GEN decided to have a sort of Open Day for all ecovillages all over the world on this established date connected to sustainability.

 Use the opportunity and get to know the ecovillage closest to You! In Hungary, most of these initiatives can be found under the name MÉH (Magyar Élőfalu Hálózat - Hungarian Living Village Network), and many of them are welcoming guests and volunteers, whether it is 0422, or any other day of the calendar.








We don't know what communities will participate in Hungary yet, but All Plants Bulletin will surely report about the most interesting upcoming events of Earth Day 2013 organized in Budapest, and other parts of the country.

Pray for an Asteroid

Excellent doomer post from Dmitry Orlov. A perfect read for a Saturday afternoon, especially if your weekend plans are still hazy, now you know what to do: find a nearby coal-burning power plant, and shut it down.