Helena Norberg-Hodge

Author/Filmmaker/Founder International Society for Ecology and Culture

Host: Basima Farhat

Previously Aired On: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 – Listen to the Show!
 

Author/filmmaker Helena Norberg Hodge (born 1946) is the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, a non-profit organisation concerned with the protection of both biological and cultural diversity, and education for action: moving beyond single issues to look at the more fundamental influences that shape our lives. ISEC runs programs on four continents aimed at strengthening ecological diversity and community, with a particular emphasis on local food and farming.

Helena is a co-founder of the International Forum on Globalization (www.ifg.org), an alliance of sixty leading activists, scholars, economists, researchers and writers formed to stimulate new thinking, joint activity and public education in response to economic globalisation. She is also involved with the Global Ecovillage Network and directs the Ladakh Project, renowned for its groundbreaking work in sustainable development on the Tibetan plateau. She is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award or Alternative Nobel Prize.

Helena is a leading analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures around the world. A linguist by training, she was educated in Sweden, Germany, England and the United States, and speaks seven languages. She has lectured and taught extensively around the world from the Smithsonian Institution to Harvard and Oxford universities. She is the author of numerous works, including the inspirational classic, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, which together with an award-winning film of the same title has been translated into more than 30 languages. Her latest book is Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness (Zed Books, UK, 2002) The film Learning from Ladakh explores the interconnections of how state-forced development can lead to unsustainable outcomes by destroying local forms of economy–and destroying local forms of happiness and self-sufficiency despite expanded material plenty. The next generation is entirely ‘lost’ and unconnected to anywhere, leading to huge alienation socially as well as ecologically. The connection here is that when the social fabric and happiness of a locality is removed, the ecological fabric decays as well. The subtle film explores this very succinctly in memorable images. The film was produced in 1991.

Helena’s newest film made with Steven Gorelick & John Page is The Economics of Happiness. The Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, government and big business continue to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, all around the world people are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance—and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localization.

The film shows how globalization breeds cultural self-rejection, competition and divisiveness; how it structurally promotes the growth of slums and urban sprawl; how it is decimating democracy. We learn about the obscene waste that results from trade for the sake of trade: apples sent from the UK to South Africa to be washed and waxed, then shipped back to British supermarkets; tuna caught off the coast of America, flown to Japan to be processed, then flown back to the US. We hear about the suicides of Indian farmers; about the demise of land-based cultures in every corner of the world.

The second half of The Economics of Happiness provides not only inspiration, but practical solutions. Arguing that economic localization is a strategic solution multiplier that can solve our most serious problems, the film spells out the policy changes needed to enable local businesses to survive and prosper. We are introduced to community initiatives that are moving the localization agenda forward, including urban gardens in Detroit, Michigan and the Transition Town movement in Totnes, UK. We see the benefits of an expanding local food movement that is restoring biological diversity, communities and local economies worldwide. And we are introduced to Via Campesina, the largest social movement in the world, with more than 400 million members.

The Economics of Happiness features a chorus of voices from six continents including Samdhong Rinpoche, the Prime Minister of Tibet’s government in exile, Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, David Korten and Zac Goldsmith. They tell us that climate change and peak oil give us little choice: we need to localize, to bring the economy home. The good news is that as we move in this direction we will begin not only to heal the earth but also to restore our own sense of well-being. The Economics of Happiness restores our faith in humanity and challenges us to believe that it is possible to build a better world.

March 1st, 2011 --Previous Guests--, Helena Norberg-Hodge | no comments