What is Localisation?
The alternative paradigm to globalisation — one that aims to counter its negative effects and even implement some truly positive ones—is localisation, a movement based around reconnection and resiliency. Basically, globalisation’s opposite. In fact, it is pretty anti all the main attributes of our current economy: anti-corporate supremacy, anti-growth, and anti-ecocide.
Localisation calls for a shift to harmonious living with nature and each other; a return to community living. It involves putting policies in place to reverse the climate crisis and improve our own degrading health – issues which globalisation seems to exacerbate no end.
What We Have
And what exactly is so compelling about globalisation, beyond the ideology? Ideologies are always… ideal. But this one cannot square with reality. Far from it: in true parasitic style, globalisation takes far more than it gives, draining both people and planet of vital natural resources in the endless quest for growth, destroying our habitats and our futures.
We ourselves lose touch with reality as we lose ties with our localities, striving instead for the false standard of success presented to us from afar (individual, financial), which contributes to psychological distress (mood disorders, suicide, violence), physical illness (pollution, pandemics) and environmental destruction (ecological degradation, species extinction): all shadow hallmarks of western prosperity, or ’progress’, that don’t factor into decision making – or at least not nearly enough. This is the undisclosed fallout when GDP trumps community enrichment and care .
What we have now, in place of healthy, connected humans and a thriving ecosystem, is a disjointed food system, corporate monopolies, wasteful and inefficient production systems, endless growth incentives, dependency on far off places, a lack of self-sufficiency and extreme vulnerability to shocks around the world—COVID-19, mass-migration, and financial crises being recent examples of this disfunction—as well as a dangerously degrading environment. But the numbers continue to soar, so it’s all going to plan?
What We Need
How then, do we transition to this more realistic vision of reality? For meaningful change to take place, it must come from the combined efforts of grassroots initiatives and governmental policies: bottom-up meets top-down.
There are various organisations, such as Transition Network, working to rebuild the economy, but they cannot succeed without significant complementary programmes from governments, such as:
Restructuring taxes and subsidies to favour local, sustainable companies rather than big, global businesses;
Amending trade treaties to support countries’ workers and natural resources above international profit;
Regulating the financial system so we are no longer subject to the “too big to fail” theory, that sees governments prop up large corporations (above all else) for fear of the impact their losses will have on the global economy;
Reworking our food production system and land-usage to prioritise local communities rather than transnational firms.
What This Means
A localised economy, or rather, a return to community-oriented society, would look very different to a globalised one. It would see projects such as community gardens, credit unions, small-scale farms, infrastructure investment, co-operatives, local trade networks, and small businesses all come to fruition.
But the deeper effect may be less tangible, as localisation could re-establish our relationships with the people and places around us, sustaining our connection to each other and to the earth rather than fostering dependence on corporations, or on superficial sources of self-worth seen in the media.
Some proposed advantages of localisation explored by Local Futures include:
• Reducing poverty
• Improving livelihoods
• Invigorating democracy
• Healing divides
• Slowing urban sprawl
• Improving environmental health
• Increasing business accountability
• Increasing human happiness
From this list, it’s clear that almost every social and environmental movement championed by activists today links with the issue of localisation: the benefits would be far and wide.
It may sound radical, and perhaps it is, given the state of things today. What localisation isn’t, however, is a continuation of the normalised insanity of our current system, which would probably appear somewhat ‘out there’ at a glance too, for the uninformed.
Really, it’s about restoring cause and effect to our social consciousness by making governments, businesses and communities all aware of, and therefore accountable for, their intake and output, rather than pursuing our unsustainable consumer culture . Localisation would replace dependency on unaccountable and unreliable transnational firms with self-sufficiency and autonomy. Crucially, it would also relieve LEDCs (less economically developed countries) of consequences from wealthier nations’ actions – in both economic and environmental terms.
This model is not about isolationism, nor about backpedalling on the beneficial aspects of modern connectivity, like improved enfranchisement for a wider variety of previously overlooked people via internet platforms, or greater insight into other lives and cultures through education, travel and open dialogues.
Far from cutting us off from the rest of the world, localisation simply means shifting the bulk of a community’s production and trade to a nearby radius, bringing interactions back to a human level, while still permitting the export of any surpluses once local needs are met, or importing goods that can’t be produced in that region. It just eliminates the unnecessary—and frankly inefficient—system of mindless import/export and ever-widening wealth gaps we have now. In that light it actually sounds more reasonable than radical.
