People's movements

The grassroots movement for economic localisation represents a positive and practical response to the challenges of food insecurity, climate change, peak oil and financial instability. Governments should support this alternative vision for sustainable, human-scale development, writes Anna White.

'Going local' currently remains a fringe, grassroots process made up of small-scale initiatives. The real question is how to steer government priorities away from big business and global finance, and to gain political and popular support for an economy geared toward localisation, writes Anna White.

The economic freedom promised through the liberalisation of market forces has, in reality, resulted in a freedom for the very few and a contradiction of the promise that increased wealth will be shared. Hence the calls are ringing out for a new alliance of the global justice movement, says Adam Parsons.

Pushing back against the unrepresentative and undemocratic nature of decision-making, the nebulous ‘global justice movement' has become a dynamic new player in international politics. The movement's advocates fight on a number of causes, including the demand for a greater say for people rather than international technocrats in matters that will most affect the general public; a fight against large-scale inequalities of power, opportunity and wealth; and resistance to the further privatisation of national and community resources.

As neoliberal policies continue to define the rules of the world economy, great signs of change are being witnessed in many progressive governments of Latin America that are rejecting the Washington Consensus in favour of democratic and people-oriented models of development based on greater regional integration, cooperation and economic justice.