Something is stirring. Amid the dark and gloom of the continuing pandemic, illness and death, the economic disruption and loss of livelihoods something is emerging, trying to be born. It is the possibility of a brighter future, born of what Christiana Figueres calls `stubborn optimism’. She knows it is not too late and that working together we can create a better world, but first we must imagine it, dream and hope.
What could this brighter future look like? – an economy which works for all based on renewable energy, new land management, co management of public lands, reparative justice recognising how much has been built on stolen lands and stolen labour, namely historic slavery: a world where cultural traditions and traditional ecological knowledge are respected and preserved, and indigenous sustainability is promoted. There could be programmes and policies which favour processes of decolonisation and where memories and stories in songs and chants are recognised as a distinct body of knowledge: a better world where we have realised our need for humility and resilience, leaving behind our desire, as a species, to dominate and extract. In the urban environment it will be where policies of public spending are put into health and education, community colleges, community and day care centres, where there is the possibility of art and music for all. Services will be arranged around human scale localities, free public transport and the flexible use of outdoor space. These are some ideas, maybe you can think of others.
Imagine we have made it and are looking back to the 2020s. it will not have been easy but looking back we can see a determined choice for a just transition towards a regenerative economy; this was when ordinary people began to realise how much our extractive economy benefitted only a very small minority of people; they had then consciously aligned themselves with the forces of life in creation and moved mountains. All in it together we had worked for racial and environmental justice. These new beginnings were born in our most difficult days, and started in our dreams. Image!
We realised what an opportunity it had been to be alive in those days!
Jessica Gatty r.a.
