July 2022 - Most Important Things

The following is a review of New Economy, New Systems: radical responses to our sustainability crises, edited by John Blewitt and published in 2022 by the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems, Bristol (ISBN 978-0-9954603-3-1).

Helices on the path to sustainability at Inverewe Botanic Garden, Wester Ross (Julian Caldecott)

Expertly compiled and edited, accessible and challenging, this book outlines the main contours of what could and should be our future social, economic and ecological systems. It responds to the spirit of emergency thinking among governments forced to adapt to public anxiety over climate change and ecological collapse, and to new economic realities imposed by the Covid pandemic. Thinkers at the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems have assembled here a body of practical wisdom in honour of Hazel Henderson (1933-2022), the Bristol-born American pioneer of environmental and social activism.

New Economy, New Systems is broadly aimed at those who sense the need for the ‘hope, change, and progress’ that Barack Obama promised but could not fully deliver in 2009-2017 – a time just before the current wave of citizen and youth mobilisation. Despite the later rise of reactionary politics, wars, heat-waves, droughts, fires, storms and plagues, the goal of transformative change remains valid and inspiring. The book explains how and why to keep the struggle going, in faith that a sustainable culture will arise. It offers ways to think about and analyse the complex systems that comprise our world, allowing us to see key connections despite all efforts to suppress more life-enhancing arrangements.

Up front, the book stresses that humanity must be clear about ‘what we can and cannot do’ within the hard boundaries of ecological law. It also stresses ‘what we ought and ought not to do’ within an ethic based on inclusion, accountability and the spurning of entitlement myths that justify elite privilege. The opening argument is that fair and radical system change is essential, and that this must be founded on an understanding of Earth and human systems.

But the authors note that those blocking change have developed ‘new forms of political capture stoked by mega-profiteering, tax evasion and corruption’, while those advancing change have been systematically censored by a ‘hegemonic neoliberal orthodoxy’. Thus the biosphere is being forced onto a tipping path, but the authors table ideas, and describe examples and breakthroughs, to inspire, motivate, and show that all is not yet lost.

Chapters range across many fields at the cutting edge of what is happening and what needs to happen. They include: a diagnosis of the ugly and dying economy that has emerged from cycles of progress and reaction; an explanation of systems thinking and its application to economic ideas; the concepts of regeneration, resilience, connection, healing and wellbeing among real peoples; and the transformative potential of sustainability goals in development financing.

There are many ‘aha!’ moments here, and more in the focused investigations that follow: on community responses to disaster; on the primacy of inclusive participatory democracy as ‘a complex learning experience that never ends’; and on new technologies that offer with one hand oppression and synthetic experience, but with the other an empowering union of people and human creativity with the resurgent power of nature.

The reader is rattled, informed and encouraged by Vala Ragnarsdóttir (for the Club of Rome and the wellbeing economy), Inez Aponte (for regeneration and human-scale development), Hugh Atkinson (for politics and sustainability financing), and Ian Roderick (for systems thinking and systemic biomimicry). Their work is gold-threaded by Jenneth Parker (for interdisciplinary sustainability) and John Blewitt (for sustainability practice), who put ‘hope’ in their final chapter titles to stress that the book opens minds to new ways and new realities.

Detailed, historical, forward-looking and upward-facing, this book explores new levels in the tension between selfishness and cooperation. It tables data, interpretations, logical pathways and narratives to strengthen the progressive vision of an economy of small parts, one that promotes life rather than death. But the agents of darkness are rampant, and time is short to avoid the moment when nature will impose force majeure and end all such debate.

So listen up! The eighth chapter stress-tests ideas: questioning radical change, uncertainty, and deep adaptation; navigating the violence of unplanned transitions, harnessing liberation technology, and recognising the Earth as our mother. And the ninth undermines the debilitating idea that what you see is what you have to get: change is possible, whatever elites may say. Alternatives can be framed in terms of campaigning urgency – ‘a tiny window left in which to move to another set of systems’ – but the future is neither predictable nor controllable. If we preserve enabling conditions, ‘an ecology of systems change’ may emerge, historic traumas may be healed, and a cascade of caring may unfold. We must do what we can, free of fear. Many ideas and techniques that we will need are crisply explained here, and holding them in a coherent relationship to one another is among the many triumphs of this book.