Guiding Principles in Challenging Times
This has been an exhausting and disorienting year. In the United States, we face deep divisions, even while we are challenged to join forces to confront huge crises. Currents of hope, fear, determination and anxiety run deep. Where do we find inspiration in these rough seas to steer towards real solutions? We at Groundswell draw on what we have learned from rural families around the world, and from our heroic front-line partner organizations that are strengthening communities and social movements in Africa, the Americas and South Asia to create better lives.
Hurricane Eta is a Bleak Reminder of a Climate in Crisis and Why Agroecology is a Solution
Hurricane Eta, the most recent and devastating hurricane that unleashed its fury in Central America, is a bleak reminder of our vulnerability as a species when up against planetary forces responding to the climate crisis. In the most affected countries of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala, the story has been the same – rains, floods, landslides, evacuees, and tragically, a considerable number of deaths. As in almost every natural disaster, the population living in poverty is the most affected.
COVID-19 Recovery Is a Chance to Make the Africa Food and Farming System More Resilient
The pandemic has acted as a giant magnifying lens. It has shed light on inequality, the vulnerability of people’s livelihoods, and the fragilities of a hyperconnected global economic system. Optimists say the pandemic is focusing policy minds on the need for more decisive, collective action on many resilience issues, including food and agriculture. As governments invest enormous resources to recover from COVID-19, many civil society groups are insisting on changing the system for the better. Optimists are saying: “build back better”. Pessimists respond that the pandemic is only a moment that s …
The Barefoot Guide to Surviving COVID-19
The Barefoot Guide to Surviving COVID-19 addresses how people across Africa can weather the COVID-19 pandemic, and, in the process it debunks many of the misconceptions that exist in the food industry, provides real, sustainable solutions to the challenges families face in their pursuit for access to healthy food, and explains how families can start their own gardens. The Natural Food Barefoot Guide Writer’s Collective, which includes Groundswell International’s Peter Gubbels, wrote the book. It is the first book in a new agroecology series produced by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Afri …
Agroecology: A Ground-Up Solution Empowering Marginalized Communities to Address Climate Change and Forced Migration
Environmental consequences disproportionately impact the poor and marginalized because they are excluded from decision-making processes that affect the places where they live. This has been true for generations, but today the stakes are greater than ever as environmental challenges, such as climate change, generate uneven environmental consequences on a global scale. People living in low-lying places, especially island nations that are just a few feet above sea level, are obviously vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by a warming planet. Until more recently, it was less clear how climate ch …
Agroecology and Local Markets: Sources of Hope During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Latin America
In Latin America, centuries of intractable social inequality and the accelerating deterioration of ecosystems, which are rooted in the neoliberal economic “development” model, have dramatically exacerbated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation has become so dire that the lives of millions now hang in the balance. These long-smoldering social and environmental crises demand urgent action if we have any hope of salvaging the project of civilization in much of the region.
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