The most advanced Greening Template for Regeneration (part 1)
Green action spaces setting the right scene for the green renewal
“Desperate times call for desperate measures” Hippocrates.
Countrywide greening templates for regeneration — a more intelligent way of addressing the current crises
Many social pressures that we experience today fuel an often flawed political stance and tend to inform policies towards right-wing bias. Politics that polarise populations are ultimately delaying our chances of moving on the issue democratically and with the necessary urgency. This has been true of all previous attempts to address environmental and climatic degradation undertaken by governments to date. Decades lost due to the fossil fuel industry’s 40 years of destructive climate change denial are a significant factor. They have dulled governmental action against what scientists say is now a full-fledged climate emergency. Furthermore, this blunted public awareness and turned off many people of thinking and acting upon these findings.
Mass media has played a critical role in co-creating confusion by broadcasting unverified or plainly wrong claims regarding the health of our planet, giving more airwave time to climate change deniers than proponents. The glossing over the ravages of the agro-industrial complex backed by the financial sector has only added to the problem. In all, our out-of-control consumerism has co-opted us in the system that has been consistently undermining the ecological and thus socio-economic balance and keeping us in a vicious cycle. Today, many feel that we need a different, more conscious circularity to break our own circle of destruction to start community led regeneration of our societies and the planet.
Deep systemic chasm crippling our intelligent collective response
This perfect storm of economy and weather interplay increases social divides instead of creating the right political conditions for dealing with problems coherently and inclusively. The current polarising thinking paradigm hinders our solution-oriented way forward to such an extent that today fewer people believe, let alone perceive, that real progress is possible. Worsening social and economic situation resulting from environmental degradation gives rise to increased protests, migrations and insecurity, experienced on every continent. Thus, echoing the deep stale dissatisfaction and malaise in many communities that have less and less of a legitimate means of expressing their frustration with the unrelenting system.
Leveraging all stakeholders by positive co-opting in the renewal process
Stakes are high; demonstrators in every country call for systemic reforms that bring back equality, increase access to decent jobs and services and restore work-life balance whilst reducing poverty and other social inequalities. When it comes to climate action and compliance, a nation that does not deal with its systemic social and economic issues first, will struggle to meet their environmental targets, too. For the two realms are inherently linked.
Instead, we could be creating optimal environments where we can come together as a collective and a peace-loving, empowered union of individuals ready to cooperate. This means acting as collectives capable of exercising our intelligence and intuitive know-how to take on diverse, complex issues and to constructively deal with the crises that frame this millennium.
From opposition protests to Green New Deal manifestos setting the right scene for the green renewal
People will continue to perceive ‘green taxes’ as a form of punishment of the working (poorer) classes if governments introduce them in the absence of major political reforms. This social dissonance is also felt by the middle classes that are becoming increasingly impoverished in many countries. Mass scale disinformation that each one of us can tap into with a single touch of our smart device further compounds the issue.
Regeneration through systemic change
Governments, however, could introduce truly egalitarian reforms aiming at allocation of a portion of profits from nature-extracted wealth to pay an outstanding climate and conservation bill. This, together with a fair sharing of the tax burden within a well-designed strategy, can lead to a better win-win situation. In turn, this creates conditions that are ripe for a population to take to novel proposals, including climate related ones, and get on board. Then, this essentially removes the need for a lame and short-sighted top-down imposition. A politically futile and costly move that will only meet with a wide scale rejection and opposition.
The case in point is an unprecedented veto of such measures by the French, fed up with the lack of reforms that has gone for too long in the country that almost perfected the concept of revolution. A sentiment of anti taxation at the expense of ordinary citizens resulted in mass protests named Mouvement des gilets jaunes, Yellow Vests. The movement has been staging weekly protests across France since November 2018, calling for systemic reforms, despite the French media’s overall blackout of the wider demands that the protesting groups are calling for. Tbc in part 2 of the article.
This article is the work of the Earthvoice editor, Kinga Monica. She is available for consulting on practical instigation of the concept, sustainability and ecotourism consulting, internationally.
Bibliography
A Big Strategy: In times of Crisis. A Model to Help Regenerate The Environment, Community And Sustainable Economy. Published in 2012.
