Full-Bodied Earth Economics: Applying Nature’s Balance to Economic Exchanges
“To have risked so much in our efforts to mold nature to our satisfaction and yet to have failed in achieving our goal would indeed be the final irony. Yet this, it seems, is our situation. — Rachel Carson in Silent Spring
“Capital became so triumphant that, like a stupid virus, it mutated into a very toxic version….” — Yanis Varoufakis on Democracy Now, April 26, 2024
The Zoom of Our Own
The words Ecology and Economy share the same Greek root, oikos, which mean a home or dwelling. Ecology studies relationships among organisms in a particular environment. Economy studies human interactions and exchanges in a multicultural environment. Since relationships and home dwellings are familiar female territory, we hosted a great woman-to-woman conversation about threats to our planet and, more importantly, real solutions. A healthy climate, rich soil, and clean water and air are surely foundational to any economy’s wellbeing, so come learn what’s necessary and hopeful.
This Zoom of Our Own conversation was part of AEOO’s 2024 Full-Bodied Economics Series, focused on the productive economy we all need for our lives and livelihoods.
We’re sharing little known ways an economy waged as war has created a ruthless culture of “privatization” and “financialization,” indifferent to social outcomes. Its mystification of money, as if money alone creates value, makes a safe climate, good health care, healthy food, and affordable housing more and more difficult for more and more people. Does it need to be this way? How might we apply Mother Earth’s balance of nature to our economic exchanges? What can we do on the ground to enable a productive economy that better empowers all earth’s bodies to flourish and be healthy?
Find out by tuning in.
This event was recorded live. As some feminist epistemologists (Gilligan, Belenky et al.) have taught us, seeing and seeking connections seems to be women’s ways of knowing and reasoning. Our economics is lived in tangible and complex communities. Our goal is to model how women can talk together and learn together about traditionally male territory still new to most women. Our Zoom of Own Series brings women (and men!) together to construct a fuller knowledge and set of values now omitted from the mainstream “free market.” Together, we’re flipping the script on a racist, sexist economy.
Meet the Speakers
Dr. Cathy Day is a geographer and qualitative researcher who studies people’s environmental interactions in agroecosystems challenged by climate change. Cathy has been working with farmers to understand their climate challenges for twenty years. Most recently, she was the Climate Policy coordinator for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. While based in Washington DC, she worked with members across the country to advocate for better federal agriculture policy in USDA’s Farm Bill. She currently is a sustainability consultant.
Mary Grant is the Public Water for All Campaign Director at Food & Water Watch. Mary has authored numerous reports exposing the dangers of water privatization and the need for public investment in water infrastructure. Her original research exposed the scandal of Flint water users paying the highest rates in the country during the height of the city’s poisoned water crisis, and her research has been essential to the efforts in dozens of communities across the country to stop water privatization.
Marguerite Adelman is a retired non-profit administrator in education, social services, and government. A former Communications Director for the Cook County Department of Public Health in Illinois, she became interested in per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in 2019. For the past five years, she has served as Coordinator for the Vermont PFAS/Military Poisons Coalition. Marguerite has given PFAS presentations to citizen groups, WILPF branches across the US, and WILPF International’s Earth Democracy Committee. The VT Coalition includes groups working for peace and social and economic eco-justice, collaborating to provide education on “forever chemicals” and advocate for legislation to ban PFAS forever.
Carmen Rios is the Digital Director of An Economy of Our Own.
Definitions
Financialization: The process of financialization creates a wall between nature and her goods and resources, and human cultures and spirituality. It makes it possible to own, buy and sell a whole forest, or even its functional ability to protect water or capture carbon, without considering social results. Under the logic of financialization of nature, those with money can harm the planet without consequences, which are written off as “externalities.”
Privatization: The transfer of control of natural resources and their management from the public domain to a group or individual whose control and interests are based on market relations, buying and selling, not on rights to resources of a commons or commonwealth.
Speculation: The forming of a theory or assumption without firm evidence. In finance this means taking more risks in hopes of making a quick profit.
Profit: From the Latin “profectus,” the word originally meant progress, to advance, to be useful, to do good. In accounting, first used in 1250 to 1300, it means the amount left from business revenues after expenses are paid within a given time period.
Futures & Derivatives: Short term financial contracts that provide private, even secret, insurance without government oversight, speculating for and against rising prices, defaults on credit, rising or falling interest rates or currency exchange rates. Bought and sold by the biggest banks and the wealthiest, derivatives too complex to understand were at the heart of the 2008 global financial crash.
Sustainability: The avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance where species coexist with other species and their environment.
Organizations
Food and Water Watch: This organization has Mother Earth at its center. In addition to financial threats to water, like water futures and privatization, F&WW is concerned about fracking, fossil fuel’s proliferation of plastics, and CCS, or Carbon Capture and Storage, which Dr. Sandra Steingraber says is “ultimately a publicly funded sewer system for the oil & gas industry. Learn more about federal legislation called the Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity and Reliability (WATER) Act.
Women, Food and Agriculture Network (WFAN) : This community of women works for sustainability agriculture. Their mission engages farmers, consumers, students, researchers, advocates, and policy makers in caring for the land and conservation. They provide women’s on-farm apprenticeship programs, and Plate to Politics tools to help women advocate for sustainable agriculture and healthy food systems at the state and national level. They hold an annual conference, and their beautiful art and recordings from 2023 are worth visiting.
Living Climate and Soil Carbon Sponge: AEOO Advisory Board member Didi Pershouse conducts international Living Climate and Soil Sponge Workshops, usually monthly. Check out her site and write her if you’re interested in a future workshop. These are Zoom workshops and often include very different international regions.
WILPF PFAS and Military Poisons Coalition: A project of Women’s Int’l League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF), its Earth Democracy Committee, and Military Poisons, this coalition works to expose the military as a hidden polluter of water and soil with PFAS, as well as herbicides and toxic fuel leaks. Military installations in the US number 450–500, worldwide it’s 750–800.
Books & Articles
Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement. Monica M. White, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2021. Begins with Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm Cooperative, ends with Detroit’s Black Community Food Security Network and a great bibliography.
Women Who Dig; Farming, Feminism and the Fight to Feed the World. Trina Moyles with photos by KJ Dakin. U. of Regina Press, 2018. Spans three continents with spectacular photos and beautiful writing about access to land, domestic violence, maternal health and a changing climate, and the power of collective action.
The Rise of Women Farmers and Sustainable Agriculture. Carolyn E. Sachs, et al. U. of Iowa Press, 2016. Female farmers challenge sexism in agricultural institutions, communities and even their own families. Strategies for land and labor and business models, and what authors call a feminist agrifood systems theory (FAST).
Invest in Nature? Might be possible with “Natural Asset Companies. Jennifer Yachin, Green Wire, 12/11/2023. A proposal before the Securities and Exchange Commission would allow the NY Stock Exchange to list companies with missions to “improve” ecosystems, protect nature, including on public lands — and make money.
Nature Has Value. Could We Literally Invest in It? Lydia DePillis, The New York Times, March 10,.2024. “It sounds like a scam. Or charity. In fact, it’s an approach backed by hardheaded investors who think nature has an intrinsic value that can provide them with a return down the road — and in the meantime, they would be happy to hold shares of the new company on their balance sheets. Such a company doesn’t yet exist. But the idea has gained traction among environmentalists, money managers and philanthropists who believe that nature won’t be adequately protected unless it is assigned a value in the market — whether or not that asset generates dividends through a monetizable use.”
AEOO’s Rickey Gard Diamond, Ms. Magazine column Women Unscrewing Screwnomics: How “Patriarchal Capitalism” Finances Systemic Agricultural Violence.
Dr. Vandana Shiva, an internationally awarded physicist, talks about her new book, Oneness vs. The 1%. She examines the “mechanical, military mindset” that routinely wars against a living planet. “What is eco-feminism?” she asks. “It’s taking off the blinkers of patriarchal capitalism that says nature is inert and dead, that women are dumb, and recognizing that nature and women are alive and creative.”
As US Looks to Revamp the Farm Bill, Women Must Be at the Table
While the US has created an omnibus Farm Bill for nearly a century, our mothers — especially when Native or women of color — have not had a say in where government farm support money goes. Not until recently.
Kitchen Sinks, Carbon Sinks and Restorative Economics
The planet is warming, weather’s disruptive, and species are falling like dominoes. Dr. Sabine O’Hara, distinguished economist, tells Ms. how restorative economics could make a difference.
Biden’s Infrastructure Bill takes some important steps toward greater water safety, but will he also confront our Pentagon and our water infrastructure’s reliance on unsafe or untested chemicals?
Superman’s Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It. Erin Brockovich, Penguin/Random House, 2020.
Plummeting Sperm Counts, Shrinking Penises: Toxic Chemicals Threaten Humanity. Erin Brockovich in The Guardian, March 18, 2021
The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and Microbial Communities. Didi Pershouse, Mycellium Books, 2015.
Films
Water Financialization 101: Water Futures, Water Markets, and Reclaiming the Water Commons. A collaboration of The Blue Planet Project, Food & Water Watch, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and Transnational Institute, this film includes perspectives from the north and south, and is presented in both English and Spanish, chock full of information.
An award-winning film by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sara Ganim about “the war on water,” and more than 650 towns and millions of Americans affected by PFAS — and the DoD’s failure to act. You can access this through iTunes and Google Play.
How Military Pollution Could Cause The Next Water Crisis — CNBC, 21 minutes
Toxic Firefighting Foam Causing Cancer in People Living Near Military Bases
The Intercept, 6 minutes.
The Great Green Wall. Jared P. Scott, director. Focused on Africa’s initiative to restore land and fight land degradation and restore plant life across 11 countries.
Regenerating Life: A New Look at the Climate Crisis. Produced by John Feldman, streaming now on Vimeo, this film features Didi Pershouse, along with biologist Lynn Margulis of Gaia theory fame, Leah and Naima Penniman of Soul Fire Farm, Vandana Shiva of Navdanya Research and a raft of remarkable international scientists and farmers. They’re reframing solutions to climate change in our biosphere, working with nature’s interconnected vital systems. At odds with high-tech solutions and corporate farming, it’s eye-opening. Watch a trailer here and learn how to share a viewing with a group.
