How do we make a new economy, and fast?
Asks Alice Yaxley
Woodbrooke was overflowing with representatives from Area Meetings at a conference about the future of economics, which followed up the day conference in London. It seems the most urgent task is for us to take our part in creating the new kind of economy, rather than engaging with the current economic system that serves the world so badly. The current system makes the rich richer while hurting poor people, other species and the life-support system of our planet. Friends are beginning to explore what changes are necessary.
A major change is necessary towards an economics that has aims and that helps us create a sustainable peace and justice society for a low carbon future. The global crisis of climate change makes this a matter of urgency: if we don’t make huge changes soon our species faces extinction. While previous massive reorganisations of the human species took centuries or decades (the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution) we have just months and years to make this one.
We learned about skills and techniques for us to undertake this work. We can learn to identify the demand for businesses that could be community-owned in a town or village: one village set up a cooperative to take over what used to be a post office – creating a fully viable community business employing local people and meeting local needs. Community-supported agriculture (CSA) creates a direct partnership between farmers and consumers to share both the responsibilities and the rewards of farming and growing. Buying what we need through local businesses has a number of benefits for community and planet. The Living Witness Project can help us find out how our Quaker Meetings can become stronger communities witnessing to a different, sustainable way of life. Transition Towns and other Low Carbon Communities projects can help people in a local area who are making changes towards a sustainable community life. We can choose building societies for our money where any profit is shared, rather than banks, which benefit their shareholders; at work we can organise employee-owned cooperatives rather than making money for those who have shares.
Facilitators from Turning the Tide led us through exercises to work on our own responses and to prepare us to work with our Meetings. What have we already done individually? What would a proportionate response to this crisis look like? What do we dream we or our Meeting could do? Can you imagine a newspaper headline caused by something your Meeting did to respond to this crisis? What would you and your Meeting need to be able to carry that out?
This conference was jointly organised by the Economics Issues Groups of QPSW and Woodbrooke. How can the centrally managed work best support us in this work we have to take on? Are you concerned but have not taken action because you are not sure how to or need some additional support? We need to consider how we spend the money we have. The centrally managed work is not fully funded and if we need the kind of help this conference provided we Friends have to find a way to pay for it. Please contact your Area Meeting clerk to get in touch with the other Friends in your Area Meeting and be part of the next stage of this work.
What is the distinctive Quaker response, if there is one? What would happen if we allowed our lives to be transformed now by hearing God’s voice in the poorest and in the other species facing extinction? We have the riches of the spiritual gifts given to our community, if we are willing to find them.
See www.quaker.org.uk/zero-growth-economy-conference and www.quakerweb.org.uk/blog for more information.
Further reading: Short circuit: strengthening local economies for security in an unstable world by economist and Quaker Richard Douthwaite. See www.feasta.org/documents/shortcircuit/contents.html for the full text online.
