Permaculture - Social Change Activism

Our guest lecturer Dave Henson has worked for social action NGOs in around 20 countries. Here is his lowdown on working for societal change..

Often we channel all our efforts towards the symptoms of social problems, rather than tackling the root causes. Not a very effective strategy! The analogy Dave gave is that if abandoned babies kept on appearing in baskets floating down the local river, taking the baby out the river and caring for it would be only dealing with the symptom. Someone would need to go upstream and see who is putting the babies in the river and deal with them to effectively stop the problem.

Dave highlighted 4 root causes behind most of today's social problems:

1 - ASSUMPTION OF NEVER-ENDING ECONOMIC GROWTH. The average American will need to tone down their lifestyle and consumerism 7x to get to a point where their behaviour will be limiting global warming.

2 - PRIVATISING THINGS WHICH SHOULD BE IN THE HANDS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE - eg. schools, healthcare, intellectual property, seeds, water etc. Private capital funds most non-profits, including the arts, so this private capital decides what the public can have access to/ enjoy etc and what causes are championed.

3 - OUR ECONOMIC DECISIONS ARE GUIDED BY PRICE, HOWEVER TRUE COSTS OF ITEMS ARN'T ALWAYS DISPLAYED ON THE PRICE TAG. For example, petrol really costs $9 a gallon, but sells for $4 a gallon (with the surplus coming from taxes) so car users are unaware of the true economic cost of buying fuel. If they were, there would be more demand for public transport. Supermarket strawberries from a 3rd world country may be cheaper than the organic ones sold at the local farmers' market, however the price doesn't include the transport fees, the healthcare fees for the local workers adversely affected by the pesticides, etc. Although buying conscientiously, can make a small difference, the real difference will come when the pricing structure is changed to reflect the true cost of what we are buying.

4 - BIG CORPORATIONS' SUPPORT FOR POLITICAL LOBBYING AND FUNDING MEANS THAT BUSINESSES' AGENDAS INFILTRATE POLITICS.

Dave has a few suggestions for social change:

1 - The best way to effect social change is to hold public office.
2 - Wait until the moment is ripe before lunging forwards with action. The world needs to be ready for you!
3 - Social change does not happen without organising.
4 - As well as spending time addressing current problems (fire fighting), have equal amounts of time devoted to building alternatives and dismantling the structures causing the problem