Just arrived: DVD with 4 hours of the best presentations from the Schumacher Centenary Festival – order now: £10 incl. post.

This most ambitious Schumacher event – to mark the Centenary of his birth – included poet Matt Harvey, Resurgence editor Satish Kumar, barrister Polly Higgins, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, Triodos Bank CEO Peter Blom, the founder of 350.org Bill McKibben, Transition Town’s Rob Hopkins and author Professor Tim Jackson.

It was a totally inspiring day, and as Diana Schumacher said in her closing remarks, “We’ve had a green lawyer, a green politician and a green banker; if Fritz Schumacher was suspicious of any categories of people, I think you could count those three professions in – and I think he’d be absolutely delighted to hear this revolutionary stuff that’s coming out of the mouths of green bankers, lawyers and politicians.”

Read more about the 2011 Centenary Festivalhere and read the excellent review in the Guardian here.

Mood of possibility defines E F Schumacher centenary festival.

You can buy a DVD with 4 hours of the best presentations from the Schumacher Centenary Festival here for £10 including postage.

Audience and speakers excited that conditions may finally be right for the ideas of the green economist to become reality.

…that was the headline for an article by the Guardian’s environmental correspondent, Jonathan Watts, writing on the Tuesday after our incredible weekend, when some 800 people had experienced an inspiring and energized two days of talks, workshops, poetry, films and a world-music concert.

Jonathan, btw, had phoned one day last month to book a ticket, and left his number which turned out to be in Beijing. That’s when I knew our global outreach was succeeding Here’s a bit more of his article, in which I think he captured the essence rather well:

“The most exciting time to be alive” is not a phrase that trips off the tongue of many politicians currently grappling with a global debt crisis and the threat of recession, but it was almost a mantra at the centenary festival for the economist and “soul of the green movement”, E F Schumacher.

The great and the good of the movement, including activists, academics and even a few bankers, turned up at the weekend event in Bristol to pay homage to the author of Small is Beautiful, the landmark 1973 environmental text that questioned the drive for relentless GDP expansion.

With many economies now flat or in decline, the financial system in crisis and the climate increasingly erratic, the crowds that gathered in Colston Hall had come not just to celebrate the life of Schumacher but to bask in the possibility that conditions may finally be ripe for his ideas to be implemented.

“The current economic model is broken and no one is clear about how to fix it. I think that makes Schumacher’s ideas more resonant,” said Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green party. “It’s time to shift towards an economy that isn’t based on an accumulation of stuff.” (see the full article here:)

What was extraordinary about the day was the atmosphere, the energy. Every speaker rose to the occasion, and it seemed to last right through the weekend. To me it’s indicative of the times we’re now in, the urgency that people are feeling to find a new way forward beyond the tired old capitalism.

One of the galvanizing moments on the Saturday morning was listening to the founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, talking to us on video because unexpectedly he’d had to return to Washington where he’s campaigning to stop the ‘tar sands pipeline’. It was a measure of both Bill’s passion and our audience’s engagement that the video still worked so effectively. And it’s the first video that we’re able to put up here on our website. Do have a look! In the coming weeks, I hope we’ll be putting up many more video clips from the weekend – and later on we’ll have a DVD with all of the Saturday keynotes.

Something else to look forward to on the website will be the amazing poem that Matt Harvey created during the course of Saturday, and which he read at the very end. We’ll email everyone once it’s here!

Meanwhile, if you were with us last weekend, do let us know your thoughts – how it was and where it’s taking you, so to speak. And if you’ve any comments for any of the speakers, workshop leaders or film-makers you came across, do add them (below) and we can forward them to the relevant folks.

So endeth the (first) lesson

The Legacy of E. F. Schumacher

During the 35 years since the publication of Fritz Schumacher’s seminal bestseller Small is Beautiful: economics as if people mattered, many of his prophetic warnings have come to pass. Yet little is remembered of the man himself, the sources of his spiritual inspiration or the remedies he prescribed for a collapsing environmental and financial world order.

Small is Beautiful in the 21st Century traces Schumacher’s legacy through the activities and outreach of those pioneers who, over the years, have been working on practical solutions to our interrelated global crises. In particular, it describes how several flourishing organisations, some large and some small, have remained closely linked with his ideas and work, and have since become associated as the Schumacher Circle.

The particular contribution of Fritz Schumacher was to bring a profound wisdom and humanity to bear on the practical challenges of our time, and the Briefing both illuminates Schumacher’s thinking and shows the ways in which each of us can help to turn our present crisis into the opportunity to build a more kind, just and ecologically sustainable society.

Charcoal’s Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility

Charcoal-making is one of the oldest industrial technologies, and in the last decade there has been a growing wave of excitement about its potential for combating climate change. This is because burying biochar (fine-grained charcoal) is a highly effective way to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In addition it can increase the yield of food crops and the ability of soil to retain moisture. Some people are concerned that awarding carbon credits for biochar could have seriously damaging outcomes. The Biochar Debate agrees, but describes an alternative approach, called the Carbon Maintenance Fund (CMF), that avoids the dangers. This would give every government the incentive to enable businesses, farmers and individuals to increase their country’s carbon pool. It is based on remote sensing by satellite, a tried and tested technology, and would be applied globally each year to measure the increase or decrease of carbon in plants, soil and roots.
The Biochar Debate sets out experimental and scientific aspects of biochar in the context of global warming, the global economy and negotiations for the future of the Kyoto Protocol. It concludes by encouraging all gardeners and farmers to use biochar to help prevent climate change.

Connecting People, Environment and Spirituality

Climate change, species extinction, war and alienation. These are just some of the threats that imperil a world that gives us life. There is no single solution, but one thing is certain.
Unless humanity learns how to rekindle community, all other efforts will wither on the vine. This timely new Schumacher Briefing explores three integrated pillars of community – with one another, with the natural environment and with the spiritual ground of all being. McIntosh draws not just on his own extensive experience, but also on the work of a dozen associates at the Centre for Human Ecology – mostly his former students. These have carried out research into the spirituality of community regeneration, assisted by WWF International. Each of them provides a summary of their findings, weaving a rich tapestry that illustrates community.
With its emphasis on spirituality, the Briefing examines the implications of living as if all life is interconnected. It addresses both the theory of community and its practical regeneration. The contexts range from remote islands to inner city deprivation and even the world of corporations and government. The results fortify our capacity to face the future and point to ever-deeper meanings of love.

Harnessing the Energy of Youth to Make Poverty History

Many strange things are done in the name of ‘development’: agencies build concrete boxes with tin roofs, cram 120 children into them and call it ‘education’; millions are invested in youth
‘training’ but little in job creation, which means youth move from being unskilled unemployed to skilled unemployed. Billions of dollars are shovelled every year into ‘budget support’ – but little of it, if any, ever trickles down to the young people of the world’s poorest regions on whose energy, commitment and idealism the future prosperity of those places depends.
In this Briefing, David Woollcombe explains why youth is such a promising new field for overseas development assistance. He argues that youth should be at the centre of all development
policy, and offers examples of where young people’s interventions are most effective. Because young people are happy to work as volunteers and take their wages in experiential learning rather than hard cash, Youth-Led Development (YLD) is extremely cost-effective. But Woollcombe argues that, even if it were more expensive, YLD is worth doing for the confidence, attitudes and skills it builds in youth. YLD offers a path to the cultural and economic prosperity less-developed countries need to operate effectively in the global village.

Connecting Communities in Global Change

The Converging World is based on the principle of ëcontraction and convergenceí in regard to climate change, which means reducing the ecological footprint of some while increasing that of others. Such convergence has many dimensions: technological change, cultural diversity, differing values, human rights, political power, social struggles and resistance. As the pressures of population and consumption are stretching the planetís capacity beyond its limits, this convergence is an urgent necessity.
This Briefing explores these ideas and describes how a new charity is forming to put these ideas into action. Inspired by the work of an Indian agency called Social Change and Development (SCAD), the initiative has started by directly reducing carbon emissions by erecting wind turbines in India, which leads to income for economic development in this poor part of the world. At the same time it will indirectly raise funds as gifts from individuals and businesses in the ëdemandingí (Western) world in return for an allocation of the carbon saved. These funds are used to address the important issue of carbon reduction in the developed world and to promote social change towards sustainable living through local groups across the globe. The Converging World is an action story which tackles the complexities of climate change, environmental degradation and social injustice.

New Frontiers for Sustainability

In the last twenty years ecovillages – local communities which aim to minimise their ecological impact but maximise human wellbeing and happiness – have been springing up all over the world. They incorporate a wealth of radical ideas and approaches which can be traced back to Schumacher, Gandhi, the 1960s, and the alternative education movement. This Briefing describes the history and potential of the ecovillage movement, including the evolution of the Global Ecovillage Network and the current developments in both North and South. The threads that are brought together in Ecovillages include:
- Learning from the best elements in traditional and indigenous cultures
- Alternative economy: community banks and currencies, and voluntary simplicity
- Designing with nature: using permaculture design, eco-building, small-scale energy generation, waste-management, low-impact transport systems, etc
- Organic, locally-based food production and processing
- Reviving small-scale participatory governance, conflict facilitation & social inclusion as well as reviving active inter-generational community
- Creating a culture of peace, and holistic, whole person education
In an age of diminishing oil supplies, the Briefing examines the lessons that we can learn from ecovillages to show us how to live in a more ecologically sound and sustainable way.

A Framework for Sustainability

The Natural Step framework for sustainability was first developed in 1989. The framework and the organisation, The Natural Step International, have been through many changes during that time, yet the essence of this unique, science-based approach remains unchanged:it is a way of seeing the world that helps decision-makers put sustainable development into action. TNS is now well-known around the world: there are teams established in ten countries, and growing activity in several others. In this Schumacher Briefing, David Cook tells the story of the evolution of the organisation from its start in Sweden to the present day. Whilst the fundamentals of TNS remain the same, it has responded to the ever-evolving sustainability debate. Based upon science and systems thinking, the basic components of the TNS framework are laid out in the text.

Climate Change and the Green Energy Revolution

In this Briefing, Dave Elliott establishes the basic sustainable energy options. However his main aim is to look at potential problems ahead in the short, medium and long term, and deal with the counter-arguments. No technology is entirely benign. Renewable energy technologies such as wind farms may have far less impacts than the global impact of fossil-fuelled plants, but they do have some local impacts. How do we trade off local and global impacts? The author looks at the UK wind farm issue and at some other examples, including the problems facing hydro power and waste combustion. The medium term example concerns a sustainable transport policy: whether we can develop a green energy system to meet that demand as well. This means looking at changes in the way we live and behave. The final example concerns the longer term limits of the sustainable energy approach: whether it is possible to use renewable sources to sustain economic growth indefinitely.