Warwick Smith is an Australian economist, ecologist, writer and policy analyst, working across many areas of economic research, from labour and taxation to environmental and wellbeing economics. He has He’s an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne's School of Social and Political Sciences, co-founder and economist at the Castlemaine Institute and a co-founder of the Castlemaine Community Investment Co-operative. He’s been putting strategies for localised economic development into practice for many years. In this episode, Warwick introduces his town of Castlemaine on Dja Dja Wurrung country in Victoria, Australia, and the range of interesting projects happening there. He shares the process of starting the Castlemaine community investment cooperative, which is acquiring real estate for the community and by the community, remove it from rampant speculation to support the local culture, community and economy instead. He stresses relationship building as a key part of this hands-on work, and reflects on ways to help ordinary people and public policymakers understand and put into practice alternative economic development ideas.

This episode features our very own Anja Lyngabek. Anja is the Managing and Programs Director at Local Futures, and has been working tirelessly and internationally to strengthen the localization movement for decades. She is an activist and analyst, with a particular passion for food and farming and much experience in that arena. She’s happiest with her hands in the soil, growing food, either with her husband and community in the cloudforests of Mexico, or on the small island of Denmark where she’s originally from.

In her interview for Planet Local Voices II, Anja discusses the cascade of social and environmental harms being caused by the global growth-obsessed corporate-controlled economy, and conversely, the multiple benefits to people and nature the accrue from a systemic shift towards the local. This dynamic is, she argues, most starkly visible in the food system, which under corporate globalization is destroying the planet, local economies and health, but under a shift to localized, ecological production and consumption models heals our interlocking polycrises simultaneously. Anja issues a rousing call to get involved, become an activist - especially a food activist - and link up with others to heal our relationship with the land beneath our feet, but also to transform the system that is driving catastrophe. Millions of people are already doing this, she reminds us, and from this realization we can draw inspiration and hope in dark times.

Vu Truong is a program coordinator at VCIL Community, Vietnam, a grassroots movement towards well-being and regenerative society re-imagining every aspect of life through social innovation in alternative education, rethinking development, new economy and community building. Thien Quach is a community builder, regenerative educator, and social innovator with VCIL Community. He is passionate about reimagining education and rethinking development through alternative education, post-growth entrepreneurship, regenerative tourism, and solidarity-based finance.

In this episode of Planet Local Voices II, Vu and Thien paint an evocative picture of the deeply relational, humble and nurturing traditional values and lifestyles that prevailed until recently in Vietnam, and how these have been dramatically undermined and degraded by the race for material wealth and "success" brought about by recent decades of mainstream development, modernization and "progress". Still, beneath the pavement and within the cracks of development, the old values still survive, and with them more and more people are turning away from the soul-deadening, polluting mainstream to create "many streams" of regenerative, life-affirming, meaningful alternatives - a process that VCIL Community is playing a vital role in nurturing.

They emphasize the importance of changing mindsets, values, and worldviews in order to effect systemic change, and conversely, the need for systemic change to enable and encourage these inner transformations. It is a story that will resonate with communities and cultures across the world who are facing similar pressures, which is to say, it will resonate everywhere.