In promoting “Sustainability Not War,” the Cultures of Resistance Network has aimed to support groups aiming to protect the natural world and create more sustainable systems of human life on Earth.
One of the most basic things we do to nurture sustainability is support tree-planting and reforestation initiatives. While working to address larger social and economic issues, we cannot forget the importance of preserving and expanding our forests and gardens. Throughout the world, trees are being destroyed and illegal logging continues to fuel deforestation. Trees provide us with air, as well as many other essentials, and robust forests offer an irreplaceable bulwark in the fight against climate change. Protecting them remains one of our top priorities.
A second focus of our grantmaking and activism has been to support agroecology, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture. Throughout the world, as food has moved towards the pre-processed and microwavable, people have become more and more detached from their meals’ origins and ingredients. However, an international movement pushing back against these trends is developing. In place of fast food, people now demand “slow food” that recovers traditions of food preparation and celebrates diversity, rather than standardization. Despite the common misperception that slow food is centered in wealthy countries, it is actually a grassroots movement coming from below, rooted in Indigenous communities and building ties with food producers in the global South. Here, slow food means defending local food security, breaking from large-scale industrial agriculture, and preserving traditional, sustainable agriculture practices. Fighting back against the encroachment of corporate norms and incentives, farmers throughout the global South are upholding their own vision of agroecology—a form of agriculture that works with nature, celebrates traditional practices, and puts social justice at the core of food production.
Finally, we have supported groups that protect animals, including organizations that combat the inhumane practices of factory farming, defend birdlife, or preserve habitat for diverse species of fauna.
[Featured image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.]
