Jorge Krekeler
The Almanac of the Future documents paradigmatic transformations – called ‘motivational experiences’ – emerging in Latin America that demonstrate alternatives to the current extractive model of ‘development’. Jorge Krekeler reflects on the origins and purpose of the Almanac as a project of transformation journalism. Offering a brief overview of the structure and themes of the Almanac, he highlights key lessons learnt from the emergence of alternatives in Latin America towards “a future with a future.”
Seeking Alternatives to ‘Development’
The current model of ‘development’ is largely responsible for the planet’s permanent crisis: the climate crisis, extreme weather events, increasing economic and social inequalities, environmental degradation, and extractivism. In particular, the cumulative logic and perpetual growth in the name of ‘development has led to development for a few at the cost of the impoverishment of the majority of people and the destruction of the planet.
Given the increasingly bleak outlook and critical forecasts about the future, achieving a change of course remains challenging. Skepticism and anxiety prevail, with many people – some out of convenience and others out of uncertainty – insisting on following the current model of ‘development’. It is wrong to expect that a paradigm shift on development will emerge in the high political and economic spheres of global governance. History shows that profound changes arise from the foundations of society when people change attitudes and practices in everyday life, modifying the model of civilization and affecting decisions at the global level.
What is the Almanac of the Future?
The Almanac of the Future finds and documents hopeful alternative experiences in Latin America, contributing to the motivation of others to take ‘development’ into their own hands. The guiding idea of the Almanac of the Future is to generate visibility and provide basic information about post-development experiences at the local level that show alternative paths to conventional development. The Almanac seeks to close the gap between the existence of these experiences and the limited accessibility of information about them. Instead of making exhaustive documentation that is tedious to read, we publish short and situational narratives that briefly explain the experience, complemented by reflections on their “added value or messages for the future”, the difficulties they have encountered and how they have faced them. These experiences are contributions to new inclusive, sustainable, and friendly modes of well-being, prioritizing the common good. The documentation of each experience in the form of a narrative is the result of a joint analysis and collaboration with the people directly involved.
How the Almanac of the Future entered my life
From my work on climate change, I experienced a very strong need for harmony and balance. These two elements were lost to the extent that I devoted myself to the issues of climate change, adaptation and mitigation. My reaction to this situation has been to carry out a critical analysis of the dominant concept of development and our civilizational model. A timid approach to climate negotiations, convened annually by the United Nations, gave me the push to look for pathways towards other ways of life and caring for the future: radiographs with the sensitivity of paradigmatic transformations in local processes. The participatory documentation of these processes – called motivating experiences – has two purposes: first, to inspire readers, and second, to show the reasons, motives or triggers that move people to transition towards future-friendly paradigms. The protagonists of these motivating experiences achieved transformations; they are irrefutable proof that other ways of life are possible. In this way, the Almanac was born as a commitment to journalism of transition and transformation.
The motivation from which I began the journey to the future was born from my conviction that paradigm shifts, if achieved, occur at the base of society, rippling outwards in concentric circles towards their societal environments. Motivating experiences can open people’s eyes to their surroundings, sow hope that change is possible and show that it is up to each person to live in greater coherence between their convictions and their daily life: from their consumption, their food, their mobility, their travels, their economic rationality and others.
The question often arises whether the motivating experiences documented by the Almanac are not too small to promote the “great transformation.” The accelerated pace of our time does not make it easy to be modest, whether in consumption, growth and, above all, in what we do. Paradigmatic transformations resemble landing strips, which must first be located by people to start acting differently. Paradigmatic transformations and transitions towards them emerge from the base of society and then ascend upwards, not vice versa; there are many people who expect transformations to come from the top down: an obvious fallacy. This personal reading translates in my case into action, making it more attractive to accompany and push for social change, instead of concentrating exclusively on political-public advocacy work, regardless of the level or sphere.
Transition and commitment to ‘transformative journalism’
Reviewing my own biography, I have to confess that I have achieved internal harmony in complex situations as long as I find light at the end of the tunnel. The crisis of our civilizational model and the damage caused by the dominant concept of development, which is increasingly obsolete, have led me to seek this light. The Almanac of the Future generates sparks of light and motivation. So that these sparks do not end up like a flare, I get involved in training processes to generate motivation to look for the landing strips (paradigmatic transformations) of the future in our lives. Working with different social groups and networks, and with academia, increases the intensity of the light at the end of the tunnel.
The search for motivating experiences, but above all, connection with people and groups who have already begun to build the future, is immensely enriching. I feel these moments again and again as a privilege. Change comes from people – every documented motivational experience underlines this fact. With several of the people whom I met as protagonists in the framework of the motivating experiences, ties of conviviality were born; we shared spaces for analysis and reflection and organized joint actions. I perceive this circle, slowly growing as a small part of the critical mass of people, who build a future that has a future, from the present. All of these people generously share their lives and, particularly, their processes of transformation. Without a doubt, they give much more than they receive in the form of modest social and journalistic recognition.
Someone, referring to the Almanac of the Future, spoke of “transformative journalism”. From there the question arose: How did I get from my professional career, closely related to cooperation, to work on transformative journalism? Working on projects, planning methods, evaluation of processes and programs and, with networks, have been important stations that have sensitised me to socially relevant paradigm transformations. At the same time, I consider it a great challenge to design projects in such a way that they are capable of strengthening people’s will to change; processes, unlike projects, fortunately are not previously conceived, they simply emerge. Projects and their design need to be thought without contaminated baggage, overcoming habitual patterns of thought, and, above all, with the firm will of each person to leave their comfort zone. A basic requirement is to be ready to question things that until now have been taken as general understanding or that serve as reference points of our logic. Systemic analysis and a gradual overcoming of anthropocentric, patriarchal and development-contaminated thought patterns are required. That this is no small challenge, I experience it at work with each motivating experience.
Social and digital dynamics of the Almanac
Central to the Almanac are paradigmatic transitional processes, documented in the form of articles or motivating experiences. As the compendium of these motivating experiences has grown, we began to classify the experiences according to thematic clusters. There are currently seven thematic categories, on the Almanac website:
- Production and Food: Eating is a political act. Nobody forces us to eat what we eat and it’s mostly a personal decision. However, accessing healthy food is not always easy or economical; there are other obstacles that producers and consumers face for organic food to reach our tables.
- Economy and Market: Commodification of common goods; perpetual growth ignoring the finitude of resources, profits at the cost of destroying ecosystems, and unbridled consumerism are all major problems. It is time to reimagine an economy and market that revolve around the common good.
- Environment and Development: Socio-environmental damages are not taken into account by extractive industries and economies when they calculate their profits. In the face of this, we document stories of proactive resistance.
- Culture and identity: So-called ‘modernity’ is characterized by the alignment of the middle class, unbridled globalized consumerism, and the sad trilogy of life, between work, housing, and shopping centers. Genuine development based on culture, identity and territory is a possible answer to all this.
- City and Housing: With population growth, cities are collapsing and there is no decent housing for everyone. What is the most accurate slogan for metropolization: dignified life or every man for himself? There is a need for reimagining the city as a space that offers life to everyone.
- Energy and mobility: The challenge is to decentralise energy production, ensuring that communities have energy autonomy derived from renewable sources. –
- Resistance and Alternatives: Resistance and alternatives are complementary paths in overcoming the logic of current development and transforming paradigms.
The digital presence of the Almanac covers different media and channels, including its website, social networks, podcasts and webinars, and, to a lesser extent, conversations and courses. The editorial line is openly oriented to the wide thematic range that helps generate motivation to nourish and catalyze transition processes towards “a future with a future”. To reach a broad audience threshold, motivating experiences are offered in five different languages – English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German. Likewise, the Almanac provides informative material (including selected articles and videos), classified according to a thematic cluster in a multilingual manner.
A particularity of the Almanac is to prioritize social interaction. Webinars and live broadcasts encourage audience participation. Similarly, discussions (e.g. around ‘alternative economies’ or ‘food and detoxification’) and courses foster interaction with and between participants. There are several groups which meet online periodically to analyse and debate topics related to the world of transitions. Some of these groups operate at the country level (in the case of Colombia and Bolivia) and others at the regional level (with participants from Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico and Central America) who feel the Almanac is their home. Located on the website as ‘Processes’ are brief profiles and recordings of their sessions. Where possible, these communities sporadically hold face-to-face meetings.
Resistance and Alternatives
The apparent dichotomy between resistance and alternatives disappears when one considers both as a sequence of processes. The analysis of the situation in our territories shows that the interests of those who inhabit the territory (from a holistic view, taking into account the whole ecosystem: Mother Earth, living species, biodiversity…) are not addressed from the logic of the development model. However, the damages (misnamed externalities) are assumed in a societal and territorial manner. Generally, the path to achieving change leads to a first milestone, which is resistance. It is about convincing yourself that the current situation, product and consequence of the established development model, is neither desirable nor acceptable. It is important to avoid an exclusive logic where resistance that is not enough to give birth to something different is dismissed.
The search and possible construction of alternatives is the product of motivation and/or disagreement (resistance) at the individual level. Building an alternative is a step beyond resistance. A possible way to break this circle, and particularly to add to the resistance of giving birth to something different (build, rescue or defend), is to opt for a feasible scale. On a global or national scale, in order to demonstrate the need to migrate towards alternatives, it is almost mandatory to convince people on a macro scale. Returning to the topic of extractivism and externalities (social and environmental damage not taken into account as costs caused), it helps to understand why many of these efforts fail to give rise to something different (…the mentally blind cannot convince…). It is then the personal and territorial scale, where there is a greater probability of overcoming the level of resistance, and venturing into the world of alternatives.
Panorama of emerging alternatives in Latin America
More than a complete panorama, what can be seen from the accumulation of the Almanac of the Future are anecdotes and appreciations. What is very possibly analogous both in Latin America and in other hemispheres of the global south, is the skill of people, born as a necessity in the face of their high vulnerability.
We talk about the capacity for improvisation, recursiveness and ‘forced’ adaptability. We document processes, initiated, maintained and led by ‘ordinary’ people, willing to break schemes and change routines, partly forced by very adverse circumstances for their survival but partly also nourished by the desire and conviction to do things differently.
A constant in these transition processes is a certain acceptance of modularity, which means not seeking the great transformation all at once but rather accepting modular transitions, that is, step by step, seeking to increase critical masses, scale alternatives and take advantage of synergies to reach more hierarchical levels. Another observable constant is that transition processes begin from a personal perspective, in local contexts and territories and, in most cases, based on the identity and self-determination of the protagonists.
Given the frequent criticism that the processes are very small and have no chance of achieving changes at more hierarchical levels (apparently not everyone shares the ‘small is beautiful’ vision) it is necessary to indicate two aspects taking into account the correlation of forces (territorial development versus global development, i.e., the local and the global) and accepting the coexistence between something different ( an alternative) and the current. This does not mean giving up resistance to the current model, but fighting it from every point of view (e.g., claim from regulations, rights approach…). A more exact understanding of these transition processes is easier if an analysis is carried out at the glocal level by recognizing the links between the circumstances of local contexts and their co-determination from global levels and, in turn, the strategic contributions from the global level.
‘Lessons learned’ from the Almanac of the Future
Paradigmatic transitions
- … emerge from below, with modesty and modular logic, like changing routines in one’s everyday life;
- … require sequential analysis of the situation. For e.g., local + global = glocal. Think global and act locally
- …allow the future to emerge in the present (leaving comfort zone) …accept (for the moment) coexistence
- … sow critical mass and act synergistically
- …and, above all, require us to START
To know more about the Almanac of the Future, visit our website:
- In English: https://www.almanaquedelfuturo.com/en/
- In Spanish: https://www.almanaquedelfuturo.com/
- In German: https://www.almanaquedelfuturo.com/de/
- In Portuguese: https://www.almanaquedelfuturo.com/pt-br/
- In French: https://www.almanaquedelfuturo.com/fr
Jorge Krekeler is a self-taught geographer and economist, lecturer, and author of the Almanac of the Future (www.almanaquedelfuturo.com). He is a Colombian resident of German nationality, living and working for 40 years in Latin America. He advises and co-creates designs and processes of paradigmatic transitions, co-constructing the future from the present.