Di Maxwell
What happens when communities lose too much local capability? Di Maxwell shares the story of The Old Packhouse Market Project in the far north of Aotearoa (New Zealand), which began as an effort to secure and protect a …
Aseem Shrivastava
Building on the critique of the rights of nature discourse in part I of this essay, Aseem Shrivastava shows how the rights discourse collapses under scrutiny, (re)producing anthropocentrism ironically at odds with its own goals. He traces …
Aseem Shrivastava
This essay interrogates the “rights of nature” discourse, arguing that it extends one of modernity’s most anthropocentric concepts—individual rights—onto nature rather than questioning the framework of rights itself. Drawing on Raimon Panikkar’s cosmotheandric vision, Martin Buber’s …
Shrishtee Bajpai and Ashish Kothari
In light of the planetary polycrisis, it is time to challenge the dominant strand of Western thought that asserts only humans possess rights and that other species exist solely for human benefit. In their contribution …
Riza Annisa Anggraeni
This article was originally published by Icarus Complex on June 16, 2026.
Kasepuhan Gelar Alam, a centuries-old indigenous community in West Java, practices food and energy sovereignty through micro-hydro power, biodiversity-rich rice farming, and traditional granaries. The …
Arif Yusop
As (inter)beings immersed in colonial modernity, we tend to forget who we truly are as a collective ‘we’. Exploring design vis-à-vis sustainability transition, Arif Yusop reflects on the manufactured global ‘we’ that has captured sustainability discourse and unearths …
Madhuresh Kumar
How can we imagine freedom outside the institutions that taught us what freedom is supposed to look like? Madhuresh Kumar reflects on his participation at a convening in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which brought together grassroots organizers to …
Simon Mitambo
In the Tharaka community of Kenya, the living world has always been understood as a council that includes more than human voices. Simon Mitambo shares how earthy governance in Tharaka has always been larger than the human community; …
Ashish Kothari
From anger and resistance to imagining alternative futures.
Originally published by Meer on 13 June 2026.
The last few years have seen a spate of youth movements – led especially by the generation called Gen Z – …
Alim M Bandara
The Tëduray, Lambangian and Non-Moro Indigenous Peoples of southern Philippines have been struggling to restore their customary self-governance system and strengthen guardianship of their ancestral territories. Alim Bandara writes about the Timuay Justice and Governance (TJG) system …
Halwest Karim
Originally published by Local Futures on March 31, 2026.
Across Kurdistan, the village has not been just a place of settlement; it has been a living ecological system, a web of deep interconnections among people, land, seeds, animals, …
Ashish Kothari
Originally published by Meer on 13 May 2026.
Grassroots movements from across the Global South gather in Indonesia to confront war, inequality, and ecological collapse through collective alternatives.
Hope. Esperanza. Harapan. These words were frequently invoked by …