Page 29 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 24
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The Environment
gas emissions must be coupled industrial pollution burdens humanitarian needs, would
with strategies to reduce they bear. help to both save lives and
toxic co-pollutants, waste and reduce massive amounts of
biodiversity destruction, as well Examples: atmospheric carbon.
as disproportionate pollution Zero Waste: In nature, there is
and poverty burdens borne by nothing such as waste, hence Number Four:
Black, Brown, Indigenous, efforts to create zero waste Real solutions must replace
migrant and poor communities systems to reduce, reuse, economies of greed with
around the world. Real solutions recycle, and compost waste in economies that serve
must be guided by our reciprocal our cities and towns lighten the ecological and human needs.
relations with all life; aligned human footprint in a variety
with restoring ecosystems and of ways – from significantly In other words, stop the
species impacted by the global reducing climate and toxic economy of greed.
extractive economy; restoring pollution loads to relocalizing
the health of all species whose the materials economy while To be effective at doing so, real
well-being we depend on for creating millions of new jobs and solutions need to be part of a
our own. just transition pathways for the suite of just transition strategies
poorest communities.[17] Zero that move us towards local,
The climate crisis cannot waste strategies, which avoid regenerative economies guided
be tackled without gauging burning or burying waste, are by caring, sharing, solidarity,
“decarbonization” efforts one of the most affordable ways and mutual aid. There are
by their ability to detoxify, for cities and communities to thousands of active experiments
decommodify, degentrify, transition to local, community- around the world, providing
demilitarize, decentralize, controlled economies. emergent lessons from efforts to
decolonize and democratize our build a solidarity and feminist
economies. Such an integrated Looking to shift the hundreds of economy, from time banking
approach ensures that harm billions in subsidies presently and trans-local community
reduction in one aspect of any handed to the oil and gas sector, investment assistance to
process does not exacerbate we need to look at the trillions federations of worker-owned
burdens in another. As such, spent on the war industry. While cooperatives such as Mondragon
real solutions need to be holistic there are few examples of in the Basque region of Spain.
in examining the life-cycles of efforts to demilitarize the global
carbon in a broader context of extractive economy, campaigns Often, the best places to find
all associated harm, i.e. the like About Face – Veterans such holistic analysis are at
proliferation of plastics in our against War, acknowledge the intersections of the oldest
oceans, the depletion of soil that repurposing the lives of struggles, amidst some of the
nutrition and high COVID-19 hundreds of thousands of young poorest, most marginalized
mortality in EJ communities people, from serving fossil communities – where people
due to the disproportionate fuel corporations to serving continue to struggle against
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