Carl Schlyter (00:00:02)

Welcome to the third series of SystemShift, a podcast from Greenpeace which explores how we can move from a world that serves the economy, to an economy that works for people and the planet. The theme of this series is change, can it happen in our lifetime? 

I’m Carl Schlyter

Joycelyn London (00:00:19)

I’m Joycelyn London.

In today’s episode we are asking the question: 

“How can I think about the planet when I can’t even afford rent?”. 

We’re thinking about the links with cost of living and climate action, and acknowledging that when times are hard and the cost of living is high, it’s very understandable that the environment might not be front of mind. But what we come to find is that viewing environmental concerns through the lens of social and economic justice can reveal powerful connections between your struggles and the health of our planet. 

Carl Schlyter (00:01:08)

We put a poll on our Instagram page where we asked: 

“How do social economic issues affect your decisions on the climate crisis?”. 

And here is what you had to say: 

“I wish I could afford to shop all local produce and environmentally friendly items”, 

“There is a lack of accessibility to really climate friendly alternatives and healthy choices”, 

“I have to work a 9 to 5 and I’m exhausted so can’t really do volunteer work anymore”, 

“I want to spend more time learning about the climate crisis but I’m stuck thinking about the bills”. 

Joycelyn London (00:01:42)

Today we’re going to be joined by a brilliant young activist, Nala Amirah, who’s the founder of Green Welfare Indonesia, a youth-led NGO pioneering eco-social action through climate education, community empowerment and nature-based solutions. 

Carl Schlyter (00:01:59)

So without further ado, a warm welcome to you Nala. 

Nala Amirah (00:02:01)

Thank you so much Carl, hi, I’m very happy to be here. 

Joycelyn London (00:02:06)

Hi Nala, it’d be interesting to hear your reflections on why, even now, the climate crisis is still being viewed as an abstract, very far away, or even elitist or niche issue, and reflect on also why this might be some of the roots of the issue that we’re facing, at intersections of the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis. 

Nala Amirah (00:02:27)

Definitely I think it’s a really important question that we should be asking. My two cents is that this concept that the climate crisis is an abstract or it’s very distant to us, it’s because the ones who are feeling all of this niche in the climate crisis, because it’s usually the aspiring middle class workers or either the middle class workers, we would never expect to hear the lower income classes say that the climate crisis is being far away and that it’s an elitist problem or that it’s abstract because they feel it directly. These huge chunks of the population especially in the developing countries from where I am, from Indonesia, this aspiring middle class and the middle class as well, they have the perception of delayed consequences. Climate change might not be felt yet as an immediate threat because the worst consequences seem very far off for these people. 

People in this group, again they have better access to resources, they usually have stable housing whether it’s in a tiny cramped place, but they still have a roof over their place, basic health care. And so they buffer them from the immediate impacts of the climate crisis. And the climate crisis is a slow burning phenomenon, it gets affected from the lower class first and it goes up the chain, and so I think this perception of delay is also very misleading because at some point we all will feel the climate crisis and it’s it’s not only going to be the lower classes that feels these. And so I think mostly for me, what I see is that there’s a huge disconnect with the impacts of the climate crisis, people only act urgently when it becomes something that’s tangible, something that you can see directly in front of your eyes. So when the climate crisis feels removed from our daily concerns we feel like it’s a very niche and far away topic. When we fail to recognise the intrinsic value of ecosystems and services they provide, we can easily overlook the significance of environmental degradation. 

Joycelyn London (00:04:52)

Thank you for that answer, there’s lots of really salient points there and one thing that I resonated with was this point that those that are the most marginalised, those on the front lines do not think it’s a delayed issue because they are facing the impacts and we know that the climate crisis is a threat multiplier, so those who are poor or marginalised or vulnerable in any way will feel the consequences of the climate crisis more strongly. 

We also know that those in low-income communities or living in poverty have housing standards that are subpar and are experiencing vulnerabilities in housing. We see statistics like, in 15 major cities in the global South, 62% of people lack access to reliable piped water, 42% of urban populations lack access to electricity. And I think here you were talking in your last answer about these two things, about marginalised communities and also environmental degradation, and I think this is a link that we don’t make so often. Would you be able to explain a little bit more, how the issues faced by low-income communities in housing are inherently linked to those posed by environmental degradation? 

Nala Amirah (00:06:01)

Of course, when we talk about the key consequences from the climate crisis, it’s not only to the environment but also socio economic, and when we talk about social economy it’s directly to the lower communities. I think one thing that is very important to help these aspiring middle classes and middle class, and the lower income for sure, is we really need to start communicating the climate crisis and information to these people very clearly. When these aspiring middle classes, blue collar workers and families, they have the urgency of meeting the basic needs first, they care more – for sure they’re going to be striving more for how to financially stabilise their household income, or when it comes to housing or even the basic needs of food – and so if we really want to make the integration of sustainability while they’re trying to fight for more basic needs within their lives, I think one more thing is making sustainability affordable for them, because they don’t have the luxury of making large upfront investments without immediate financial support. 

It could be something that’s very simple that I see here in Japan, one of the examples is grocery store promotion, so I see a lot of, especially farmer markets here, they give incentives for buying organic or sustainably sourced products. So for example there are seasonal campaigns here where you know customers who purchase a certain amount of organic produce, they receive a discount on their next purchase, or especially, let’s say utility companies, they can also include informational inserts in their energy bills so an informational sheet of how much you would save when you turn off the electricity, as well as an insert that might explain maybe a programme where if they purchase energy efficient appliances or they install smart thermostats or cooling. So directly offering sustainable affordable options to their basic needs and just integrating it and making lots of incentives. And this is where both the government and businesses have a really crucial role in giving this information, providing the necessary information. 

And I think going back to the housing crisis and the living crisis, it’s not only being impacted only to the lower communities now. Japan is having a really huge inflation rate, I think the inflation rate reached around 4% in 2024. Everything is much more expensive, from electricity, food, as well as transportation, and it’s public transportation that’s becoming more expensive. And this is undeniably connected directly to the climate crisis, from energy prices, because Japan imports a lot of energy and imports a lot of food so undeniably when inflation hits everything’s going to be much more expensive. 

Carl Schlyter (00:09:30)

I think it’s interesting when you talk about linking social sustainability and how you promote more eco-friendly living. If the government supports EV purchases or investments in housing it’s the rich who are going to have the capacity to use that, but it’s not them who spend the largest share of their income on housing. When you do that you can’t afford energy efficiency, you can’t afford to do investments that you know are good for you. And that’s exactly the same group that feels the first pressure of inflation and cost increases. So the people who feel the brunt of the inflation and the people who feel the brunt of the daily cost crisis, are also the same people who have the least capacity to invest themselves out of the problem by themselves, and therefore the government needs to step in. And I think it’s interesting that you were you only 15 when you took part in the initiative to do the green environment movement in Indonesia, and I wonder when you did this at such a young age, did you think about the social link to sustainability issues, was that part of what made you want to start this movement or was it other things? 

Nala Amirah (00:10:42)

I think I started in the climate movement just as the pandemic was swayed in, so most of the activism that I did back then was digitally, but one thing that really made my awareness or what I realised especially from the people around me, was the lack of information about the climate crisis to really make people have the urgency to actually take action. And everyone back in 2020 at least within my circle, because I think in the Indonesian or the Asia climate movement back then, even though it was only four years ago, it was definitely not as big as the Western climate movement, especially when Greta started. The climate crisis in Indonesia back then was only seen as a very niche field, mostly we saw sustainability as a role that needs to be taken by academicians, like researchers, or on a professional level and not really necessarily young people. 

And so I think from there, everyone didn’t really know the cost of inaction, and I realised that, and so that’s what sparked and tingled me to really start, they didn’t know the cost of inaction, how that cost will affect them socially and economically in the future. 

Joycelyn London (00:12:14)

I think it’s really amazing to have highlighted those gaps in your community and tried to plug them, and I think what you’ve built is a wide community, you’ve impacted so many people and part of your work is going into communities as well. So not just building an activist group but actually trying to interact with people, meet them at their level and also service needs that are inherently connected to people’s ability to survive and to sustain themselves whilst doing this education work on environmental justice and unsustainability. And I think one of the big things that people feel that they can’t take climate action, apart from this kind of resource issue of, “I can’t pay my rent”, or “I have all of these cost of living crisis”, is just feeling that the problem is too large to do on their own and feeling quite isolated with action. And what you’ve done is the complete opposite, you’re hitting all of these different things on the head, the community action, the services, the housing needs. I would love to hear some of your reflections on collective action and how we move from this place, whether feeling things are too far away or the problems are too big, to actually meeting really specific needs, educating on these needs, and making change in a collective manner. 

Nala Amirah (00:13:35)

I think my generation or the younger generation, it’s very easy for us to experience climate anxiety or climate despair, just feeling that whatever action we take it’s not really going to matter. And I think of course from an individual point of view that is true, and that’s why we say that we need collective action, of course, rather than individual action. But in a sense, individual action needs to also (go) in parallel, it needs to go at the same time with systematic action. So we can’t just depend on individual action or we can’t just depend on systematic action, it needs to be both from the supply and the demand, from the consumers and the producers. And so I think one thing that I try to change the narrative, or what I see that usually that we try to do when it comes to climate action, is that we have the wrong goal of executing or doing climate action in the first place. A lot of people usually see that climate action, they don’t see the bigger picture, they only see the direct, immediate or measurable impact, let’s say –reducing your meat consumption for example, reducing your carbon footprint from transportation. Of course that’s super important, but if we only focus on these little lifestyle changes without adding more value to it by putting it as a collective demand for climate action, of course we’re going to feel despair because we can’t really see the impacts directly. 

And I think one of the goals that we need to try to shift ourselves towards, the goal of climate action is not about counting the carbon footprint that we emit on a personal level, it’s more of creating a collective demand to the government, to the companies, to push out these old systems and create a new system. I think I learned this in one of my environmental economics classes – creative disruption – it’s the destruction of the old to create spaces for the creative growth of the new. So in order for us to create new systems we need to push back the outdated systems that are unsustainable for this current life path, and that takes a lot of transition, it takes a lot of change, it takes a lot of shocks, culturally and economically and socially for sure for everyone, but it’s that transition period where we need to mainstream and normalise the new way of living that has much more quality and that’s much more sustainable. And I think it’s so important for us to also realise the bigger picture of community collective actions. 

Carl Schlyter (00:16:42)

I think it’s interesting because you mentioned the creative destruction, and it has traditionally also been used by the neoliberals and the ultra capitalists when they want to change the world in their direction. Now what you’re saying is that, using community, is that the next rebuild is going to be for the common good, not the individual greed. And you talk about the importance of building communities and that’s actually what you have been doing concretely. So I’m wondering, what can we learn from your Indonesian initiative when it comes to making people engaged, and who is engaged, is it an aspiring middle class, is it the already middle class or upper middle class, and which groups, do you bring all ethnic groups and so on? What can we learn from your experience here? 

Nala Amirah (00:17:26)

I think, so from my movement Indonesia Green Welfare, we have a very diverse background of young people. Mostly we target around 15 to 25 year olds to be involved in our movement, and from Green Welfare itself we focus on environmental education, on informal schools, so both informal schools and also in indirect and informal learning settings. What’s very interesting about Green Welfare, even though we don’t directly have any specific requirements for you to join Green Welfare, but the ones who usually register to volunteer in Green Welfare are actually high school students and young girls. So we have a programme where we create climate change education textbooks that will be used for informal learning in schools in the co-curricular subjects, and from that we have around 22 young girls that are being involved directly creating the textbooks, and then we have the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Environment, as well as teachers, who cross check that what is being created by these girls are relevant are credible. And so we also have that intergenerational collaboration in Green Welfare, even though the young people are executing it, we want to get the wisdom and the knowledge from the generations before us because that’s really important, with the generations before teaching us lessons learned. 

And I think for me personally, from my experience from Green Welfare, it’s definitely very important to create programmes that give benefits to the community, like the beneficiaries, but it’s also very important to think about the upskilling of your volunteers, so what we try to do in Green Welfare is that we try to get them directly involved in learning soft skills and technical skills and green skills. So for example for our climate education programme, not only are they creating the necessary information for these school students, but they’re also learning how to create climate curriculums, so they are equipped with the end-to-end knowledge and skills to become future environmental leaders but also to give impact directly to the society that they want to contribute to. I think that’s my two cents. 

Carl Schlyter (00:19:58)

I think it’s more than two cents. 

Joycelyn London (00:20:00)

It’s more than that, it’s really beautiful to hear and it’s really interesting to also hear you speak about intergenerational collaboration. And one thing that we need as communities with  increasing environmental degradation is resilience, communities that work together and especially communities that work together across this generational bound are more resilient. I think I have two questions here, one is, how have you seen that community action has made the communities that you work with more resilient, and what are some of these risks that are able to be easier weathered by working together? 

Nala Amirah (00:20:36)

I think the benefits that they get from preserving the environment it’s priceless. One thing that we need to focus on, for especially communities, is to understand that once communities actually take positive advantage of the environment and reduce as much as (possible) negative impacts on it, we create a community that’s super independent and that can thrive on its own. So I had a recent experience of directly being involved in the end-to-end process of an organic farm here in a rural city in Japan in Oita, and they create their own rice, they have their own paddy fields, they do organic farming so no pesticides used at all, and one thing that I see from all of the communities there, from also socially and as well as just psychologically, is that I can see how healthy they are, maybe the average was around 60 to 70 year old farmers and they were still working on fields where they had to harvest from 8 am to 12 pm every day. 

And for me it was super tiring as my first experience, but then when I saw one of the farmers who has been doing this his whole life and he’s never complained, I was just like, okay, my generation needs to start understanding what it’s like out there. Because we’re always just inside the classroom nowadays, we don’t really go out and the professors, what we learn in school is mostly just theories, we don’t really actually know how hard it is to produce our own food, to produce our own energy. So I think once a community knows how to provide those basic needs, from energy to food, and some communities also know how to build their own homes from scratch using the natural resources, you become independent and you’re not scared of economic shocks because you already know how to produce the primary needs that your family needs to survive day-to-day. 

Joycelyn London (00:22:58)

And how does this community approach to action reimagine the myth that in order to take environmental action you have to be a perfect environmentalist?

Nala Amirah (00:23:08)

You know a lot of young people who didn’t really understand what the climate crisis was, they used to call me out for that, so let’s say I used to go to school using my own car and they would say “you’re an environmentalist, why are you not using public transportation?”. There were times where I, as a human, forgot my water bottle at home so I had to buy a plastic bottle, and so that one time I used a plastic bottle they were like “you’re an environmentalist why are you buying plastic?”. 

Carl Schlyter (00:23:38)

Unforgivable, we’ll take you off this podcast immediately! 

Nala Amirah (00:23:42)

And so I got called out for all of those. And so I think there isn’t a perfect environmentalist in the world, even just as small as, this mic had to be transported all the way from Osaka to where I live, and the emissions from shipping itself, it’s already creating emission from that. And so I think what we need to try to do is look at the broader systems that have facilitated this kind of system in the first place, because perfect environmentalism doesn’t exist. 

Joycelyn London (00:25:15)

Thank you so much Nala for being with us today, we’ve covered so much ground and I think our listeners would be really interested in your answers, so keep on doing the amazing work that you’re doing and thank you so much for being here with us today. 

Nala Amirah (00:24:27)

Thank you so much. 

Joycelyn London (00:24:29)

Well that was such an interesting conversation, it was great to hear about Nala’s work and really this focus on community action. I know that we spent a lot of time on that and I think for me this is one of the best levers to move past this idea that those who are the most vulnerable, don’t have a space to care about the environmental crisis. We see in this conversation that that’s a myth and that they’re the most impacted by these issues, but that also approaching vulnerabilities through a community lens allows us to become empowered and to become more resilient, rather than as an extra burden or sacrifice that we need to make in terms of taking out environmental action. I think that was a really important reflection to bring to the fore. 

Carl Schlyter (00:25:15)

I was also inspired by her talk about the community of villagers in Japan and how they work together, how that gives you energy and doesn’t take energy, because quite often I meet people that are struggling just to get by, and then you don’t have the energy to do collective action or fight the system or whatever that’s needed. But I think her example and many others around the world show that it’s actually when you engage yourself with others, it can start small, but that’s what it actually quite often gives you more energy than it takes, because this sense of empowerment helps you to gain energy. 

Joycelyn London (00:25:57)

And I think that this energy transfer also comes from the fact that working as communities for a general environmental justice agenda, but one that is intersectional, means that you actually can get through life easier in terms of mutual aid, supporting each other, picking up the slack where some people are lacking, or where you have strength, bringing those in and having more of an ecosystem, which means that instead of having to worry about your food, your energy, all of these issues and vulnerabilities, some of that burden can be carried by the community and also you can lighten that burden for others where you have capacity. I see this a lot in groups where the climate isn’t necessarily the core agenda, but the action has been taken under this kind of environmental justice framework. 

One really important example is that of Hazel M Johnson who is one of the mothers of environmental justice, and her work was really about housing. She found out that her community’s estate was located on top of a toxic waste site, and she found this out because sadly her husband had passed away from cancer very early on. And lots of members of her community which was a primarily black community were suffering lots of different ailments. And so already we have a low income community suffering exasperated health impacts, and without an environmental justice framework you might think, well that’s got everything to do with economics. But when you take this broader idea of environmental justice you see that this community is being more strongly impacted by overconsumption, by polluting industries, by toxic industries. So she founded the People for Community Recovery, which really focused on this intersection of housing, terrible housing that people were experiencing in Chicago where she lived, and this wider issue of environmental justice. So I think that’s a really good example of where projects that are motivated by some of these other issues that are faced by low-income communities, become an environmental justice campaign.

Carl Schlyter (00:28:12)

I totally agree that’s crucially important, I experienced this first hand when I did my final thesis. I did it in a favela in Brazil, an extremely poor community there. And you could see that the current economic system just pushes environmental problems to the weakest group that can’t defend themselves. So you mentioned black communities in the US, it’s quite clear that they are more exposed to lead poisoning from different sources and it’s the same all over the place, it doesn’t matter if you’re in Europe or in the US or in the global South, like Swedish mining companies put their toxic waste in communities in South America that couldn’t defend themselves. So this is going through everywhere, it’s the same story, and if you don’t have the capacity to build communities and empower people we are never going to solve environmental problems, we’re are always going to move them to people who can’t defend themselves and communities that can’t defend themselves, so it’s really important this. 

Joycelyn London (00:29:09)

You’re right, this is happening in all countries all across the world, it’s not just a global South, global North problem, and I think this is why it’s something that we need to become intimately more aware of, this social justice approach, because it’s happening to the most marginalised communities everywhere, even in high income countries. In the UK for example black communities, regardless of income level, are more likely to be living in areas of high air pollution. And so it’s those who are on the front lines as you said who are facing the worst impacts but also who are the least responsible, and it’s our responsibility as those who live with relative safety, relative security to engage with those communities and to be allies and to better educate ourselves on these intersections. The examples of where this is done right are so important as well, the examples of where communities, regardless of income, have a base level quality of life and environmental experience is so important, and important for being able to feel like you have agency in taking action against these issues, because I think that’s a big thing. 

Carl Schlyter (00:30:22)

And it shows the importance of keeping more than one thought in mind at the same time, it’s easy to say “okay, we have a lack of housing in this city, let’s build here close to this highway because that’s where there’s some free land”, but that’s going to be severely noise polluted and people there are going to have more diseases; only think about “we need to solve the housing now, now, now” and you put them in places where people are going to feel sick, and not being able to get energy enough to defend themselves, then you’re worse off, you’re going to create new places where people are going to suffer. So integrating environmental and sustainable concerns in social housing and in social issues is crucial, otherwise we’re not going to win the battle against neither climate nor social exclusion. 

Joycelyn London (00:31:08)

No, and I mean this is such an important part of the conversation around house building, because one, you’re right, we don’t have enough houses and people need more housing, but two, the rush for putting up very shoddy housing made of incredibly unsustainable materials, made in ways that are not conducive to a good quality of life, just exposes those communities further to risk. When communities are hit by floods or when they’re hit by heat waves, those buildings are not going to provide the safety for those communities to live properly. And so you’re right, keeping these two things in mind is so important, because whatever the outcome it’s those who are the most vulnerable that will be impacted the most, whilst people are profiting off of these new build situations. 

Carl Schlyter (00:31:58)

And that’s where Nala gave me some hope because showing that community organising, creating this counter movement of people who do things together, can prevent us from repeating those mistakes again and again, so that feels inspiring. 

Joycelyn London (00:32:11)

And this is where the education piece comes in, because so many of us are just trying to get by and don’t have the time, or feel like we don’t have the time to engage in these issues. But it’s kind of a benefit to those systems of oppression that we don’t know a lot, it’s a benefit that we don’t see how these systems are interlinked. It benefits them that we don’t push together or we don’t come together to actually say “hold on a minute, this isn’t good enough” or “hold on a minute, actually housing is tied to the environmental crisis and you’re not providing us with the quality of life that’s important”. And so education and access to information becomes a really big lever in changing systems. 

Carl Schlyter (00:32:53)

And for those who are new to this podcast, we actually have two earlier seasons where we went through a lot of the economic root causes of problems, for example, that across the globe housing has become increasingly unaffordable, and in most places of the world especially in Southeast Asian and Asia you have six years of income to buy a house, it’s extremely unaffordable when it’s above five, and every continent is now above five except Africa. So we can see here this extreme unaffordability for housing is not by coincidence it’s by the banking system and the financial system. Across the globe housing prices have increased 75% more than income for the last 22 years. So you can see that the root causes and the financial system that creates these social problems and these environmental problems are also, in this sector when we talk about housing, extremely negatively impacting people’s general daily lives and their possibility to afford decent housing. So if you want to study more the root causes of economic foundations then I can recommend some of the episodes also from the earlier two seasons. 

Joycelyn London (00:34:08)

Well it’s been such an expansive conversation and I think one lesson I’m leaving with today is just how much hope there is in community. It can be very overwhelming to contemplate the environmental crisis alongside these socio economic pressures that we’ve been talking about and that we all face day to day, but what we’ve learnt is that there’s so many things that we can do, and how these things make the smallest difference on a global scale, but also make a huge difference on our day-to-day lives on a local level. Carl, you were just mentioning some of the past episodes that people can listen to, to learn more on this topic. Do you have some other resources that people can dive into to educate themselves better? 

Carl Schlyter (00:34:48)

For sure, for example on the Greenpeace International homepage greenpeace.org we have several blog posts exploring climate and social crises and what you can do about that, and how you can achieve transformative action, and so on. So I think there you can get some inspiration for what you can do and what you could do with others, and how you can influence your politicians. 

Joycelyn London (00:35:10)

Amazing, and we’ve spoken so much about community today, there are the obvious actions like trying to find out about local initiatives and events that are climate related, environmentally related, really getting into the projects and initiatives that are happening in your local community. But one thing that I find that’s often overlooked is actually just speaking with your neighbours. How many of us really know our neighbours, do we know our neighbours names? These are the people that we live very intimately with and so this could be a really interesting and novel first step, as well as all of the other actions. But knocking on next door’s door and saying “Hey, do you want to talk about these issues that are happening in our community”, I think that I’d be interested to see how some of those conversations go. 

Carl Schlyter (00:36:00)

That’s funny you say that, because I live in Sweden where speaking with somebody that you don’t know is kind of a scary thing to do. 

Joycelyn London (00:36:07)

Scary! 

Carl Schlyter (00:36:08)

But I think you’re right, if you find it too scary a step to meet people in person there are many online initiatives and many groups you could go where you would feel safe and meet other people. So I think that’s a good tip to communicate with your peers. 

Joycelyn London (00:36:25)

Even a WhatsApp group, a little note through the letterbox, there are so many ways, doesn’t have to just be in person. 

Carl Schlyter (00:36:30)

Yeah we’ll just mention the platforms, where young people would feel comfortable, sure, that’s true. 

Do you feel that things are unsurmountable, difficult to change? That’s actually not the right feeling to have, because we have so many examples in history where things were considered to be completely impossible and just a few weeks later things changed. And remember this, when a thought is starting to spread to society that you can topple an old power structure, it can spread so much quicker than you think. And if you, together with your community and friends, you start this process, you feel empowered, others will as well, and this spread can change things much more rapidly than we think. And we often think about big economic investments, and infrastructure, and technological solutions. The good thing with social change is it can go so much more rapid. 

Joycelyn London (00:37:35)

Thank you, I really believe the same thing, I always think to my ancestors and I think to people like Nala who are doing this work, by taking this apathetic approach we neglect the work that people are doing that is making change every single day and on various different levels, and I find that incredibly hopeful. 

So, can change happen in our lifetime? I think it already is. 

Carl Schlyter (00:37:58)

Sure, and I feel so much inspiration and hope, when we have been talking with youth activists in SouthEast Asia, or labour union activists in Africa, or researchers in North America. Everybody put their knowledge and their capacity into something that helps a community to start changing, to inspire others and give them information and examples and tools of how to act, and that is what gives me a lot of hope. Because in the first two seasons we focussed a lot on the economic fundamentals of the system and what could be wrong and what we can do about it. And  this season I feel  that we reconnect that knowledge from earlier in this series to the action of so many people in different ways, in different contexts, in different communities, with different holders of power, and people who didn’t have any power whatsoever when they started, but everybody has some power inside and finding a community to enlarge that for the common good. That really gives me a lot of hope.

Joycelyn London (00:39:06)

I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who’s tuned in to this season of SystemShift, it has been quite a journey and I hope that you have enjoyed listening as much as we have enjoyed recording these conversations. You can find links to the resources, groups, articles and podcasts that we have mentioned in this episode in the show notes. There’s been a lot of really tangible, really beautiful actions also nestled in all of these different episodes and it might be a useful activity to go back through and note down some of the points of inspiration for you to take into your own lives, into your workplace, into your families and into your daily activities and actions. So take these stories and make them your own.

Carl Schlyter (00:39:56)

Bye, until next time.

Joycelyn London (00:39:57)

See you next time.