Local Futures

Local Futures (formerly the International Society for Ecology and Culture) is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to raise awareness about what it identifies as the root causes of contemporary social, environmental, and economic crises.

The group argues that focusing on single issues – saving whales, blocking nuclear power plants, feeding the hungry, etc. – only overwhelms people and ultimately fails as a strategy. Instead, Local Futures believes that the focus must be on changing the fundamental forces that create or exacerbate all of these problems. Among those forces are economic globalization, corporate power, and conventional notions of technological and economic "progress". As a solution, Local Futures promotes economic localization and other locally based alternatives to the global consumer culture, as a means to protect both biological and cultural diversity. The group is also associated with the concept of Counter-development.

Local Futures is the parent organization of a program in Ladakh, or "Little Tibet", begun in 1975. The Ladakh Project includes a wide range of hands-on activities, including a renewable-energy program, and has won international recognition for countering the negative effects of conventional development in that region. Local Futures' founder and Director, Helena Norberg-Hodge, shared the 1986 Right Livelihood Award. In 2012, she received the Goi Peace Award for "her pioneering work in the localization movement".