Prize Year: 2017

La Via Campesina

La Via Campesina (LVC) was founded in 1993 and involves 164 member organisations in 73 countries from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

LVC represents millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers.

LVC is an autonomous, pluralist and multicultural movement that promotes agroecology as a path to social justice and dignity. LVC defends peasant agriculture against corporate-driven agriculture and trade liberalisation, and upholds Food Sovereignty as a response to the intertwined food and climate crises.

We are working towards a Peasant Rights Declaration currently in negotiation at the UN Human Rights Council.

The Soft Foot Alliance

The Soft Foot Alliance is dedicated to improving the lives and landscapes of people living on the boundary of Hwange national Park, Zimbabwe, while achieving a sustainable co-existence with wildlife.

We use permaculture design and holistic land management to apply long-term solutions that are regenerative and uplift people whilst protecting the environment.

One such initiative is ‘Co-Herd’, where herders are given training in a variety of sustainable skills in return for herding as a team, following a holistic grazing plan and using predator proof mobile livestock stockades.

This is regenerating the land, uplifting people and protecting livestock and lions.

 

Regeneration Project: Granada

Regeneration Project: Granada (Spain) grew from Eroles Project’s 2016 Camp As If People Matter residency.

We are a growing collective of refugees/migrants, local people and international participants who are working together to develop a project which seeks to find new ways to respond to migration.

We aim to co-create small scale viable solutions, lifelong friendships, skill sharing, and ways of living as human to human.

Together our vision is to repopulate a village in the province of Granada, Spain; collaboratively working the land and creating viable and sustainable livelihoods, to regenerate both the ecosystem and the economy of the area.

One Planet Productions

One Planet Productions is a think and do tank based in rural Greece.

We’re on a mission to transform a fertile bioregion of Evia into a leading European hub for regenerative agriculture and applied social and solidarity economics. We do this by sparking the creativity of local Greek communities with support from a global talent network. Working together, we can demonstrate that a new regenerative economy is possible.

Active startups include a destination marketing organisation called Transform Evia and a collaborative trade network called Origin Club. We’re currently developing a distributed research farm called Elysion Fields, launching in 2018.

Photo: One Planet Productions

MontBio (Montnegre Biochar)

MontBio promotes the intelligent use of carbon for ecological, economic and social regeneration; climate change adaption; and truly ethical consumerism.

Our community project is bringing back the ancient tradition of making charcoal in the coastal mountains of Montnegre i El Corredor natural park.

However, we intend to put carbon in the ground instead of the atmosphere – meanwhile regenerating the Mediterranean ecosystem, reducing wildfire risks, and building a circular economy among the mountain inhabitants.

MontBio has permission to recover “waste” wood from forestry operations that would otherwise be burned, in order to create a high value, carbon negative product.

Initiative Re_

Initiative Re_ is nomadic. During each collaborative project our team will live alongside remote communities and work in-situ.

Being based locally will enable us to facilitate the development of local skill bases through workshops, training and practical action for ecosystem-based landscape planning, design and management to ensure continued innovation of site specific solutions from within the community itself.

With an emphasis on dryland regeneration we intend our pilot project to be based in Iran within the Chaharmahal Bakhtiari tribal territories.

We will utilise holistic, integrated methods for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, ecosystem function regeneration, habitat creation, biodiversity protection, community empowerment and sustainable livelihood creation.

Photo: Initiative Re_

Food Forest International Research Network

Forest gardens or food forests are a promising method of growing food in small spaces, and have potential to feed populations in urban and rural areas across the world.

We are conducting the first grassroots international survey of forest gardens. During the International Permaculture Convergence 2017 in Hyderabad we want to bring together practitioners from around the world with leading forest gardeners from India, where many of the best established examples are located.

Both before and after the event participants will travel to forest garden sites in order to study and document them for out international baseline survey.

Photo: Food Forest International Research Network

Compassos Institute / Action Compassos

The purpose of the Compassos Institute is to debate ideas related to the marginality of youngsters and adults with special needs that cannot enter the labor market.

We also strive to develop ways to minimize and prevent environmental damage in Brazil.

The Compassos Action Project is multidisciplinary and works in different spheres, the main one being biodynamic agriculture. Families, schools and the community will all be welcomed.

We will offer practical experience creating a collective vegetable garden, as well as student training, courses and lectures.

We hope for this project to be replicated in neighboring cities.

Communities in Transition – Tackling fuel poverty

In Hungary and the rest of Europe Roma people are one of the largest and most discriminated minorities and predominantly live in extreme poverty, geographically segregated.

Among many hardships poor housing conditions and lack of adequate heating during winter are some of the largest difficulties they face.

Eco-solutions can be cost effective and achievable with local resources and hence crucial for families with unpredictable incomes. Unfortunately few technological solutions are designed specifically for people living in extreme poverty in Europe.

Our work challenges this; we are developing affordable and efficient stoves, insulation and fuel programs in collaboration with local communities.

Photo: Communities in Transition – Tackling fuel poverty

Calderdale Bootstrap

Calderdale Bootstrap is a group of social entrepreneurs, co-operators, activists and changemakers, looking to engage our community in the upper Calder Valley to co-create our next economy.

We aim to build on the history of mutual self-help in our valley; work with our existing social enterprise and take it up a gear. We will inspire and directly support the next generation of enterprises to help create a more vibrant and more resilient solidarity economy, with real livelihoods, community commonwealth, and the ability to thrive in the challenging times ahead as the current economic system unravels.

Another Economy is Possible.

Photo: Calderdale Bootstrap