Local landscapes were once powerful forces in their own right, shaping how people lived, farmed, traded, and made sense of the world. The land created people, and as people worked, they changed the land. Over time a shared identity and distinctive culture emerged. Again and again, people have made their patch of the earth feel like home: stable, familiar, well understood, enlivening.

Global commerce, air travel, technologies, and corporate imagery have largely shattered this historic pattern of life. They have homogenized once-distinctive places and cultures into interchangeable anywheres. Local traditions, foods, knowledge, and folkways have been eclipsed by branded Western foods, clothing, music, lifestyles, and technologies. Coca-Cola is sold in remote African villages. Shopping malls in Bangkok are similar to ones in Doha, London, Kansas City, and Mexico City.

Now that the circuits of global commerce are so powerful and pervasive, it may seem quixotic to attempt to defend and fortify the local. But failing to do so has serious consequences.

“The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth,” writes Wendell Berry, the farmer-poet and essayist. “This alignment destroys the commonwealth, that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community, and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.”

Climate change and other eco-crises are making a return to the local inevitable. Global supply chains have become so long, complex, and fragile that even a small disruption of shipments of oil, food, semiconductors, or rare minerals can have far-reaching consequences around the globe. Since the frenzy of modern commerce is based on carbon fuels, the very metabolism of modern civilization is driving climate collapse. Going local is one of the most significant ways to build a more resilient, post-growth economy.

We should take inspiration from many brave, resourceful commons projects that are reclaiming the local from the neocolonial priorities of capital and nation-states. A big part of their work is recovering local ownership and use of land so that it can steward, and not exploit natural systems.

In his landmark 1949 book Sand County Almanac, the great American conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote,

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect…. [Our land use] is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Commoning of land is a way to reintroduce local stewardship of land. As chronicled by the group Culture Hack in a 2022 report, the Land Back movement in North America is trying to reclaim land taken during colonization as a form of reparations. It wants to restore biodiversity and Indigenous spiritual engagement with landscapes.

The Comunalidad movement is pursuing a similar agenda in the Global South, particularly in Mexico, while the peasant group La Via Campesina has been leading the fight for “food sovereignty,” the idea that people should have the right to control production of the food they need, for both subsistence and cultural reasons.

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) have been a powerful tool in North America and Europe for taking land off the market in perpetuity and managing it for community benefit. CLTs are democratically run, regionally based commons that use their land to host affordable housing, sustainable agriculture, recreation, and village improvements. CLTs make land more accessible and affordable to ordinary people, especially in areas where real estate speculation and gentrification are raising land prices.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is another local, commons-based approach. In most CSAs, members buy upfront shares in the farm’s seasonal harvest and then pick up fresh produce as it is grown, week by week. The arrangement gives farmers working capital at the beginning of the season when they need it to buy seed and plant crops, while reducing their financial burden if the harvest is disappointing. For their part, CSA members usually get their food for below market prices and enjoy fresher, organic food in the bargain.

Interestingly, CSA principles are being applied to other contexts. In western Massachusetts, Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares invites jazz fans to buy upfront subscriptions to a season of ten concerts by leading musicians. There are also a number of community-supported fisheries in the state, such as Cape Anne Fresh Catch.

The conservation movement is also exploring postcapitalist forms for protecting land. Rather than lock up land as wilderness off-limits to humans or promote capitalist markets for ecotourism or hunting preserves, a new international network for “convivial conservation” is creating symbiotic, commons-based ways to protect land. The idea is to use land for agriculture, timber, and other purposes, but without the fierce profit motives and extraction of capitalist business.

The full spectrum of relocalizing initiatives is vast yet often overlooked. Increasingly, farmers, food processors and distributors, restaurants, schools, and others in a region are coming together to create deeply relational food systems. Areas with “food deserts” and underserved people in Montana, Hawaii, and Arizona, have shown how relational cooperation among players can be the backbone of higher quality yet affordable food.

Many communities have introduced alternative currencies to help invigorate local communities. A prime example is the BerkShares in Massachusetts, as overseen by the Schumacher Center for a new Economics. Mutual credit and timebanking systems are also region-specific ways to facilitate exchanges of goods and services.

Solar Commons projects in Minnesota and Arizona, managed as community trusts, are using revenue streams from solar energy arrays to help Native American recover their food sovereignty and low-income families to access quality food. Some communities have hosted “repair cafes” that bring together volunteer tech experts with people who have broken appliances and electronics. “Freecycle” and “upcycle” projects allow people to give used bicycles, clothing, and household goods to people who need them.

While many of these ventures may seem either too marginal or too ambitious, we will urgently need such models very soon. Invoking a future of dramatic climate change and economic instability, the late, prophetic David Fleming, author of Lean Logic, predicted that

“the political economies of the future will be essentially local. They will use locally generated energy and local land and materials, producing for local consumption and reusing their wastes. They will be managed — given life, competence, and resilience — by the people who live there, participants, in daily touch with the local detail.”

Bioregional and local commons will be critical in avoiding such epic disruptions. Besides meeting many practical needs, these new and yet ancient forms will provide us with a coherent new vision for the future. We need such a vision to replace the progress fantasy of “the global” as a realm of limitless material extraction and infinite growth, without falling into another fantasy – the nostalgic, reactionary idea that “the local” is a haven of safety, morality, and order. Commoning with local landscapes offers a practical alternative that we very much need to expand.

---