Call for participation: Thinkers lodge youth high school climate action retreat

The Centre for Local Prosperity has partnered with the Discovery Centre and Thinkers Lodge to bring together student representatives from Nova Scotia High Schools to an intensive two-day climate change retreat at the historic Thinkers Lodge, Pugwash, NS.

From June 29 to 30, 2022, up to 20 students selected from high schools across Nova Scotia will attend this gathering focused on climate change education, networking, and communication planning.

See our event page and please complete the application form, which needs to be completed by a school representative with the input from the two students that would like to attend.  The deadline is March 20, 2022

Atlantic Canada: Conversations on an Uncertain Future

Today, citizens and scientists alike are saying that humanity has missed the window for avoiding climate extremes and ecosystem decay.  Our world has become an increasingly damaged habitat that threatens our civilization as we know it.

How can we grapple with—and talk about—the reality that our ecological, economic, and social systems may unravel in some frightening ways beyond our control?  How could communities be disrupted due to an increasingly fragile civilization? What should we do in our families, our communities, and our region of Atlantic Canada?

“We find ourselves living on unstable ground. It is time to give up the notion of experts and people in power leading the way.  We need to follow our own noses. This report encourages us to find stability in clean air, local food, sane politics, and fair and just communities. I encourage you to read it, roll it up, put it under your arm, carry it with you to your next community gathering and roll it out for others to share,” said Gregory Heming, Senior Advisor to the Centre for Local Prosperity. 

This report captures the essence of twelve virtual discussion sessions from May 12 to June 17, 2020, convened by the Centre for Local Prosperity, with an invited group of delegates from across the region and internationally at Thinkers Lodge, Pugwash, Nova Scotia.  The deep and brave discussions captured in this report shows how communities in our region, and globally, can best prepare and manage through potential collapse.  These deliberations have sought to apply the many large-scale global changes now underway to local readiness solutions that are applicable for Atlantic Canadian communities.

Thinkers Retreat – Pandemic, Climate Crisis and the uncertain future of local community

During May and June, 2020, the Centre for Local Prosperity conducted its fifth Thinkers Lodge Retreat (virtually) on Pandemic, Climate Crisis and the Uncertain Future of Local Community. These discussions generated short videos on many essential topics. Please visit the Centre’s Youtube channel for all posted videos. A resource guide for communities in Atlantic Canada is being prepared based on this retreat, and will be available later in 2020.

COMMENTARY: Aquaculture a broken business model that’s ruinous for the environment

Given the current awarding of “options for leases” for open-net aquaculture in our South Shore bays, it’s important to gain a higher perspective on the business and economic model being proposed, its effects on our local communities, and what alternatives may exist.

The Chronicle Herald, Halifax, NS
Published: 10th Feb 2020

OPINION: Rural N.S. needs ethical, ecologically literate economics

From a local economy perspective, extraction is a win-lose scenario every time. The ordinary person might see a short-term job here, a new customer there, but their livelihoods and their communities are insecure; they are always at risk of disappearing with the swipe of a pen in an office far away—from the community, geographically, but also socially far away from the lived experience of putting food on a table or protecting a local school. This is not thriving.

Import replacement Repairing the economic leakage that drains wealth out of rural communities

For anyone who feels the buy-local movement has gone about as far as it can go, a contrasting view is presented in a report titled “Import Replacement: Local Prosperity for Rural Atlantic Canada”, released earlier this year by the Centre for Local Prosperity (CLP), a non-profit organization located in Nova Scotia.