This episode features our very own Anja Lyngabek. Anja is the Managing and Programs Director at Local Futures, and has been working tirelessly and internationally to strengthen the localization movement for decades. She is an activist and analyst, with a particular passion for food and farming and much experience in that arena. She’s happiest with her hands in the soil, growing food, either with her husband and community in the cloudforests of Mexico, or on the small island of Denmark where she’s originally from.

In her interview for Planet Local Voices II, Anja discusses the cascade of social and environmental harms being caused by the global growth-obsessed corporate-controlled economy, and conversely, the multiple benefits to people and nature the accrue from a systemic shift towards the local. This dynamic is, she argues, most starkly visible in the food system, which under corporate globalization is destroying the planet, local economies and health, but under a shift to localized, ecological production and consumption models heals our interlocking polycrises simultaneously. Anja issues a rousing call to get involved, become an activist - especially a food activist - and link up with others to heal our relationship with the land beneath our feet, but also to transform the system that is driving catastrophe. Millions of people are already doing this, she reminds us, and from this realization we can draw inspiration and hope in dark times.