THE NEXT ECONOMY
be readily defined. Even Mathis Wackernagel who invented the ecological footprint, says today: “You can’t measure it!” (Wackernagel, 1996). Since he invented the concept, he probably knows better than anyone the difficulty of measuring ecological footprints. And he sees that it is all completely out of our control. The only possible way we can measure our ecological footprint is to analyze our past actions and deduce that something is fundamentally wrong. The reason that we have to have parks is that our system of stewarding our productive lands has generally, not been sustainable. It hasn’t worked! Therefore, we use parks as a desperate measure to set aside some areas with the hope of preserving biodiversity and providing examples of sustainability. This seems an unfortunate and desperate last measure. It would be a much better world if ALL of our natural landscapes were being stewarded sustainably. The rising of the Next Economy Let’s pursue further what these Next Economy leaders and thinkers are doing from an implementation perspective. They are making a U-Turn; going from an overdeveloped world with a global economy to an emphasis on the concept and application of “eco-local” economy. In Australia and New Zealand, there are strong localization movements. England is also advancing in many ways, as are many places in the United States. In the Ukraine, an “eco-village”, composed of a small nucleus of people, is starting to act in local economic ways. And the global slow food movement is another Next Economy example. Even in Aysén, by necessity, we see a form of the Next Economy, due to its location, local conditions, and social and political development, which dictate the identification and propulsion of forms of “local economies”. Very few of these local economies are totally self-sufficient, due to the necessity for trade and interchange. I believe that trade and interchange is a necessary trait to include in this world-wide movement. It cannot be 100% percent insular; although exceptionally, in Finland, we see a movement that is very insular. They refuse to trade outside of the country; excluding the concepts of “export and imports”, in their quest to achieve a complete, “national”, local economy. If you take the situation in Aysén, groups of people (small business like the Ricer Restaurant and organizations such as CODEFF (Corporation for the Defense of Flora and Fauna) or CODESA (A Private Corporation for Development of Aysén) are trying to make an insular Aysén, more self-sufficient, more locally minded and less dependent on centralized political control and impositions of an outside global economy (Segura, 2008). This is not easy; because, we do not have a community that is in total agreement with the idea. There are tensions within Aysén between those that want to build mega-dams for more development and those that don’t want them at all (Rodrigo, 2007). Similar divergence applies to many other issues that Aysén faces. While change cannot happen immediately, we are in the stream and flow of fundamental change.
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