Shrishtee Bajpai

Now, from the war-torn border regions of South Asia to the Amazon rainforest, people are questioning whether sustainability can ever be achieved through the framework of nation-states. They are turning to other ways of organising society based on Indigenous worldviews and practices that respect all humans and the rest of nature.

The Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA) was initiated in mid-2019 as a confluence of movements of radical transformation for collaboration, solidarity, and visioning from local to global levels.

Taken beyond the law, recognising the rights of nature opens up the possibility of articulating Indigenous worldviews of nature as a living being, even within formal institutions; and of creating a mutually flourishing future for humans and more-than-humans, where people’s lives are rooted in territories that do not have arbitrary militarised borders but are ecologically and culturally defined, open and connected.

Are we ready to constructively challenge each other, offer active solidarity to each other whenever needed, interweave the initiatives in common actions, and support the conditions for the radical systemic changes we need?

As we’ve seen, the few environmental movements that have succeeded in the long run are almost all built around certain ideas of the relationship between humans and certain spaces.

Diverse communities around the globe have been diving into their traditions and innovating to respond to ecological, economic, political and social crises (including the current COVID-generated one).