Living Well

Living Well

By Dr Arvind Kumar

The notion of living well should not be construed in terms of leading a luxurious and cosy life. It means redesigning urban and non-urban living environments, the restitution of the local, regional and national communal goods, and a quick transition toward renewable energy at a small scale, that must be oriented to the locality and owned by the local community, without hampering the natural balance, and including wind, solar, small scale hydro and wave and local biofuels, not global agrofuels. It also means reallocating the massive funds destined for war in order to heal Mother Earth.

Living Well should aim at promoting an orderly reconstruction of the rural areas and the revitalization of communities by way of agrarian reform, education and application of eco-agricultural microfarming methods, based on native cultural and communal practices, the wealth of communities, fertile land, clean water and air. All of these approaches are in preparation for the inevitable de-industrialization of agriculture as cheap energy supply declines.

Within the framework of Living Well, what matters the most is not the individual, but the community, where all the families live together.

Unbalanced development has culminated in the crisis of nature and the severe effects of climate change. The exaggerated industrialization of some countries, addicted consumerism and irresponsible exploitation of human and natural resources have resulted in ecological imbalance.