“GDP as an indicator of progress is outrageous”: Helena Norberg-Hodge on localising melbourne
Ahead of her workshop with Regen Melbourne on April 1st, we caught up with world-renowned localisation expert Helena Norberg-Hodge to discuss what localisation looks like in 2025, and how each of us can work to make it a reality.
Helena Norberg-Hodge has dedicated her life to rebuilding connections. As founder of international not-for-profit Local Futures, she’s helped reimagine the status quo, advocating for ecological and social renewal, thriving local food systems and strengthened communities via a decentralised economy.
Helena’s journey began in 1974. Visiting the Himalayan region of Ladakh, she found a dynamic and flourishing community untouched by the global economy. Until it wasn’t. Her first book, Ancient Futures (1991), captures Ladkah’s transformation following the arrival of international tourism, detailing how pressures for economic growth broke down social and environmental cohesion. It would act as a blueprint for her life’s work, offering lessons on the relationship between traditional cultures and modernity and tending a reevaluation of what constitutes true progress.
Four decades on, Helena remains at the forefront of the global push for a return to localisation.
Sarah Smith: How do you describe localisation in 2025?
Helena Norberg-Hodge: I describe it as “re-indigenisation”, because my awakening to this came from an experience in an Indigenous culture. This means, it's fundamentally both about rebuilding our deeper connections to others but also to nature – to everything that lives: the plants, the animals, the air, the water. So it's about connection, to people and to nature.
Sarah: Localisation offers an alternative to the globalised economy. How is the current system failing our communities most?
Helena: The tragic and frightening impact of the dominant global economy is that it is dividing us further and further from one another. It's breaking down the family fabric, and that's been happening progressively. And now, because it's pressuring us all the time to move into bigger cities where the space shrinks, we're also putting so much stress on the nuclear family, and so the family fabric is breaking down.
“[Localisation] is global, because everywhere in the world where people have tasted the dangers, the emptiness and the illness that comes from the alienation the current system causes, are waking up.”
It's very clear to see around the world where this economic system has the most impact. We're desperately fragmented, and that now is also leading to technologies pushing us so hard, both in time, but also through algorithms, creating divisiveness and hatred and anger.
This division between people is also ultimately division from ourselves. We're losing a sense of who we are, the meaning in life and faith in life, and that's also now creating an epidemic of depression. At the same time, it's cutting us off further from the living world. And as we become more distant, we inadvertently destroy that living world – it's fading behind numbers and abstractions.
Sarah: How does a grassroots movement like localisation compete and maintain strength against an entrenched global system?
Helena: It's important for people to see that it’s not just the “other side” that is working, that this localisation movement, which is taking us back to nature and back to one another, is also growing – and it's huge. It's global, because everywhere in the world where people have tasted the dangers, the emptiness and the illness that comes from the alienation the current system causes, are waking up. So there is a way and people are coming back. It's very much about reclaiming our humanity, reclaiming our hearts, reclaiming who we really are.
Sarah: Why is the food economy such a powerful example of the benefits of localisation in action?
Helena: There are so many inspiring examples of localisation in action, but the global food economy and localised food economies are the clearest examples. The global one is responsible for cancer, for an epidemic of obesity, neurological illnesses, mountains of plastic and growing pollution. On the other side, the localised food systems, in a very short time, transform the land to be vastly more productive than the big monocultures. This allows us to heal the land, while we heal people, and produce more than we ever can on the large market. So in terms of localising the food economy, we're talking about truly win, win, win. But all the time it's being squashed by government policies that support a corporate machine, and so that's why we have to be aware of both sides.
Sarah: The balance of power seems overwhelmingly stacked towards the status quo – who holds the most power in this equation? And how do we overcome that power imbalance?
Helena: No matter who they are, the majority of people have just bought into the idea that free trade is necessary to grow the economy. They believe that GDP can still function as an indicator of progress, which is absolutely outrageous.
“This is about our health, our happiness, and our well being. So, we are up against the power of a system that's destructive, but ultimately it can't actually function without us, and so without a doubt, we are and have the power.”
So, the key is to connect the current work of hundreds of millions of activists to the failures of GDP. This means that whether someone is focusing on climate, depression, gender or health issues, they need to see how all the crises are linked by this one overarching issue. Such understanding would mean that we could all still focus on our own individual issues, but with the united message that demands policy change in the economic realm. That would mean regulating big business, rather than deregulating; taxing them rather than subsidising them. And it would mean taking a serious look at regulations at the local level, to deregulate a lot of the areas that work against genuine ecological and socially beneficial changes.
Sarah: How do you measure and maintain faith in the progress of the local economies movement in the current political environment?
Helena: I'm nourished every day by getting more information about things that are moving in the other direction, and above all, by the knowledge that most people don't want this. Not even the people who are pushing the destruction want this. These initiatives require a lot of volunteerism and a lot of grit and toil, and that's heartwarming when you realise how much of that is still going on, even though people are so stretched. This is about our health, our happiness, and our well being. So, we are up against the power of a system that's destructive, but ultimately it can't actually function without us, and so without a doubt, we are and have the power.
Sarah: What kinds of skills and knowledge do you strive to share with Melburnians? What are the actionable messages you hope to leave people with when you hold a workshop?
Helena: We like to lead people with five words: reconnection, rethinking, resist, renew and rejoice. With reconnection, my first recommendation is to find some friends, colleagues, or family members so you can start talking and thinking together about what action you can take and how you need to connect to one another and nature to start healing.
Then the rethinking is fundamental to that reconnection. It means taking a bit of time to find and share films, articles, information and to start waking up to another way of viewing things. Process and discuss ideas together, and then choose which direction you should take. In this process we then recommend that you're willing to both resist and renew. Resist meaning: not to be afraid to say “no”, to understand that in rejecting corporate expansion, you are not just some kind of blind, angry activist. Very important in all of this is kindness, kindness to ourselves, kindness to others, kindness to those horrible corporations. So it's clarity, it's being firm and strong, but not angry, not hateful. Renewing!
And then we must rejoice. As we wake up more and start appreciating life itself, the wealth of life, the beauty of life, the magic of life, and the beauty of being more deeply connected to life and to nature.
Want to learn more about how our communities can be strengthened by local economies? Join Helena Norberg-Hodge for a workshop “Thriving Local: Building Resilient Economies Together” on Tuesday, 1st April 11am – 1pm.
*This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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