The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) refers to the ‘products of the mind: inventions, literaray and artistic works, any symbols, names, images and designes used in commerce’ as intellectual property. This type of property is protected in law by processes such as patents, copyright and trademarks.
We often hear rhetoric about the need to create more food and manipulate plants and animals genetically to meet this demand, however we are overlooking one vital fact: we overproduce food and waste a terrible amount of the food that is produced. This is why groups like Foodsharing Edinburgh are so important.
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Over the last two film and curry nights at Serenity Cafe in Edinburgh, we have been watching the film The Corporation. Originally it started as a book by Professor Joel Bakan, who teaches law at the University of British Columbia. He examines the social, economic, and political dimensions of law winning a number of awards for his scholarship and teaching as well as having worked on landmark legal cases and government policy.
This is a podcast of Polly Jones talking about the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership at University of Manchester Policy Week 2014. The World Development Movement changed it’s name to Global Justice Now, and are an organisation which fights for democratic social justice which works as part of a global movement to challenge the powerful to create a more just and equal world. They mobilise people in the UK for change, and act in solidarity with those fighting injustice, particularly in the global south. Read more…
Here David Brown, Waste Development David Officer for Derbyshire County Council, gives a talk about International waste management; the crises and opportunities which are presented to us. In an age of neo-magical thinking, the culture which has developed is wasteful – that is, we imagine things both have no cost to the environment, and that our waste just magically disappears when it is out of sight. This is the major crises of our time as we are discovering in quick and powerful terms that the planets resources (of which the ecosystems which keep us alive are included) are finite.
This is an interview with Eleanor Cunningham who opened the Edinburgh Larder in 2009. In search for sustainable and ethical businesses, coming across Edinburgh Larder was a surprise. Combining locally collected and seasonal produce in recipes which reflect the flavours and tastes of Scotland, she has demonstrated that highly successful business is viable through sustainable practices. Read more…
We are living in an age where increasingly the lifeworld we inherently own and share are becoming colonized with the values of the marketplace. In short, everything is being bought and sold from under our feet and out of our lives. This is a distinct and troubling trend where the idea of economic growth is metastasizing into a financialism which consumes everything in its wake.