NẾP MỚI · RECAP: Local Futures: Globalization and the Path to Rebuilding Local Economies

Note: text in brackets [ … ] is data cross-checked and added by the editorial team; all other text follows the speaker's words.

Part 1 — The dominant economic paradigm

Local Futures is advancing localization and the rebuilding of local economies. This is how we critique and question the current economic system and globalization. This is the economic paradigm dominating the world today, built on infinite growth, colonialism, industrialization, the push for exports, and ever-more production.

We critique this system because it is the root cause of most of today's crises — environmental, economic, and social. Below are the costs humanity is paying to keep this system running: a system focused solely on growth and driven by multinational corporations.

Globalization took off around 1990, when many governments pushed international trade, FDI, export-oriented production, and removed restrictions on the use of capital (i.e., the ability of corporations to invest and trade globally). Looking at the chart, you can see the rapid rise in exports. [Cross-check: world trade as a share of GDP rose from around 20% in the mid-1990s to over 50% today.]^[1]

One key mechanism that enabled this is the FTA (free trade agreement). From the 1980s onward, a great many FTAs were signed. Almost every country takes part in them, from India to Mexico… [Cross-check: the number of regional trade agreements in force has grown roughly six-fold, from under 50 in 1990 to nearly 300 today; every WTO member belongs to at least one.]^[2]

Through these FTAs, multinational corporations can easily penetrate national economies and invest; in essence it lets these corporations seek out places with lower labor standards and costs, then relocate there.

This process generates many impacts on the planet:

• Rising inequality (see chart). In the US, most wealth is owned by a few people — billionaires — while the majority of the population controls an ever-smaller share of global resources. This trend occurs not only within countries but also between them. Whether you look at the UK, India, or Brazil… they all show the same pattern. [Cross-check: the richest 1% now own about 43% of global financial assets, and hold more wealth than 95% of the rest of humanity combined.]^[3]
• Media control. In 1983 there were far more media outlets; now only about 6 large corporations control the media in the US. [Cross-check: in 1983 around 50 corporations controlled most of the information reaching Americans; today it is about 5–6.]^[4] This is a hallmark of globalization: the concentration of power and ownership across every sector — from retail to media and the press.
• Rising housing prices. In developed countries like the US and the UK, it is increasingly hard for young people to buy a home. [Cross-check: in the UK, a first-time-buyer home now costs about 5.9 times annual income, versus 3–4 times in the past; homeownership among 20–34-year-olds has fallen sharply over two decades.]^[5]
• The food system. It is increasingly clear that the food we eat is controlled by a handful of corporations. As a result, much of our food is produced industrially, processed or ultra-processed — things that are very unhealthy. [Cross-check: ultra-processed food now makes up about 60% of dietary energy in the US and ~57% in the UK, and is rising fast in middle-income countries.]^[6]
• This also pushes many communities and individuals to change their diets, shifting from local, traditional dishes to processed, packaged foods. That in turn leads to consequences and illnesses tied to consuming these industrial products — especially diabetes and obesity, since products like Coca-Cola contain a great deal of sugar. When Vietnam opened up to FDI, soft-drink consumption rose significantly; accordingly, the diabetes rate rose as well, with a global increase of 200%. This is a visible consequence of the global food system. [Cross-check: about 589 million adults worldwide now live with diabetes — 1 in 9 — and the number has kept rising since the turn of the millennium. In Vietnam, diabetes prevalence in 2016–2020 was about 3 times that of the early 2000s; soft-drink consumption rose ~420%, from 1.59 billion liters (2009) to 6.67 billion liters (2023).]^[7][8]
• On top of that, more and more large and small retail outlets — branches of various big corporations — appear, directly driving up the consumption of industrial products in general.
  
  • Greenhouse gas emissions have also risen rapidly as globalization unfolds. The more global trade there is, the more goods and products move around the world — and that consumes enormous amounts of energy. [Cross-check: emissions embodied in internationally traded goods rose from 4.3 Gt CO₂ (1990) to 7.8 Gt (2008), and now account for roughly 1/5 to 1/4 of total global CO₂ emissions.]^[9]
  • Rising pesticide use. There has also been an increase in pesticide use in agriculture — itself part of the global food system, as farming is designed for industrial-scale, monoculture, high-yield production to serve global trade. [Cross-check: global pesticide use has doubled since 1990, reaching ~3.7 million tonnes of active ingredients in 2022.]^[10]
• Mental health. Mental-health problems are rising: more depression, crisis, stress, and burnout — stress, burnout, anxiety, depression — and they are becoming a global crisis. [Cross-check: over 1 billion people worldwide live with mental-health disorders; in the first year of the pandemic alone, global anxiety and depression rose by 25%.]^[11]
• Environment and plastic waste. One of the biggest issues today is the surge in production by oil companies — making too many products also creates too much waste. We now see this trend everywhere. Single-use plastic has become a common habit. The consequences are now everywhere: oceans full of trash, and microplastics already in our bodies. This is also closely tied to the global food system, since junk food is packaged in single-use plastic and nylon. [Cross-check: global plastic production rose from ~2 million tonnes/year (1950s) to over 460 million tonnes/year; microplastics have been found in the human body itself.]^[12]
• Biodiversity. Ecologically, the loss of biodiversity is happening everywhere. [Cross-check: according to WWF's 2024 Living Planet Report, the average size of monitored wildlife populations declined 73% in just 50 years (1970–2020).]^[13]

The above is an overview of the trends that have unfolded as consequences of more than 30 years of accelerating globalization.

Part 2 — Growth, pollution, and neocolonialism

As the global economy grows ever faster, Vietnam has also become one of the fastest-growing economies in recent years — around 8%, and aiming for 10%/year soon. [Cross-check: Vietnam reached 8.02% GDP growth in 2025 and has set a target of at least 10% for 2026.]^[14] One of the drivers of that growth is the export of machinery, components, textiles, chemicals… Recently I also saw Hanoi listed among the most air-polluted places in the world — many causes are directly tied to the factories producing the goods above, and food for the world. [Cross-check: Hanoi has repeatedly ranked among the world's most polluted cities; average PM2.5 in 2024 was about 9 times the WHO recommended limit.]^[15] So one could say much of Hanoi's pollution actually belongs in part to consumers in the US and Europe — the people who buy those products.

People often say the US or Europe has clean air; that's understandable, because much of the air pollution has been exported to other countries through the food chain — consumption in those countries causes pollution in others. This phenomenon is called pollution offshoring or environmental load displacement.^[16]

More than 40% of global resource extraction is linked to global trade. Mining to produce electronic components and other goods mainly serves trade — making money and serving other countries — rather than local needs. [Cross-check: for metals, much extraction is tied to exports — for example, ~62% of iron ore and ~64% of bauxite mined are associated with trade.]^[16]

We view this as neocolonialism. Traditional colonialism was European nations invading and extracting resources, land, and labor from colonies in the Global South. Yet this continues today, even though colonialism formally ended long ago — now through the globalized economy.

Some 200 million full-time workers serve exports in China and India — solely to serve consumption in the US; and 70 million migrant workers are mobilized for that purpose. As a result, the US and Europe are in fact far larger than their territory. Consumption rates there are also among the highest in the world. This is unjust and unsustainable. [Note: the figures of 200 million / 70 million workers are as shared by the speaker; the editorial team could not find an independent public source to verify them precisely, so they are kept as stated and flagged for Members' careful reference.]

The forces driving the system

At Local Futures, we are trying to understand what is happening, why, and what the driving forces are. As shared earlier, one part is through FTAs. Another mechanism is subsidies — for the fuel (oil) industry. A subsidy is how a government promotes or supports the sectors it wants; in other words, whatever the government wants, it funds with money.

Around the world, the oil industry is funded by governments to the tune of up to 13 million dollars per minute (this is the 2023 figure; it may be higher now). [Cross-check: according to the IMF, fossil-fuel subsidies in 2022 hit a record ~$7 trillion — equivalent to ~$13 million per minute.]^[17] In addition, industrial agriculture is subsidized by billions of dollars. People often say local, organic food is expensive — but that's because the global food system is subsidized, so it is “artificially cheaper.” For example, when you buy Coca-Cola, the price is subsidized; or the one paying for the consequences is society at large, including the cost of treating related illnesses. So the purchase price is cheap, but the social cost is enormous.

Hundreds of FTAs and bilateral trade agreements have been signed — between countries, between multinational corporations and countries, and at the global level. The more countries sign them (from India–Australia to India–Vietnam…), the more we are essentially giving multinational corporations greater freedom to do business with fewer restrictions.

Global trade in corporate hands

80% of trade activity is international trade. [Cross-check: according to UNCTAD, about 80% of world trade takes place within value chains tied to multinational corporations.]^[18] Trade happens through supply chains operated by many companies whose sole aim is to make money, with a mindset of infinite growth — while we have only one Earth and cannot keep growing forever.

And it must be said that global trade is controlled by multinational corporations, and it generates about 1/5 of total global greenhouse gas emissions, directly driving climate change. [Cross-check: studies on trade-embodied emissions estimate that roughly 1/5 to 1/4 of global CO₂ emissions are embodied in traded goods.]^[20]

An image shows that the number of cargo ships on the oceans has risen 300% over the past 20 years. [Cross-check: seaborne trade volume has more than tripled since 1990 — from ~4 to nearly 13 billion tonnes of cargo in 2024.]^[19]

Import dependence and the fragility of the system

Finally, global trade makes countries dependent on imports. Many countries therefore want to produce only for global trade and money, rather than to meet the real needs of their land or nation. This erodes food, water, and energy security whenever volatility strikes.

Covid was an event that proved the unsustainability of this globalized system — and many came to understand that we cannot fully depend on it. Similar disruption and instability recur when war in West Asia (the Middle East) blocks and chokes the flow of oil. When oil isn't transported, the food system is directly affected — especially in countries deeply tied to industrialized agricultural chains, an agriculture heavily dependent on industrially produced chemical fertilizers, which are made from natural gas. These very inputs are restricted when Iran threatens to close the Strait of Hormuz. Countries are therefore now facing shortages of chemical fertilizers, threatening food security and creating the risk of hunger.

And so, once again, we are experiencing an economy in turmoil much like during Covid. That is why building a local, resilient economy — an alternative economy — is essential.

Part 3 — Localization: the alternative path

Localization means reducing dependence on export markets and instead promoting production for local needs. At the same time, it strengthens local ownership and local control over the economy. This means that economic decisions affecting communities and stakeholders must give those affected a voice, ownership, and a role in deciding — rather than being shaped and controlled by corporations.

We usually think globalization increases responsibility and accountability, but in reality it's the opposite. Many people care only about consumption, while remaining completely unaware of the impacts that producing those goods creates — on local communities, culture, and ecology — simply because those impacts happen in another country.

Localization brings costs and benefits close together; at the same time, that economy must adapt to local ecological, cultural, and social realities, and protect cultural and ecological diversity.

So what is NOT localization?

1. It is not isolationism. Localization does not forbid trade between countries. Fundamentally, exchange and cooperation are necessary — like the way communities in Vietnam connect with international ones.
2. Not everywhere has to be fully self-sufficient. Of course, being self-sufficient where possible is great; but Local Futures avoids the extreme. If there are things a locality cannot produce itself, trade and exchange are perfectly normal — but that trade must be fair, equitable, and ethical, meaning conscious of its impacts and oriented toward real needs.

Localization is also a multifaceted initiative for addressing today's problems. It produces clear benefits: reducing inequality and reconnecting people with the environment (this matters especially now, as we are disconnected from land, ecology, and local community; the loneliness driven by globalization is amplified by technologies like e-commerce, where we can order online anytime). Localization is a plausible answer to today's crises: it encourages meeting face to face and connecting with the local ecosystem; it increases transparency, responsibility, and accountability; and it promotes community wellbeing and production grounded in ecological limits and regenerative principles.

Movements and initiatives heading the same way

Many movements and initiatives have been created, set up, and run. Broadly speaking, they too can be grouped under the localization movement. “Localization” is just one name — different organizations and communities call it different things:

• Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) — a network promoting a wellbeing economy rather than a competitive, growth-obsessed one. They ask fundamental questions: what is the economy, and is its purpose growth or the happiness of people and ecology? What do we need to do to achieve sustainable wellbeing? [Cross-check: WEAll is an alliance of organizations, movements, and individuals working toward an economy that serves human and ecological wellbeing, formed in 2018.]^[22]
• Buen Vivir (in South America) — a philosophy of wellbeing from Indigenous communities, grounded in living in harmony with nature and people, offering an alternative vision for the future. [Cross-check: Buen Vivir is a translation of “sumak kawsay” from the Quechua peoples of the Andes; it was written into the constitutions of Ecuador (2008) and Bolivia (2009).]^[23]

Looking at the image, you can see localization happening across nearly every sector: media, food, Indigenous knowledge, banking, energy, health, business… The aim of these initiatives is not to make money but to create wellbeing for the community, meet its needs, and ensure social and ecological justice.

Another form is the solidarity economy — an economy based on care and values. The solidarity economy encompasses many things, especially thinking about the commons and protecting them together — for example clean air, ecosystems, organic food — and taking them out of the market economy. This economy focuses on needs and life's essentials; it also tells a story that we can live happily without much money. In a capitalist economy, you struggle if you don't have a lot of money.

There are also many other initiatives: Cooperatives, Food Policy Councils, the Deccan Development Society, Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence), and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives.

Resources & events

• Local Futures action guide: actionguide.localfutures.org
• World Localization Day. Local Futures organizes this celebration; you can join the online gathering on June 21, or host your own local activities: film screenings and discussions on localization, community meals, farm visits to understand where food comes from… all of this is localization. [Cross-check: World Localization Day is convened by Local Futures, held on June 21 and throughout June.]^[21]
• Learn more about similar initiatives: localfutures.org/programs/global-to-local/planet-local

Q&A

1. If localization relies largely on community-based development, how can we ensure consistent quality in areas like food and education?

In Local Futures' experience and research, communities usually set their own quality standards — and these are often even higher than the host country's national standards. For example, India has a system for assessing food quality, but it is always a standard meant for industrial food. Meanwhile, communities typically grow food for their own needs, so those general standards have little meaning in a local context: they usually cover packaging, preservatives, additives… things that simply don't exist in local food. Throughout history, communities have sustained themselves stably without national standards.

Of course, communities will also have quality-related issues, but these are handled and resolved within the community without general regulations. Personally, I don't believe we need no laws at all — we still need them, especially for large corporations. Because the general context is that countries tend to be lax with big corporations while being stricter with small local businesses.

2. How can conflicts within the community be effectively managed?

Conflict is normal in human social interaction. Even in very peaceful places like Ladakh, we still see conflict present as anywhere else — they have plenty of conflict, in fact. But they have their own conflict-mediation system, built and developed over hundreds of years of living together in villages. Though imperfect, it brings people together and resolves conflicts directly, face to face. Usually there are mediation councils to support such cases.

This is also where models like citizen assemblies or citizen democracy come into play, because they let conflict be handled in a healthy way rather than producing anger and division. Sometimes a conflict isn't resolved and remains within the community; but spaces for meeting create opportunities for participants to express themselves, and people tend to compromise more.

3. Localization sounds idealistic to me. Are there any bad parts of localization?

If people apply localization superficially, negativity will appear: they may think localization is everything, better than every other approach, even consider themselves superior to others. But if applied with a spirit of learning and humility, it becomes healthier. Otherwise it can turn into “ego localization.”

So we often remind one another that localization does not mean separation, and that we should avoid dualism — the kind where anything foreign is bad and only local is good. We need to promote international cooperation and understanding, bringing production and consumption closer to where we live, rather than depending on multinational corporations. For example, instead of consuming food industrially produced somewhere far away that we know nothing about, we can connect and build relationships with local farmers.

Localization is also not the kind the US is doing. For instance, with a right-wing government wanting to bring industrial production back to the US — many people confuse this with localization. Essentially, that kind of industrial development still just gives big corporations more power. So we must be careful about what kind of localization we practice, and in what spirit.

For example, sometimes there are shops run by locals — which is good, since they're small enough and belong to local people — but the products sold there aren't local; while sometimes a supermarket sells plenty of local products. Everything is in a process of transition. If we want a local economy owned by locals and produced locally, it will help create more jobs and keep more value in the locality. And when we consume products that aren't local, we need to be more conscious of how they were produced — for instance, when Alex drinks coffee, he prioritizes products that are organic, ecological, and fairly traded; otherwise it's easy to contribute to exploitation through consumption.

4. Do we have any measurement or evaluation to check whether localization implementation is effective?

Alex suggests looking at the work of Michael H. Shuman — an “alternative” economist who champions local economies. One of his contributions is measuring the benefits of localization: the flow of wealth within a locality through concrete indicators. He provides much evidence of the benefits and effectiveness of localization, and writes extensively on local currencies and local investing. [Cross-check: Shuman is associated with the “local multiplier effect” — money spent at local businesses circulates more times within the community, generating more income, wealth, and jobs, because local businesses spend more locally than large chains.]^[24]

On local investing: instead of investing in the stock market (which essentially hands money to large corporations), his argument is to use that money to boost the local economy.

References & data notes

The data in green brackets has been cross-checked against public sources (updated through June 2026). Each item below corresponds to a marker in the text.

• [1] Growth of trade / global GDP — Our World in Data — https://ourworldindata.org/trade-and-globalization
• [2] Number of FTAs / regional trade agreements — WTO — https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/ersd202503_e.pdf
• [3] Global wealth inequality — Inequality.org / Oxfam — https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/
• [4] Media concentration (50 → 5–6 corporations) — FAIR.org — https://fair.org/extra/the-50-26-20-corporations-that-own-our-media/
• [5] Housing prices & youth homeownership (UK) — IFS Briefing Note — https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/BN224.pdf
• [6] Ultra-processed food share of diet — World Obesity Federation — https://www.worldobesity.org/news/ultra-processed-foods-are-pushing-aside-all-other-food-groups-to-dominate-global-diets
• [7] Global diabetes (589 million, 1 in 9 adults) — IDF Diabetes Atlas 2024 — https://diabetesatlas.org/
• [8] Diabetes & soft drinks in Vietnam — WHO Vietnam / Vietnam News — https://www.who.int/vietnam/news/feature-stories/detail/the-growing-burden-of-diabetes-in-viet-nam
• [9] Emissions embodied in international trade — PNAS (Peters et al.) — https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1006388108
• [10] Pesticide use doubled since 1990 — FAO — https://www.fao.org/statistics/highlights-archive/highlights-detail/pesticides-use-and-trade-1990-2022/en
• [11] Global mental health (over 1 billion; +25%) — WHO — https://www.who.int/news/item/02-03-2022-covid-19-pandemic-triggers-25-increase-in-prevalence-of-anxiety-and-depression-worldwide
• [12] Plastic production & microplastics in the body — aggregated / OWID — https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/microplastics-in-ocean
• [13] 73% decline in wildlife populations — WWF Living Planet Report 2024 — https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/2024-living-planet-report/
• [14] Vietnam GDP growth (8% in 2025, 10% target) — Vietnam Briefing — https://www.vietnam-briefing.com/news/vietnam-economy-gdp-fdi-and-trade-2025.html/
• [15] Hanoi air pollution & PM2.5 — IQAir — https://www.iqair.com/newsroom/hanoi-among-top-10-most-polluted-cities-in-the-world-10-5-2025
• [16] Pollution offshoring / environmental load displacement & resource extraction tied to trade — Muradian, O'Connor & Martinez-Alier — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800901002816
• [17] Fossil-fuel subsidies (~$7 trillion / ~$13 million per minute, 2022) — IMF — https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion
• [18] 80% of trade within multinational value chains — UNCTAD — https://unctad.org/press-material/80-trade-takes-place-value-chains-linked-transnational-corporations-unctad-report
• [19] Growth of maritime trade (~3x since 1990) — UNCTAD — https://unctad.org/news/shipping-data-unctad-releases-new-seaborne-trade-statistics
• [20] ~1/5–1/4 of CO₂ emissions embodied in trade — embodied-carbon research — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9658327/
• [21] World Localization Day (June 21) — World Localization Day / Local Futures — https://worldlocalizationday.org/
• [22] Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) — https://weall.org/
• [23] Buen Vivir / sumak kawsay — The Conversation — https://theconversation.com/buen-vivir-south-americas-rethinking-of-the-future-we-want-44507
• [24] Michael H. Shuman & the local multiplier effect — https://michaelhshuman.com/about/

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