This September edition of the Eco-Instigator comes at a time when ecological, social, and political crises continue to deepen across the world. From climate disruptions, including deadly floods and landslides in parts of Asia and extreme heat, drought and wildfires across Europe, to extractive expansion, food insecurity and growing inequality, the systems that sacrifice people and nature at the altar of profit continue to shape our realities. Yet, across communities and movements, resistance is growing, and so are the alternatives.
This edition reflects on some of these struggles, alternatives and possibilities, beginning with the Nigeria Socio-Ecological Alternatives Convergence (NSAC), where participants examined the growing push for critical minerals, deforestation and mining, with a focus on their impacts on human security.
The conversations at NSAC raised an urgent question for Nigeria: will critical minerals replicate the destructive extractivist pathways of fossil fuels, or can the country choose a pathway centred on ecological protection, community rights, and justice? Similarly, this edition reports from the West Africa Climate Justice Movement Convening (WACMO), which brought together socioecological activists across the region to share struggles and insights around climate change, during which they stressed the need to build solidarity for a people-centred regional climate justice movement.
Food sovereignty is another key focus of this edition. Reports from our agroecology trainings and GMO campaigns where we provided practical farmer training on biosafety and seed sovereignty are included here. Insights from these engagements affirm that resilient food systems are possible when farmers, indigenous knowledge, biodiversity, and community control remain at the centre of the food system. They also challenge growing dependence on corporate-controlled seeds and agricultural inputs.
We also feature the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA) Declaration, which affirms that alternatives to extractive and exploitative systems are already being created by communities around the world. These experiences offer possibilities for building economies and societies grounded in care, solidarity, ecological balance, and collective wellbeing.
Through Hope Is a Word, we encounter another language of resistance. Set within the oil-scarred Niger Delta, the documentary shows how poetry, music, memory, and storytelling are enabling a new generation to carry forward the region’s long tradition of environmental resistance.
This documentary illustrates that movements are sustained not only through political action, but also through creativity and the courage to tell our stories.
The recent World Social Forum, which is discussed in this edition, further reinforces the importance of connecting struggles across borders and building collective responses to the crises of our time.
This exciting edition of the Eco-Instigator brings together these intersecting stories of resistance, food sovereignty, climate justice, creativity, solidarity, and alternatives. As we continue to confront systems that threaten people and planet, we remain committed to documenting the struggles and possibilities that point towards a more just and sustainable future.
We invite you to read, reflect, and continue building with us. The movement grows because you are part of it.
It’s always a delight to hear and read from you. We never stop looking forward to receiving your feedback, stories, articles, poems, or photos.
Continue to share with us at editor@homef.org.
Until Victory!
Read the issue here.