Activities
Since its inception, Feasta's attitude has been that sustainability needs to be explored and promoted both by the public in general and by policy-makers in particular. So it has simultaneously taken a "bottom-up" and a "top-down" approach to its activities.
Bottom-up
Feasta is registered as an educational non-profit, and membership is open to all. According to its website, Feasta tries to operate in as democratic and non-hierarchical a way as possible. Activities have generally been initiated by individual members who were interested in pursuing specific projects. They have often been willing to start working on these projects with little or no funding, using Feasta for support and to make contact with other interested people, with funding only coming later. Feasta employs a Members' Agent, Morag Friel, whose job is to help members get in touch with one another, identify common interests and develop projects.
The Feasta website is interactive, with a forum section that includes discussions on broad topics such as energy, food and land, as well as ongoing projects such as Cap and Share. Members can also get in touch with one another via the website. Relevant papers and articles can be uploaded to the forum by members.
Feasta has hosted a large number of sustainability-related events which are open to the public. It has organised several major conferences, covering subjects such as Ireland's transition to renewable energy, the merits of introducing a land value tax, third-world debt and climate change, and the challenge of sustainable food production in a world of depleting fossil fuel. Since its founding it has held an annual lecture each year in Dublin. Past lecturers have included Herman Daly, David Korten, Marjorie Kelly and Wolfgang Sachs.
Feasta has also hosted numerous workshops, courses and discussions. It has frequently collaborated on events with other organisations such as the London-based New Economics Foundation, Jubilee Research, Cultivate Centre in Dublin, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, Trocaire and CORI (the Conference of Religious in Ireland).
Top-down
Since 1999, Feasta has made a series of submissions and reports to governmental bodies in Ireland and the UK on topics ranging from financial system reform to rural housing. It ran a series of seminars entitled "Converging Crises: Policy Responses" in the summer of 2008 that was also aimed at policymakers, although the general public were welcome to attend.
Feasta has received funding from the Irish Environmental Protection Agency for a number of projects, ongoing ones (as of late 2008) consisting of research into carbon sinks and cycles and "smart taxes". The Irish government is currently considering the adoption of Cap and Share, an approach to addressing climate change which was developed by Feasta, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport.
Read more about this topic: Foundation For The Economics Of Sustainability
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