Colin Hines

Colin Hines "is most well-known for his work in propagating the idea of Localisation as a response to the destructive social and environmental consequences of globalisation. His book Localisation: A Global Manifesto (Earthscan, 2000) develops this theme. Localization would ensure that all goods, finance and services that can reasonably be provided locally should be. Depending on the context, the ‘local’ is predominantly defined as part of the nation state, although it can be the nation state itself or occasionally a regional grouping of nation states.

"Colin was Co-ordinator of Greenpeace International's Economics Unit and has worked in the environmental movement for over 30 years on the issues of population, food, new technology and unemployment, nuclear proliferation. Most recently he has focussed on the adverse environmental and social effects of international trade and the need to solve these problems by replacing globalisation with localization. He has advised and written reports with Green MEP Caroline Lucas and is an Associate of the International Forum on Globalisation, a San Francisco based alliance of activists, academics and economists committed to challenging the adverse effects of globalisation and free trade and in the process to develop alternatives.

"Colin is a co-director of Finance for the Future, an entity set up to encourage investments in local authority bonds to reduce fossil fuel use. He bought together a group of finance, tax, energy and environmental experts to form the Green New Deal Group. In July 2008 they published a report ‘A Green New Deal: joined up policies to solve the triple crunch of the credit crisis, climate change and high oil prices’. He helped form Localise West Midlands which is attempting to put localisation into practise on the ground, with particular emphasis on Local Authority bonds as a local funding source.

"A critique that Colin Hines wrote in 2002 of Oxfam's 'Jekyll and Hyde' approach to world trade and how this would harm the poor is available in full here. Colin has also produced many reports with Caroline Lucas MEP. You can find a list of these on this page."