Exploring the relationship between localisation and sustainability

Localisation is believed to occur where a country, region, community or townown and source their essential life requirements such as water, food, energy andhousing materials from renewable resources locally, minimise importedresource dependence and prioritise social and environmental health, localownership and governance participation. It is believed that localisation may beglobally adopted to regain sustainability, allowing healthy, globally diversecommunities and cultures to flourish. Localisation would involve (particularlyfor high income countries) more constrained (localised) production andconsumption, entailing minimisation of the redistribution of resources and cheaplabour from low to high-income countries. This redistribution historicallyoccurred through colonisation, and is more recently occurring throughglobalisation involving international trade and 'development' programs. Aparadigm shift away from the currently dominant force of globalisation towardlocalisation would require high-income countries to prioritise social andenvironmental health by locally providing their own resource needs, and todecrease their reliance upon international trade.Within the context of the need for sustainability strategies that can facilitate aparadigm shift away from unsustainable and dominant globalisation, and bydeveloping a way to measure localisation, this research correlates localisationand sustainability at national and global levels, and provides qualitativeinterview analysis from top sustainability scoring places. A modified version ofthe Bhutanese Gross National Happiness Index was developed and utilised toidentify top sustainability scoring Bhutanese districts, and interviewing wascarried in these places to explore whether localisation is relevant tosustainability planning and implementation there. The interview resultsimportantly contribute to final recommendations regarding the potential forlocalisation to provide successful planning and implementation strategies toachieve the required paradigm shift toward sustainability.