La Huella Verde

0:16 What is your name and what relationship do you have to the field of economics?

0:32 You are an economist, a university professor, and a contributor to the Landscape Unit of the Council of Europe and Vicepresident of Asociación Aperos de ayer, in which you coordinate the Center for Interpretation of Rural Life. How did you get into ecological economics?

1:30 What is ecological economics?

2:33 You’re a university professor, and you work in an economics department. Which economic model is taught at the university, and why that model?

5:23 You are part of a cooperative, and you coordinate the Huella Verde collective. Would you say that this project is structured around the possibility of ecological production for ecological consumption?

7:02 How do you measure profitability, or how would you define profitability in the economic context of ecological production and consumption?

8:36 Essayist and poet Jorge Riechmann (also an ecologist, like you) writes that democracy is not compatible with capitalism. What would you say?

10:02 In the 2015 edition of Revista Papeles you published an essay titled “Teaching in the Landscape, Rural Culture, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge” [“Educar en el paisaje en la cultura rural y en el conocimiento ecológico tradicional.”] This text emphasizes the importance of this type of education amidst a predominantly urban model of society. According to this essay, it seems that these days the term “rural” is most often understood in opposition to the category of “urban,” and not as another possible form of life and relation with the environment and its inhabitants. Can you explain to us how you understand rural existence from your work?

11:50 How is this rural culture linked to the commons and the idea of communal property?

14:17 We often hear of a connection between rural areas and the practice of communal labor. Is that an exclusive relationship?

15:56 Within the capitalist archetype, urban areas are often depicted as superior to rural areas. Where does this hierarchy come from and who does it benefit?

18:16 From your point of view, why is it important to recover rural culture?

19:49 Someone might think that the exploitation of the earth utilizing new technologies should also be a part of what might be called a culture of the new rurality. What are your thoughts on this association?

21:21 You often talk about the importance of educating ourselves in the landscape. Can you explain to us what this means exactly?

23:24 Where is it possible to get a landscape education?

24:40 Is it possible to have the theory of ecological economics and the defense of rural culture and landscape education come together in practice?

26:20 Can you explain to us what La Huella Verde is and what activities are developed in this space?

28:50 Is La Huella Verde involved with other consumption cooperatives in the area?

31:03 Are cooperatives committed to local production and consumption an alternative to the capitalist economic model of production and consumption?

34:25 What factors explain the process of depopulation in rural Castille?

36:49 Why does the government seem uninterested in investing in public assistance to repopulate rural areas?

40:00 Based on what you’ve been explaining, it would seem that the government is not investing public assistance in models of sustainable and ecological production and consumption. What are public funds destined for agriculture being invested in then?

45:08 At the present moment, the policy of degrowth is being proposed as one of the possible ways to tackle the problem of the destruction of life on the planet. What is your opinion of this proposal as an economist?

47:24 What encourages these 500 families in the city of Valladolid to be active members of the Huella Verde cooperative?

50:03 Is the Huella Verde cooperative a space populated by a diversity of people from different social classes?

55:39 At the Constellation of the Commons we are working on a proactive and exciting collective imagination that encourages citizen participation and co-responsibility in approaching eco-social, polyethical, and economic transformations. How do you imagine, politically speaking, a society organized around the idea of the commons?

57:24 At the Constellation of the Commons we understand that the transition towards this other model of life not only depends on an intervention in the political, legal, and economic spheres, but that it also requires a transition or a shift in the cultural paradigm that depends, in turn, on changes in the education of citizens. Do you agree with us in this assessment?