Helena Norberg-Hodge

Helena is the director of Local Futures, is a linguist, author and filmmaker. With decades of experience in indigenous cultures, she has been promoting re-indigenisation or localisation while raising awareness about the disastrous impact of the global consumer culture.

Helena is author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures which, together with a film of the same title, has been translated into more than 40 languages, and sold half a million copies. Other books include Local is Our Future: Steps to an Economics of Happiness, Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness and From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture, as well as a Local Food Toolkit, which won a prestigious UK award for investigative journalism.

Helena is the producer of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness, which has been described by the media-activism site Films for Action as “truly one of the most important and useful films for inspiring change that has been made in a generation”. Her other films include Closer to Home: Hope in a time of crisis, and Planet Local: A Quiet Revolution.

She is the founder of the International Alliance for Localisation, and a cofounder of the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Ecovillage Network.

Helena’s 50 years of activism has gained her the Alternative Nobel prize, the Arthur Morgan Award and the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.”