Helena Norberg-Hodge is founder and director of Local Futures/International Society for Ecology and Culture and producer and co-director of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness. She is an analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures and agriculture worldwide, a pioneer of the localisation movement, and the articulator of the core ideas of Counter-development. Based in the US and UK, with subsidiaries in Sweden, Germany, Australia, and Ladakh, Local Futures’ mission is to examine the root causes of our social and environmental crises, while promoting more sustainable and equitable patterns of living in both North and South. She is the author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, based on her first-hand experience of the effects of conventional development in Ladakh.