I went to a very interesting meeting at the New Economics Foundation recently to discuss thriving communities. The strongest message that I took away was the need to empower individuals and communities to become economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. I met some really amazing people working in social care services, schools, regeneration trusts, councils, think tanks and other charities, who were all finding practical ways to do just this. Read on for a few reflections and links.

I'm involved with a number of political and practical initiatives, both as part of my job and through volunteer positions.

No matter how many local/national government initiatives get launched, no matter how many companies move from PR about their supposed ethics to genuinely addressing their own business, we will still consume too many resources, emit too large a quantity of greenhouse gases, suffer too much economic inequality, be unhappy and unhealthy, act as relatively passive consumers ... unless a much wider portion of the population are empowered to sustain themselves.

This means more localised power, and communities having the resources and skills to start developing their own solutions. The wonderful Marsh Farm Outreach team on the housing estate in Luton are using a converted warehouse and masses of participatory effort to help locals develop a range of social enterprises. They're working with their neighbours in a very deprived area, people who are usually subjected to endless consultants with little appropriate help to build their local economy with their own skills. Inward investment is quite different from genuine economic renewal! Best of all, they are serving Fairtrade tea at a very cheap price, showing how local and international economic justice issues can be linked.

Efforts such as these are changing government rhetoric, although as usual this has infused cutting-edge policy without reaching those who do on the ground work. Official experiments with participatory budgeting remain tokenistic, and groups such as Marsh Farm Outreach are resisted by local governments one they start to seriously challenge established power.

I also spoke to Ian Hutchcroft, Sustainable Prosperity Manager for Devon County Council. He has faced up to the fact that the Council lack the capacity to transform the entire county in time to effectively tackle climate change. To give one example, in the past 7 years they have helped about 700 businesses become more resource efficient, but to achieve 32% cuts in CO2 emissions by 2030 they would need to work with 18,000 businesses - clearly beyond their reach! Devon are now working on innovative ways of giving their citizens the tools, skills and access to finance that they will need to start developing these solutions themselves.

For Greens, and any other activists concerned with economic and social justice, this probably sounds familiar. Standard politics won't ever break us out of the cycle of unsustainable consumption, leading to small improvements in equality and little or no improvement in life quality. We need to be radical in focusing on empowerment, including access to finance, as much as centralised initiatives and individual solutions.