Issued after the second in-person Assembly of the Global TapestryThe weaving of networks of Alternatives of AlternativesAre activities and initiatives, concepts, worldviews, or action proposals by collectives, groups, organizations, communities, or social movements challenging and replacing the dominant system that perpetuates inequality, exploitation, and unsustainabiity. In the GTA we focus primarily on what we call "radical or transformative alternatives", which we define as initiatives that are attempting to break with the dominant system and take paths towards direct and radical forms of political and economic democracy, localised self-reliance, social justice and equity, cultural and knowledge diversity, and ecological resilience. Their locus is neither the State nor the capitalist economy. They are advancing in the process of dismantling most forms of hierarchies, assuming the principles of sufficiency, autonomy, non-violence, justice and equality, solidarity, and the caring of life and the Earth. They do this in an integral way, not limited to a single aspect of life. Although such initiatives may have some kind of link with capitalist markets and the State, they prioritize their autonomy to avoid significant dependency on them and tend to reduce, as much as possible, any relationship with them. held in Bandung, Indonesia, 11-17 April 2026
To the peoples of the world and to those struggling against any and all forms of oppression and injustices. To all of life, including all non-human species. To the nation-state governments of the world, and to international institutions.
Humanity and all other life on planet Earth stand at the precipice of catastrophic ecological, social, cultural and economic collapse. In the deepening darkness, however, there are many pinpricks of light – struggles for sustaining life, confronting the roots of these crises, and building regenerative futures. We dedicate this Declaration to such struggles for justice, dignity, and liberation.
With the presence of seventy participants from twenty-five countries and nations, representing diverse communities, organizations, social movements, and networks, the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTAGlobal Tapestry of Alternatives) gathered for its second in-person Assembly from April 11 to 17, 2026, in Bandung, Indonesia. Surrounded by rainforests and trees, volcanic mountains and guided by rituals, we came together to share, strengthen, and weave earthy alternatives that seek to break with the dominant system and open pathways toward direct and radical forms of political and economic democracy, localized self-reliance, social justice and equity, cultural and epistemic diversity, and socioecological resilience in all aspects of life. These alternatives include initiatives focused on regenerative and holistic agriculture, community-led water, energy, and food sovereignty, solidarity and sharing economies, worker control of production, resource and knowledge commons, respect for the rights of nature as also collective and individual human rights, inter-ethnic peace and coexistence, radical democracy as well as broader processes of autonomy and collective self-determination that seek to reshape how communities govern themselves and organize relations of care, production, and exchange in everyday life.
Seventy-one years after the 1955 Bandung Conference, when representatives from twenty-nine African and Asian countries gathered in a landmark encounter of anti-colonial solidarity and non-alignment, we returned to Bandung convinced that its spirit remains alive. Forged in defiance of colonial domination, imperial aggression, and the violent division of the world into Cold War blocs, Bandung affirmed the possibility of solidarity among peoples and territories seeking autonomy from imperial power. Yet this spirit was never the product of state diplomacy alone. ” It was also shaped by the collective organizing of women, movements, communities and people whose anti-imperialist contributions have too often been erased. The 1949 Conference of the Women of Asia cemented anti-imperial struggles that challenged power, understood grassroots mobilisation and named class, race, colonial analyses while drawing on global women’s solidarity. Regrettably there was very little substantive participation and framing by women at the Bandung Conference, but the 1958 Conference of Asian African Women in Colombo continued to shape the Bandung project and is often remembered as ‘Women’s Bandung’.
The spirit of Bandung extends far beyond the speeches of statespersons, government policies, or diplomatic declarations. Yet the process in and after 1955 remained largely centred on nation-states and conventional notions of “development,” both deeply marked by patriarchy. These foundations limited the survival of Bandung’s original promise. We gathered with another horizon in mind: not a future shaped by the nation-state or the imperatives of development, but one grounded in dignified and meaningful lives, the plurality of ways of being, knowing, existing, and relating to the world, and relations of commonality, solidarity, and care among human and more-than-human life.
The GTA Assembly took place amid a deepening civilizational crisis. War and militarization are expanding; authoritarianism and fascism are intensifying; and ecological and climate collapse are advancing through extractivism, forced displacement, the criminalization of movements and land defenders, and the destruction of territories. There are also multiple crises that play themselves out on feminized, racialized, and subaltern, embedded in structural, systemic and discursive forms of violences. These are gateways to far-right indoctrination, and the rise of largely white, male grievances that are contaminating social provision, public policy, military recruitment, authoritarian alliance and even digital imperialism that is exported across the globe.
The ongoing genocide in Gaza is one of the clearest expressions of a system of oppression and injustice that continues to build wealth through dispossession, from expulsions to the extermination of peoples across the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, and through the subjugation of lands, bodies, and worlds deemed disposable. Humanity’s rupture with the rest of nature, rooted in the denial of our dependence on other life forms and their right to thrive, is producing catastrophic impacts, including mass extinction. This civilizational project continues today through what our Mapuche colleagues from Wallmapu call Terricide: the convergence of wars, genocides, ecocides, and ethnocides through militarization, occupation, extractivism, gendered and racialized violence, and the designation of entire territories and peoples as sacrifice zones. At the same time, we face a crisis of meaning marked by hyperindividualism, loneliness, fear, the loss of collective horizons, and the erosion of ethical and political commitments. Entire ways of life are being threatened as biodiversity, languages, memories, and worldviews are annihilated.
These irreparable harms must be rejected and defended against. This call to action is more urgent than ever, as many so-called “solutions” pursued by governments — including “green transitions” and policies that seek “justice” through markets or the institutions of the nation-state — often reproduce or deepen the same oppressive logics that produced the crisis in the first place. Resistance is necessary not only against the intensifying plunder of territories designated as sacrifice zones, but also against the destruction of knowledges, peoples, and languages. By interrupting the monologue of development, which insists that there is only one “superior” way of knowing, being, and doing, struggles around the world reclaim what has been rendered “obsolete” or “invisible”: words, languages, knowledges, and ways of living that the development enterprise has sought to erase. Our response begins by naming this reality clearly, refusing to normalize it, organizing against it, and working to dismantle it in the name of total liberation: the conviction that no being, people, territory, or ecosystem can be free while systems of hierarchy, exploitation, or domination remain intact.
One example of organized resistance is the Sunda Wiwitan Indigenous community, who welcomed us into their territory during the Assembly. Their history predates the Indonesian nation-state, and they have their own worldviews, values, beliefs, customary law, ancestral territories, and forms of intergenerational continuity. Yet they continue to demand full recognition and legal protection at both regional and national levels. The lack of recognition has enabled violations of their fundamental rights, including injustices related to ancestral territories, access to land and means of subsistence, and the protection of their cultural identity, spirituality, and ways of life. Their struggle, connected to many others present at the Assembly and across the GTA, reminds us that transformation is not an abstract process. It is already being practiced by peoples, communities, cooperatives, autonomous schools, care networks, water and food guardianships, healing processes, and territorial defence initiatives resisting state neglect, colonial erasure, and imposed models of development.
In this context, the GTA, launched in 2019, has helped weave a living process of encounter, exchange, and solidarity among movements, communities, and networks working toward radical transformation across the Global South, in collaboration with movements of solidarity in the Global North. It links and makes visible radical alternatives, fostering mutual learning and strengthening autonomous pathways. These include communities defending forests, rivers, mountains, seeds, and territories against extractivism; Indigenous and peasant processes of radical democracy, autonomy, and self-government; agroecology and food sovereignty initiatives; feminist and gendered economies of care and mutual support; community health practices; alternatives to education and popular pedagogies; commons-based forms of land, water, and energy stewardship; solidarity economies, cooperatives, and local exchange systems all of which require attention to gendered power relations and intersecting inequalities.
The GTA has worked to create spaces where diverse knowledges, practices, and political traditions — a veritable pluriverse — can meet without being reduced to a single model. Nurtured by the work of many, it seeks to weave a trans-territorial network where struggles, organizations, alternatives, and collective practices can listen to and learn from one another, deepen solidarity, and make visible the many worlds already being built within and beyond the cracks of oppressive systems. It also seeks to strengthen collective capacities to respond to present struggles and create futures where many worlds are possible. In this sense, the GTA is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a collective infrastructure for recognizing, supporting, and connecting real alternatives that defend life and open pathways toward buenos vivires [good livings] beyond the dominant system.
We are building and envisioning a future not administered by any single authority, but rooted in struggles sustained and strengthened from below, through tactics that move within, against, and beyond the State and capitalism. We do this collectively through practices of repair, restoration, reparations, relationality, and restitution, in defence of the conditions that make life possible. This means defending the regenerative capacities and rights of nature, recovering suppressed knowledges and languages, restoring damaged relations among peoples and with more-than-human worlds, and nurturing solidarity amid accelerating socioecological collapse. It means recognizing the deep interdependence of all life and affirming that we are not separate from nature: we are nature defending itself.
The GTA is rooted in the recognition that, across the world, diverse peoples, communities, movements, and territories are already organizing autonomously beyond and against oppression and injustice. We understand these efforts as seeds of a global solidarity from below: a communitarian, confederated, and trans-territorial process woven through struggle, mutual support, shared learning, hospitality, regional exchange, and the collective defence of life. We seek a pluriversal horizon — a world where many worlds fit — grounded in solidarity, reciprocity, dignity, autonomy, and care. Against extractivism, colonialism, patriarchy, racism, anthropocentrism, ableism, militarism, and the capitalist logics that produce war, dispossession, ecological devastation, and sacrifice, we affirm networks of resistance and re-existence capable of sustaining what sustains us, repairing what has been damaged, and building alternatives rooted in collective life. In this spirit, we stand with movements and grassroots organizations that continue to rebel, disobey, resist, and organize wherever relational ways of being, knowing, and doing are under attack. We commit to strengthening the GTA as one space among many for weaving mutual aid, solidarity, struggle, renewal, and collective visions.
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