Sekowo News 24 HOW SEKO SILENTLY BECAME A SOLARPUNK UTOPIA The last two centuries have shaped Sekowo tremendously, bringing a stable economy and the highest standards of living 
Konohana Ecovillage, Ibarachi prefecture Heimeikyo, 06.5420 - Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement that envisions and works toward actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community. The "solar" represents solar energy as a renewable energy source and an optimistic vision of the future that rejects climate doomerism, while the "punk" refers to the countercultural, post-capitalist, and decolonial enthusiasm for creating such a future.[1] If we had to find a real-life example of such a visionary future, that would probably be Sekowo.
In the last 200 years Sekowo has changed its laws to better protect its natural environments,[2] while also promoting and subsidising sustainable agriculture.[3]
This made Seko an international role-model on the front of fighting climate change,[4] as the country has a specific strategy for it: Degrowth.
In 4825 the Sekowan Island of Yamashima hosted the international meeting that published the Yamashima Degrowth Declaration.[4] Several countries have followed its principles, but the most consistent one has probably been Seko. In 5342 the Yamashima Institute of Post-Growth Studies has been funded as a research centre and as an advisory group for Seko and other foreign or international institutions. The Institute has studied applications of the Yamashima Degrowth Declaration and of istalian economist Antonio dal Negro's "Donut Economics" in several cauntries, aiding the government of Sekowo in shaping a new resilient and prosperous economic system centered on well-being and stability rather than economic growth.
In the past, Sekowan economics have been swinging between "Kodonomics" and "Jiyūnomics". Jiyūnomics are the economic policies implemented by governments led by the Liberal Democratic Party of Sekowo (also known as Jiyū Party), one of the historical Sekowan political parties and currently the biggest opposition party retaining 22% of all seats in the Sekowan Diet. Jiyūnomics, popular especially during the first two centuries of the 6th millennia and the firts centuries of the second second half of the 4th, consist basically of free market capitalism sustained by economic growth.
Kodonomics (from its theorist Kodos Fairname) are economic policies implemented by centre-left govenrments in Sekowo. These foresee various degrees of government intervention in the economy to solve different problems and were first applied at the end of the 4th millennia, and at several times during the 5th millennia under Change, the Liberation Movement or other political parties which, at different times, have dominated the political area to the left of the Liberal Democratic Party. Since the Yamashima Degrowth Declaraion, Kodonomics have slowly started to incorporate also degrowth policies until in 5335 Sekowan President Satō Haruna finally declared the Yamashima Principles the national economic policy.
This new form of Kodonomics with incorporated Yamashima Principles, fused with the guidance of the Yamashima Institute of Post-Growth Studies, is already showing its results. Human Development Index in Seko is very high, and social inequality is the lowest in the West Dovanian Union with a value of 2.5 Gini.[6] Seko is a carbon-negative country in which modern, dynamic and sustainable metropolis, protected natural ecosystems and low-tech rural areas dedicated to permaculture and local traditions coexist.
Subsidies to agricultural cooperatives have solved the problem of rural depopulation, with ecovillages, communes and indigenous-led food coops popping up everywhere in Seko. As animal farming is banned in Seko for religious,[7] environmental, animal welfare and food security reasons, permaculture in Seko uses crop rotation of pulses to fertilise the soil with nitrogen, a byproduct of symbiotic bacteria that live on soy and other pulses' roots. This technique of shifting cultivation was first developed in West Dovani by indigenous Orinco people prior to contact with Artanian people when cattle had not yet been imported in the continent and nitrogen-fixing chemical processes were yet to be discovered by humanity. In rural areas sedoretus (poliamorous marrianges of four or more people) are very common as four is considered the lower number possible to build an efficient and productive self-sufficient farms. These farms, combining traditional and indigenous techniques as well as low-tech but science backed technologies, are able to produce great quantities of rice, soy, tofu, tempe, maize, beans, squashes, chili peppers, avocado, quinoa, seitan, nori, wakame, spirulina, mizo, bamboo, shiitake and other mushrooms, manioc, sunflowers, kombu, rootless duckweed, chia, taro, various yeasts and fermented food such as nattō which satisfy the internal food supply demand while also being widely exported abroad.
While these rural societies are energetically independent in forms of renewable energy communities, regional power grids powers urban areas, where energy demand is met by different energy sources. Many hydroelecric power plants, especially in the northern mountainous Sanzan region, gather energy from the numerous rivers flowing into the Anantonese Ocean. Some energetic regions also operates nuclear reactors. Wind turbines and especially solar panels (found on almost every rooftop) however produce much of the electricity in the country. Fossil fuel exploration, extraction and use is something of the past in Sekowo. This, together with its people's plant based diet and the preference of high speed (shinkansen) trains over domestic or inter-dovanian flights[8] make Seko a perfect candidate for the title of the most solarpunk nation on Terra.
Stability is also something that distinguishes Seko from its neighbours and makes it a peaceful, solarpunk nation: in the last two hundred years Hulstria and Gao Soto have seen dictatorships, attempted genocides, ethnic and separatist conflicts, coups, economic crisis, inequality and drastic changes of regime, while Seko has remained much stabler in comparison.
The political landscape has always been stable, with the Tomorrow Party and its left of centre governments and the Liberal Democratic Party at the opposition. Several crisis have been resolved smoothly, such as the spread of the Elyianist ideology from Hulstria,[9] the arrival and the assimilation of hundred of thousend of mikunian refugees from Hulstria, or the failed military coup d'etat.[10] Many Mikunian refugees have found such a paradise in Sekowan rural areas, that they have decided to permanently become farmers and to never go back to Mikuni-Hulstria.
In a world where resources are becoming scarcer and scarcer, with skyrocketing inequality, disappearing biodiverity and growing pessimism for the future, could Sekowan Solarpunk be the solution?
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk[2]
http://classic.particracy.net/viewbill. ... lid=682243[3]
http://classic.particracy.net/viewbill. ... lid=685373[4]
http://classic.particracy.net/viewtreat ... atyid=5083[5]
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=81&p=186191#p186191[6]
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7531&p=188505#p188505[7] Kamists and Daenists believe in reincarnation of the spirit after death, often in the form of other animal species. For this reason Sekowo is currenly the only country to recognise non-human animals as sentient beings capable of feeling pain and suffer, and therefore subjects of inalienable rights
http://classic.particracy.net/viewtreat ... atyid=5050[8] The only operating airports in the country are the Kasmenai International Airport and the Seritei International Airport, plus one airstip on Celestial Island. No passenger domestic flight exists between the two airports of Sekowo proper, since the two cities are already connected by the Central-Eastern High Speed Rail.
[9]
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=81&p=186246#p186246 and
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=81&p=186204#p186204[10]http://forum.particracy.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=81&p=189359#p189359
