When it comes to climate change, many systems of control designed around national borders break down: internationally restrictive trade processes and systems of enforcement have little or power in the face of desertification, mass flooding, forced migration and other social and environmental disasters. The industrial and heavy technological revolutions in 19th/20th century Europe and US contained a blindness to the consequences of these developments. We now need new strategies to prevent cultural, social and ethical collapse. Can scaling up local initiatives help meet global challenges? What can we learn from models that distribute insecurity as a default; such as those which are improvised and informal in Lagos, New Delhi and Karachi?