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The first part of the paper is an attempt to demonstrate that what we are going through at the present time is not just an economic-financial crisis, but a crisis of humanity. It seems that for the first time in human history several crises converge to simultaneously reach their maximum level of tension. The dominant economic model is to a great degree responsible for the world's collision course. Hence a number of myths that sustain the model are listed and analyzed. It is argued that a new economy, coherent with the problematiques of the twenty first century, needs urgently to be devised. The second part proposes the foundations for a new economy based on five fundamental postulates that allow the construction of transdisciplinary, holistic, and systemic visions to adequately understand the interdependence of all the elements that sustain life. It is stressed that it is no longer acceptable that Universities still teach economic theories of the nineteenth century in order to tackle twenty first century problems that have no precedence.

This article extends the Human-scale Development methodology to include non-humans. We found this wider approach to be helpful in analysing the conflict of interest between fish farming and otter protection in the Natural Reserve of the Sado River estuary in Portugal. Our analysis of this environmental conflict goes beyond the anthropocentric view restricted to human needs to include all stakeholder needs, i.e. both human and non-human 'actants'. The needs-based analysis aims to ensure that local development strategies are more sustainable, improving interactions between all living beings, not just humans.

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