Posted 30/5/09
Transition Towns:
How a community can transition to an energy lean, carbon constrained, and re-localised future that is abundant, sustainable, pleasurable, and resilient.
Municipal Association of Victoria [MAV] convenes meeting 4 June to discuss role of local government in facilitating accelerated take up of the Transition Town initiative.
MAV meeting to discuss Transition Towns/cities/neighbourhoods and the building of community resilience: the role of LG
The MAV is convening a meeting on Thursday, June 4 at the Spring Street Conference Centre (corner Spring and Flinders Streets, Melbourne) from 10.30am to 3pm to discuss the role of local government in facilitating an accelerated take-up of the Transition Town (or city or neighbourhood) initiative across Victorian communities.
It will also discuss the potential to link community planning processes to Transition Initiatives. There are currently over 500 community plans in Victoria. Transition Towns began in September 2006 and has since morphed into a worldwide movement.
The Transition Town movement has seized the historic opportunity presented by our global challenges to creatively examine the choices we have and choose the future we want. We stand at a cross roads in human history where the choices we make now – about economic growth, energy usage and carbon emissions - will affect generations to come. ‘Transition Towns’ is an inspiring vision and action plan for how a community can transition to an energy lean, carbon constrained, and re-localised future that is abundant, sustainable, pleasurable, and resilient.
Transition Initiatives are based on 4 key assumptions:
That life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.
That our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany climate change/peak oil.
That we have to act collectively, and we have to act now.
That by unleashing the collective genius of those around us to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognise the biological limits of our planet.
The recent MAV Future of Local Government Summit placed significant emphasis on the role of local government in facilitating the building of community resilience. There are many reports that individual citizens are increasingly concerned about the impact of global forces, including climate change, peak oil, and the global financial crisis. The Transition Towns/Communities process is a ‘bottom up’ response that empowers communities to plan an appropriate response to these challenges. As discussed at the Summit, eventually everything occurs at the local community level, so why not start planning a better future from there?
See a brief overview of the Transition Towns initiative below.
Agenda
Introduction
The journey of Transition Neighbourhood Bell (Bell Park and Bell Post Hill - two of the most diverse and multicultural suburbs in the Geelong region), Andrew Lucas
Community resilience and Transition Towns: Peter Kenyon
The role of local government in promoting Transition Towns/Communities across Victoria
Next steps
Who should attend? Anyone with an interest in the future of communities and the role of LG in that future: Councillors, CEOs, officers.
This meeting will discuss the role of councils in facilitating
an accelerated take-up of the Transition Town (or city or neighbourhood) initiative
across Victorian communities.
Contact: John Hennessy, Phone: 9667 5525, Email: jhennessy@mav.asn.au
There is no cost to attend the meeting, but please indicate by email if you plan to attend.
Transition Towns (and cities and neighbourhoods): overview
The Transition Town initiative is a model designed to harness collective genius at the local grassroots level to address the most important question of the twenty first century: for all life processes that sustain this community, how do we significantly increase our resilience (to provide for our needs with much less fossil fuel) while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions?
The 12 step model aims to be flexible and broad enough to allow people from all walks of life to connect to the fundamental vision of a healthy, resilient community.
The process begins by forming an initiating group who then adopt the Transition Model with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative.
After going through a comprehensive and creative process of:
awareness raising around climate change, peak oil and the need to undertake a community lead process to rebuild resilience and reduce carbon emissions
connecting with existing groups in the community
building bridges to local government
connecting with other transition initiatives
forming groups to look at all the key areas of life (food, energy, transport, health, heart & soul, economics & livelihoods, etc)
kicking off projects aimed at building people's understanding of resilience and carbon issues and community engagement
eventually launching a community defined, community implemented "Energy Descent Action Plan" over a 15 to 20 year timescale
This results in a coordinated range of projects across all these areas of life that strives to rebuild the resilience we've lost as a result of cheap oil and reduce the community's carbon emissions drastically.
The community also recognises two crucial points:
that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there's no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
if we collectively plan and act early enough there's every likelihood that we can create a way of living that's significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.
In addition, it is important to remember:
Climate change makes this carbon reduction transition essential
Peak oil makes it inevitable
Transition initiatives make it feasible, viable and attractive (so far, so good…)
The Transition Town movement has seized the historic opportunity presented by our global challenges to creatively examine the choices we have and choose the future we want. We stand at a cross roads in human history where the choices we make now – about economic growth, energy usage and carbon emissions - will affect generations to come. ‘Transition Towns’ is an inspiring vision and action plan for how a community can transition to an energy lean, carbon constrained, and relocalised future that is abundant, sustainable, pleasurable, and resilient. Transition Towns began in September 2006 and has since morphed into a worldwide movement.
"Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change, so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks." In the context of communities and settlements, it refers to their ability to not collapse at first sight of oil or food shortages, and to their ability to respond with adaptability to disturbance. The UK truck drivers’ dispute of 2000 offers a valuable lesson here. Within the space of three days, the UK economy was brought to the brink, as it became clear that the country was about a day away from food rationing and civil unrest. Increased resilience and a stronger local economy do not mean that we put a fence up around our towns and cities and refuse to allow anything in or out. It is not a rejection of commerce or somehow a return to a rose-tinted version of some imagined past. What it does mean is being more prepared for a leaner future, more self-reliant, and prioritising the local over the imported.
Transition Initiatives are based on four key assumptions:
That life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.
That our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.
That we have to act collectively, and we have to act now.
That by unleashing the collective genius of those around us to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognise the biological limits of our planet.
The future with less oil could, if enough thinking and design is applied sufficiently in advance, be preferable to the present. There is no reason why a lower-energy, more resilient future needs to have a lower quality of life than the present. Indeed, a future with a revitalised local economy would have many advantages over the present, including a happier and less stressed population, an improved environment and increased stability.