For 6 years I have been involved with Transition Stroud - one of over 300 initiatives globally attempting to deal with the issues of climate change, peak oil and economic turmoil through practical local projects and community-building. I am now one of 12 Directors of the Limited Company we set up to run various projects, and network the multitude of other organisations working locally on these and related issues.
In some ways, I feel like I am building my personal resilience - I am a qualified cycle mechanic (Cytek Level 1, which is a basic qualification, since you ask, but enough to get me by on my bike and help others), I cycle for almost all the journeys I make (thus am much less affected than most, at least directly, when oil prices spike), I grow some of my own food on an Allotment (in England, small patches of land are rented to people for small sums of money by local authorities), and I have a good network of friends and acquaintances in my street and local town who I know will all pull together to help each other when the need arises. But, while I’m developing my academic and work skills by studying for a PhD (on the resilience of certain organisations), beginning to work as a Lecturer, and volunteering on all manner of projects, I am extremely uncertain about the future, and about how our community might cope in the long-term following significant shocks. Though I feel like I have a good understanding of what the term ‘resilience’ means in everyday speech, and in various academic fields, I am less certain what it looks like in practice - at least, I am unsure what a community or society truly resilient to the enormous shocks we face in the future would look like.
In particular, I am concerned about producing enough food locally (not reliant on long-distance transport), and about employment - and the effects increased transportation costs have on the ability of people to travel to work.
People often cite my hometown - Stroud, Gloucestershire - as a frontrunner in the development of a resilient and sustainable local economy. But it still feels like we have a long way to go!
Yes, we have a very successful weekly Farmers’ Market - with produce largely from within a 50 mile radius of the town, and a couple of Community Supported Agriculture projects, not to mention several full allotment sites (with long waiting lists), and a town council interested in creating more. But our local area also falls within the food footprint of bigger settlements nearby - such as Gloucester and Bristol. How are we going to feed all these people in a world where yields and transportation of food is dramatically affected by peak oil and climate change?
Yes, we have a ‘Car Club’ where people share 4 communal vehicles, so they do not have to own their own car but have access to one. And we have some good train connections - to the nearest large town and to London, and a few decent bus services. But most bus services are terrible - especially for the many isolated rural settlements that make up our district, and unattractive to people. Public transport is prohibitively expensive, and provision for cyclists is poor (not to mention the hills!). There has been a lot of work and campaigning on improving infrastructure for cycling, but little action by local authorities. In Transition Stroud, we are looking into electric bike provision, and working out how we can best mobilise and put pressure on local authorities - but transport is a national policy issue, with provision privatised to large companies. How can we influence them? Or can we take this provision back into public ownership?
There is an ongoing debate locally about housing - mainly the opposition to construction in the countryside dominates media coverage, but discussion of the high prices of housing, the increasing difficulty young people have in finding accomodation in the places they grew up, is never far behind. Is there a solution to this conundrum that can also address the need for new build housing to be as energy efficient and environmentally sound as possible? Following my research on UK Building Societies (mutuals - cooperatives owned by their consumers - which were once the dominant mortgage lenders in the UK, and before that helped people to pool funds to build homes), I am involved in the tentative beginnings of a ‘Stroud REbuilding Society’ - the aim being to use a cooperative model to enable young people to access affordable, green, housing.
With others in Transition Stroud, I have been debating the difference between creating new ‘sustainable enterprises’ and creating resilient economies where we can reduce our reliance on money and hence on wage-labour, making life easier for the unemployed and those on low incomes, and enabling volunteering. We have a local currency (which can only circulate in the local town, and loses value over time so cannot be hoarded), and a TimeBank (where each hour of work donated is equal to another hour requested), and a good culture of voluntary groups and small enterprises. But national and local government cuts, and increased competition for funding is making much of this work considerably more difficult. We need to figure out how to build a new economy as the old one falls apart fast!
Maybe I am too pessimistic, and too focussed on the problems, and questions, than on the solutions. To counter this I will mention the events we have coming up:
In July we have organised four days of ‘Edible Open Gardens’, where 40 productive gardens, allotments and orchards will be open to the public, showcasing their growing methods and providing workshops from basic to advanced techniques (starting out and composting to wildlife gardening and soil micro-organisms). See here: http://www.transitionstroud.org/wpedibleopengardens/. I’ll bring some of the pamphlets we’ve made to advertise the weekend to the conference.
In September, we are running our 5th annual ‘Open Eco-Renovated Homes’ weekend, you can see videos and more from previous years here: http://www.stroudopenhomes.org.uk/. I’ll bring some printed material from previous years of this event too, if I can find it!
We’re also running a series of films - ‘Debtocracy’ and shorts on the Greek crisis and community responses, and ‘Just Do It!’, a film about UK climate activists.
There’s lots more too, but I guess it will have to wait for the conference. If any of the above has interested you, please comment below and I can elaborate.
