According to the Transition approach, the most important step to building community resilience is relocalization.

localize: 1. To make local. 2. To confine or restrict to a locality.

re: 1. Again: rebuild. 2. Back: react. 3. Used as an intensive: refine.

Relocalization is the reverse of globalization.  Rather than having goods produced across the country or even across the world and transporting them into your community, relocalization calls for increased production of local goods.  Communities where goods are produced locally or regionally are more resilient to fluctuations in oil prices as well as disruptions in the wider economic system.  It doesn’t matter if gas is $10/gallon if you dinner is coming from your backyard or just down the street, or at least it won’t hit you nearly so hard.

One of the primary areas addressed by Transition is food production, which is understandable.  Life goes on without new video games.  It doesn’t go so well without food.  Food production hits us where it hurts.  Proposed steps include the development of community and residential gardens, local markets, and replacing ornamental landscaping with edible foliage, or plants that can be used for textile production or construction.  In addition to food, The Transition Handbook mentions other important aims of localization such as energy systems, transportation, and medication and textile production.

Why Peak Oil Solutions Aren’t Climate Change Solutions

The Transition approach to relocalization clearly demonstrates how a peak oil response is not necessarily a climate change response.  For instance, they include a photo of a residential firewood pile.  The caption suggests that resilience can be measured in part by how much seasoned firewood is available in a community.  And yes, a good supply of firewood is a local, resilient solution for home heating in the face of an oil shock.  But from a climate change perspective, billions of people heating their homes with wood is not a solution if it is not paired with carefully designed and sustainably managed forestry programs.

Similarly, in the process of relocalizing the food system, climate change requires us to preserve existing forests, and not reallocate forests, wetlands, or other natural carbon sinks to food production.  Transition proposes that land currently being used for car-related infrastructure such as parking lots be repurposed to strengthen the local foodshed.  However, we have to remember that relocalization by itself doesn’t automatically address climate change.  If relocalization is to address climate change, it must do so through deliberate systemic design.

Local Currency

To be honest, this is where Transition kind of lost me.  But it is an important step in their plan and, as such, deserves mention.

Transition proposes the creation of a local currency that can only be used in the community.  This new currency has a fixed exchange rate with the national currency and can be used just like standard money at participating vendors.

I can certainly understand the goal of keeping money within the community.  According to a principle called the local multiplier, a dollar spent within the community generates $5-14 for the community.  Anywhere from $0.60 to $0.80 of every dollar spent at a big box store leaves the community immediately.  Who cares?  Schools, fire departments, and any civic services that are funded through local tax dollars care.  It will also affect the local unemployment rate and general community wellbeing.  Creating a local currency keeps money within the community.  One of the interesting (read: geeky) parts of the local currency plan is that each bill is tracked to see how many times and where it was spent.  I’m sure the results would be fascinating and informative.

One of the reasons I struggle with the currency part of the Transition plan is that I don’t buy that we need to completely disengage from the global economic system (although here’s a compelling argument that we do).  Certainly moving towards completely self-sufficient local and regional economies is one solution.  But I don’t think it’s the only one, and possibly not even a preferable one.  There are some advantages to ‘competitive advantage.’ And this is probably a cultural bias, but local currencies seem confrontational to me; a strategy not likely to foster cooperation on a global scale.  And I think we really do need cooperation (or at least international development of best practices) at a global level.

Local in a Post-Oil World

Most importantly, Transition’s concept of relocalization is based on “powering down” – designing for a post-oil world.  Bringing everything closer to home means less oil consumed in transportation costs, certainly.  But Transition also looks at building local solutions that do not require oil.  Privately owned generators for electricity are a local solution.  Residential solar would be a local, post-oil, and therefore resilient solution.  To apply a “Transition lens” to localization, it can’t just be local, it also has to be post-oil.

So… that was a lot.  What do you guys think?  Is local a solution to resilience?  Is local a solution to climate change?  Does it have to be local?  Is relocalization the solution or only part of the solution?  Other thoughts?

Also, because Transition is so much fun, I’ll be giving away my very lightly used copy of The Transition Handbook.  Not sure what day yet, so be sure to check back .

Related Posts:

• Transition: Resilience
• Transition: An Introduction
• Hyperlocavore Book Club: The Transition

If sustainability was the buzzword for 2009, resilience is it for 2010.  That was my thought at the beginning of the year, and I was excited to hear that other people were thinking it too. (It’s always nice to have outside confirmation that you’re not just babbling gibberish.  Or at least if you are, you’re not doing it alone.)

Part of the reason the Transition Initiative focuses on resilience is the peak oil PLUS climate change equation.  On the climate change side, you may hear some discussion about resilience, but they probably don’t call it that.  They are probably calling it “adaptation,” and it’s probably used in discussions about how developing countries and particularly “at risk” communities are going to survive the impacts of climate change.  They are also most likely discussing it in terms of how many billions of dollars successful adaptation will require.

The peak oil types talk a lot about resilience, but frequently omit societal and global solutions to climate change.  As I mentioned in Transition: An Introduction, not all responses to peak oil address climate change.  However, most of the responses to peak oil are fundamentally about building resilience.

What Is Resilience?

resilient: adj. 1. Marked by the ability to recover readily, as from misfortune. 2. Capable of returning to an original shape or position, as after having been compressed.

The first definition is most relevant to discussions of community in terms of peak oil, climate change, and transition.  (Although I am intrigued by the connotations of the second definition as it pertains to civic planning – developing the “shape” of communities in a way that fosters sustainability and resilience.)  Resilient communities are able to withstand and recover from shocks to “the system.”  “The system” can be the food system, the energy system, the distribution system for basic consumer necessities, or pretty much any other system you can think of.  Resilience is also measured by a community’s capacity to respond and adapt to rapid change.

Shocks can take many different forms.  From oil shocks to natural disasters to health crises to terrorist attacks, resilient communities will be more effective at responding to and recovering from these events.

Why Do We Care?

“Civilization is only three meals deep.”

“We are always nine meals away from anarchy.”

Whichever way you say it, the idea is the same.

The Transition Initiative addresses resilience on all levels, but particularly compelling are their arguments about food security.  Food crises hit us where it hurts.  Cold snaps, trucking strikes and rising staple crop prices are present-day examples – we’re talking within the last couple years! – of how fragile our food system is.  Highly centralized (a very small number of large companies dominate grocery store retail), but spread over a great distance (the average meal in the US travels 1500 miles to reach your plate), it takes very little to jeopardize our food security.

The Transition Initiative is based on the idea that these kind of changes could happen more quickly than our systems can adapt to them.  If oil prices spike, making food significantly more expensive to transport, we may not have the decades needed to establish alternate shipping methods or the technological advances to fuel trucks with something other than oil.

Have you ever been to a store at the beginning of a blizzard?  Remember the empty shelves?  If all the trucks stopped running tomorrow, where would you get your food?  What about clothing and other basic necessities?  How would you heat your house?  How expensive would oil have to get before you could not afford to drive to work, or have to choose between putting gas in your car and buying increasingly expensive and scarce food?  Transition proposes that the answer to these concerns is the development of resilient communities.

So what do you think?  Is resilience an important consideration in the face of volatile systems?

More on Transition:

• The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins
• Transition Towns Wiki

Related Posts:

• Transition: An Introduction
• Hyperlocavore Book Club: The Transition Town Handbook

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dreamsjung/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

An interesting phenomenon of the human mind is that the better we understand something, the worse we get at explaining it.  We also become less capable of understanding that others do not share our knowledge.  Lately I’ve found myself mentioning Transition Initiative concepts, only to be met by the blank stares of my family and friends.  Oops!  I guess Transition sunk in more than I realized – the Curse of Knowledge in action.  In a deliberate attempt to counteract the Curse of Knowledge, I’ve decided to do a short series of posts on the basics of the Transition Initiative, as well as some of the continuing dialogue about Transition and how it fits with other visions of a sustainable future.

What Is Transition?

The Transition Initiative is an organized response to the dual threats of climate change and peak oil.  It is important to distinguish between the two issues and their associated solutions, because many of the solutions proposed for climate change would not address the issue of peak oil, and vice versa.  Transition is designed to confront both problems simultaneously, and argues that they must be addressed in tandem if we are to move confidently into the future.

What Is Peak Oil?

By now most of us are familiar with the concept of climate change, and even the term “anthropogenic global warming,” or the understanding that human action is responsible for the changing climate.  But only occasionally do you hear mention of peak oil in discussions of climate change policy or activism.  This is a little surprising, as the two issues are fundamentally connected.

Peak oil refers to the moment when global oil production is at its maximum.  From that point forward, we will be able to extract decreasing amounts of oil at an increasing cost.  This cost can be financial, technological, or environmental.  The costs begin to climb, quickly and (theoretically) irreversibly.  Some experts believe that we have already reached peak oil, and are now accelerating on the downhill slope, slowed only by inaccurate inflation of stated oil reserves and natural short term market fluctuations.  In other words, the people with the oil know we don’t have enough, but are lying both to keep things stable and present a strong front internationally, and markets have little up and down blips while they generally trend in whatever direction they’re headed.

Why Transition?

As I mentioned, the Transition Initiative approach was created to address climate change and peak oil together.  Hopkins argues that not only does addressing the two issues separately generate ineffective solutions, but that they actually may be more compelling motivators when addressed together.  Climate change asks us to change.  Peak oil forces us to change.

A Transition Initiative is designed to address the future through a localized message of community empowerment.  The goal is for communities to work together to develop in such a way that they will be resilient to future economic contraction and/or crisis.  This resilience is created through relocalisation, reskilling, regenerative efforts and a few other “re’s,” which I’ll babble about in more depth over the next several weeks.

In the mean time, what do you think?  Should we be worried about peak oil now?  Are climate change and peak oil more effectively addressed separately or together?

More on Transition:

• The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins
• In Transition 1.0 (video)
• Transition Towns Wiki
• Transition United States

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecolabs/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Instead, I’m bobbing around in the ocean wearing little inflatable arm floaties.  Periodically they grow limp, and I tread water while I blow some more air into them.

I’m not alone.  I’m holding hands with other people who have arm floaties too.  And they’re hanging onto more people with arm floaties and we’re actually a little cluster of floaty people, bobbing around on the ocean together.

It gets a little frustrating, because there are also these people on jet skis who ride around us, pointing and laughing.  They speed close and shoot water at us.  Then they laugh and zoom away.

I can see a cruise ship in the distance.  The people on the cruise ship don’t notice our little group of floaty people.  They’re too busy goofing off in the pool and eating at the buffet.  I wonder if they realize that the 24 hour buffet sign is more like a hope than a promise.

But as I look further into the distance, I can see that my little cluster of floaty people is connected to other clusters, and we’re really a huge web of floaty people, as far as the eye can see.  We’re a floaty brigade.

I’m going to try to remember this when I talk to other floaty people.  When I expect them to be on board, I’ll remind myself that there is no “on board.”  The ocean is vast, and their little section might look different from mine.  My floaties are pink, but maybe theirs are blue or yellow, or polka-dotted.  A few of them even have pool noodles and inflatable crocodiles.  (Sometimes I wish I had a pool noodle.)  But we’re all floaty people.  We are all getting sprayed by jet ski people, and we’re all watching the same cruise ship, even if we have different perspectives.

Speaking of the cruise ship, I really hope they remembered to pack their life jackets.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdeetz/ / CC BY 2.0

To be honest, until I got back online yesterday morning, I hadn’t even registered that today would be the first day of a new decade.  But it seems that over the last week, everyone else has been trying out answers, drawing diagrams and making tons of lists.  From lists of the most influential people to lists of the most important movies of the decade, we’re engaging in a collective process of taking stock, trying to come to terms with the last decade, what it means for us and for our future.  I would prefer if we did this – reviewing and setting goals, personal and societal – all year round.  But it doesn’t seem to work that way, so here we are: trying to draw some sort of conclusion from the last ten years.

I don’t usually make predictions.  If you had asked me a year ago where I would be now… let’s just say I would have been very wrong (never, ever would have guessed married!).  My life has been anything but predictable.  And if I can’t make accurate guesses at my own life, which is theoretically within some measure of my own control, how could I begin to guess at anything else?

But this year I’m going to hazard a guess at 2010.  Why?  Because I just have a gut feeling about it.  And I hope that I might be right.

Resilience

I predict that ‘resilience’ will be a defining term of the year, and possibly even the decade, to come.

What is resilience?  The New Oxford American Dictionary defines ‘resilient’ as:

adj. (of a substance or object) able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed. <SPECIAL USAGE> (of a person or animal) able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.

Take note of that special usage.  That’s the one.  But add community to the little list.  “Of a person, animal, or community.”  Add economy.  Add culture and society.  Add civilization and species.

I’ll probably be writing a lot more about resilience this year, and I hope that I won’t be the only one.  In the meantime, here’s wishing everyone a resilient new year, individually, communally, globally.  Happy 2010!

I don’t know why I can’t seem to get this thing to live.  I am alive.  My pets are alive.  Even my incredibly finicky bonsai tree is alive (and blooming!).  But this little colony of yeast and lactobacillus just isn’t happy with me.

Not my sourdough culture.

I try to do the right thing.  I feed it organic flour and water without too much chlorine in it.  I weigh everything carefully to ensure the proportions are correct.  But my sourdough just bubbles halfheartedly at me from its jar.  I’ve tried several times to make it into bread, only to have it sit, dismal and sour like my teenage cousin that time her parents dragged her to Great Aunt Ida’s birthday party.

As I dumped my deceased culture into my compost bin, I asked myself why it mattered anyways.  Why is so important to me to get this flour and water to rise into a fluffy loaf of goodness, when I could just go buy bread at the store like everyone else?

I think it’s because I should be able to make bread.  I mean, it’s just flour, water and salt!  How can I suck so badly at making something as fundamental as a loaf of bread?

It is one thing to not be able to make a car or a computer.  I don’t mind lacking the ingrained knowledge to repair the space shuttle.  But I don’t feel like I should need corporate assistance to make what is, for me, a staple food.  Something that feels wrong about that, like kids who don’t realize the part of the carrot that we eat is a root that grows under the ground.  Shouldn’t we know these things?

Not my bread either.

Kids today are growing up with a new set of “fundamental survival skills.”  They manage a diverse range of online identities.  They seem to effortlessly walk the line between their online and physical lives (or perhaps for them that line has faded away entirely).  And that is a good thing, because they will need to be masters of that world.

But what if they lost access to Easy Mac, ramen and delivery pizza?  Would they be able to turn the contents of their pantry or their garden into a decent meal?  Would they know how to tell a carrot from a weed?  Would you?

This kind of knowledge is a certain type of resilience that many of us have lost over the past several generations.  I don’t think it’s something we can afford to lose for much longer.

So I’ve been working on it for myself.  I’m getting much better at making actual meals from the food in my pantry.  My freezer is filled with chicken stock instead of Hot Pockets.  But I still can’t tell food sproutlings from baby weeds.  And my sourdough is dead.

I am determined to keep learning and trying.  Because you can’t eat Farmville vegetables, no matter how hard you try.  But you can eat a nice loaf of sourdough bread.

Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dklein/ / http://www.flickr.com/photos/karloskarmattsson/ / CC BY 2.0