Re: This List is Too Busy...
On 10 Apr 2008 at 9:01, denise4peace wrote:
> I thought the Coordinator's Hub list was for sharing ideas (as I did with my> original posting about the Suburban Ecovillage Project andvarious activities
> we're involved in here) about how we can more effectively motivate and guide our
> various relocalization efforts.
Hmm, I thought that's what we were doing. There is more to relocalization than planting organic veggies in your backyard, water harvesting, passive solar techniques, and decreasing our individual eco-footprints. Just about all you have to do to find details on any of that is search the Mother Earth News archives. But please don't think I'm devaluing any of that, as it is all also necessary for a sustainable future, and I'm involved in those aspects as well.
Part of the relocalization effort includes getting local government and the business community to go along with instituting widespread policy changes, such as steady-state economies and rebuilding urban environments to be not only walkable, but to deliver a sense of security as well. An aspect of this is getting the support of your neighbors. This often requires explaining to all the parties involved that change is both necessary and, perhaps more importantly, possible, and being able to deal effectively with their fears and uncertainties.
Anyway, that's my motivation for engaging in this conversation. While there may be aspects of it that appear esoteric, it directly relates to the relocalization work I'm actively engaged in.
I mean, this list should be busy, as we've all got a whole lot of work to do in a number of different realms. Each of those realms calls to us each differently in the expression of our passions. But as they say, it's going to take us all.
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April 14th, 2008
Re: This List is Too Busy...
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Re: This List is Too Busy...
Resilient communities: A
guide to disaster
management
by Richard Heinberg
MuseLetter #192
Resilience: The ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or
misfortune; buoyancy; the ability to absorb shocks.
The following is a proposal to help make communities better able to respond
to the coming economic shocks from resource depletion, beginning with
Peak Oil, and perhaps also to shocks from other causes (such as the
ongoing subprime mortgage and credit collapse).
In searching for a name for the strategy, I have settled on the phrase
"Resilient Communities," which comes with considerable baggage—useful
baggage in this instance. Once I have described and discussed the
proposal, I will offer some background materials regarding the terms
resilience and resilient communities, mentioning some other projects that
have used the same title or that pursue similar goals.
Making existing petroleum-reliant communities truly sustainable is a huge
task. Virtually every system must be redesigned—from transport to food,
sanitation, health care, and manufacturing. Some fine efforts are under way
in towns such as Kinsale, Ireland; Totnes, England; Portland, Oregon; and
several cities in northern California to catalog the needed changes and
initiate the transformative process. The Powerdown Project, Energy Descent
Action Plans, and local Climate Protection initiatives are all important efforts
in this direction.
However, even in places that began such work two or three years ago,
actual oil dependence remains largely unaffected. The transition that is
required will take many years, huge shifts in both private and public
investment, and fundamental changes in public policy at higher levels of
government in order to succeed. Do we have enough time? Will the
investment capital be available?
Meanwhile, global oil production appears already to have entered its plateau
phase, with a gradually steepening decline in total production—and a much
more rapid drop in export capacity among nations with any oil to
spare—likely to commence within the next two or three years. It appears that
the time available for adaptation is probably far too short to enable needed
work to be accomplished.
Meanwhile, the financial solvency crisis initiated by the US subprime
mortgage fiasco threatens to obliterate trillions of dollars of investment
capital, impeding whatever efforts might be undertaken toward energy
conversion. Thus few if any communities—including those that have initiated
worthwhile projects—will be prepared for the shocks of high fuel prices and
fuel shortages that will inevitably follow in the coming years. What to do?
A few months ago, on the day following the most recent "Peak Oil and
Community Solutions" conference in Yellow Springs, Ohio, some of the
speakers and organizers gathered to compare notes and strategize. At
some point during the lively conversation, Faith Morgan, the Director of the
film The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, reminded us
how, early in Cuba's crisis period, organic farming advocates had provided
crucial advice that helped quickly transform the nation's food system; without
the input of these previously marginalized alternatives advocates, the nation
probably would not have survived. I was certainly familiar with the story: I
have recounted it in print and in lectures on many occasions.
Nevertheless, as Faith spoke, a (compact-fluorescent) light bulb flickered
somewhere in my murky skull. Perhaps something similar could happen in
other nations or communities—and not just with regard to food, but all the
other aspects of modern existence. There are plenty of marginalized
"alternatives" advocates who for decades have been researching and
promoting low-energy ways of doing things that will make perfect sense in a
post-petroleum environment. What if these folks could be mobilized and
coordinated, their knowledge made readily available to local officials and the
public at large, in preparation for the imminent period when existing systems
start to fail in ever more obvious ways?
The notion solidified as I read Naomi Klein's recent book, The Shock
Doctrine, which details how savvy politicians and business leaders have
used natural disasters, wars, and economic upheavals as propitious
moments for the introduction of neo-liberal economic policies—privatization,
free trade, slashed social spending—that are themselves disastrous (though
immensely profitable for the few), and that would normally be rejected. In the
current instance, as we contemplate a global mega-disaster-in-the-making, it
is not difficult to envision neo-liberal or neo-conservative power-holders
licking their collective chops over the prospect of doing away with all labor
and environmental regulations as citizens everywhere clamor for strong
leaders who can implement bold policies to restore relative normalcy.
In other words, crisis equals opportunity—for those who are prepared to
seize the day. Unless sensible plans to manage disaster are formulated and
put forward now, the opportunity afforded by crisis will be hijacked by a
familiar cast of characters.
What follows, then, is a strategy to take advantage of the gathering storm to
steer communities in a direction that will make them more sustainable over
the long run. I must emphasize at the outset that, while I am making the
case for this new strategy as strongly as I can (that's a writer's job), I do not
wish people already hard at work on proactive energy transition strategies
through Relocalization and Transition projects to get the impression that I
am saying, "Stop everything you're doing now, rush to the other side of the
boat, and start doing this other thing." In fact, all I hope to accomplish with
this essay is to introduce a new strategic perspective that can be useful to
activists as they continue and expand the work in which they are currently
engaged.
Anyone can adopt this strategy; however, existing Peak Oil response groups
and networks are probably in the best position to do so. Groups wanting to
explore this strategy can join the Relocalization Network
(www.relocalize.net), if they are not already affiliated, and use that network
for sharing information and other resources. Groups could also link Resilient
Communities work with the Transition Network (www.transitiontowns.org),
Step It Up, Mayors for Climate Protection Campaign, Climate Action
Network, and Sierra Club's Cool Cities program.
What is needed is not just another trademark for yet another activist
campaign, but an additional strategy that can be used by any existing
organization.
Try This
The strategy I am envisioning might be composed of the following series of
steps:
* Establish a working group for the purpose of formulating a
Community Resilience Plan. The size of the group will depend on who
is available and motivated, and on the size of the community. It will be
helpful if the individuals involved have experience with organizing
efforts and are already trusted, active members of the community. If
there is a sufficiently large pool of potential members, group
membership could rotate. This could be an entirely new group, or it
could be a new project for an existing group. At the very earliest
stage, establish a connection with the Relocalization Network.
* Identify organizations, businesses, and individuals in your community
that have some skill or capacity that will be needed in the post-Peak
Oil environment. Look for people who are already working in food
production and distribution, health, transport, water delivery, waste
disposal, home heating, communication, and crisis management who
are able to supply goods or services in their respective field using
less energy and fewer imported materials, or who have concrete
proposals in this regard. Examples include organic farming and
Permaculture groups; herbalists and others able to provide health
care in the absence of high-tech equipment; car-share organizations;
and bicycle advocacy groups.
* Approach these people, inform them that you are formulating a
Community Resilience Plan, and ask for their help and participation.
Tell them about Peak Oil—if they don't already know—and help them
understand the implications. Point out that their "alternative" skills and
knowledge, which they may have grown weary of promoting in the
face of general systemic preference for "mainstream" approaches,
will soon be crucial to community survival and well-being. In effect,
you must appeal to their self-interest as a way to motivate them to
expend some extra effort on behalf of a Community Resilience Plan.
* Work with these groups and individuals to develop a contingency plan
in their respective areas of action and expertise. The plan should
answer the question: If your community were suffering from a crisis
(unaffordable energy prices, fuel shortages, and knock-on effects
such as empty store shelves and rampant unemployment), how could
your expertise be rapidly deployed on a large scale to help reduce the
impact? What assistance and resources would you need? What
steps would have to be taken, and in what order? For example,
Permaculturists might have a fine way of producing food locally, but in
order to expand their efforts significantly they might need to train
teams of gardeners to roam the city planting garden beds on vacant
lots or in the front and back yards of willing homeowners. How would
these teams be financed and coordinated? How might a surge in
demand for garden tools and seeds be satisfied? In each essential
field, look for ways to build redundancy with regard to provision of
goods and services.
* As you are doing all of these things, also contact city disaster
management officials, letting them know what you are doing and why.
Ask for their input and inquire how what you are doing can be most
useful to the community at large. Make sure they have copies of Post
Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty, by
Daniel Lerch (www.postcarboncities.net).
* It might also be useful to contact leaders in some of the mainstream
organizations (government agencies as well as private companies)
currently responsible for food, water, transport, and energy
provisioning and inquire if they have any plans for the time when fuel
becomes scarce. If they perceive your project as a threat, they are
likely to try to block or undermine it in various ways. However, if they
see the project for what it is—an effort to enable the survival of the
community in circumstances where current support systems cease
functioning—they may be moved to contribute. If they simply deny
that any problems are on the horizon, you may have no choice but to
continue what you are doing without their input. Again, make sure
these leaders have copies of Post Carbon Cities.
* Assemble the various suggestions into a coherent Community
Resilience Plan. Some sort of document is always useful as a
touchstone for collective action. The plan should be comprehensive,
modular, and staged. It should offer suggestions for slow-onset as
well as rapid-onset disasters. It should also be consistent with
proactive plans for the long-term post-carbon transition of society
(such as the report of the Portland Peak Oil task force). It should be
in a form that can be upgraded and revised continually. And it should
be widely available to the public (i.e., published on an easily
accessible web site).
* Once a document has been formulated, go back to civic leaders and
disaster management officials and present the document. At the
same time, stage a public roll-out of the plan, arranging newspaper
articles and radio interviews as well as a public event at which all of
the contributors, and local officials, can offer brief presentations.
* When shortages develop and the economy comes unhinged, work
with contributing groups and local officials to implement the plan.
Without implementation, the effort will have been wasted. This stage
will no doubt entail the hardest and most demanding work. It is
difficult to foresee the exact circumstances in which that work will be
taking place; nevertheless, the more thorough the preparatory efforts,
the more successful the implementation is likely to be.
* Work with groups in other communities to coordinate programs
across regions and nations. Again, the organizations most likely to be
helpful in this are the Relocalization Network and the Post Carbon
Cities program of Post Carbon Institute, and the Transition Network.
Communities should be encouraged to share their experiences, and
to share other resources wherever possible. At the earliest
opportunity, meta-plans for resilience should be initiated at the state,
national, and international levels.
* Granted, formulating a plan along the lines I have suggested is a
huge task, and the process I have described may not be robust
enough and sufficiently engaged with all facets of the community in
order to succeed. I welcome input on how to deal with these
shortcomings. However, the general thrust of the strategy is logical
and strategically sound. Obtaining local government support and
public or private funding will be extremely advantageous, as
attempting such a task on a purely volunteer basis will create obvious
pitfalls of overwork and underperformance.
Why?-and Other Questions
Why do we need another strategy?
I have been directly or peripherally involved in many Peak Oil response
efforts over the past five years. Some I would characterize as top-down
(starting by trying to convince and enroll policy makers such as city officials),
some bottom-up (starting from a grass-roots base of concerned citizens and
activists). All begin or end with a long-range plan for reducing the
community's reliance on oil and other fossil fuels—a plan that entails a
redirection in investment of public funds, the shifting of priorities, changes to
zoning regulations, and so on.
The Resilient Communities strategy is based on observations of what
worked in those previous efforts and what didn't. It is also based on the fact
that, even in situations of apparent success (where much publicity was
garnered and city councils adopted Peak Oil action plans), nagging doubts
remain. What if these efforts are too little, too late? What if society is
broadsided by an economic collapse from other sources before the effects
of Peak Oil become obvious, undermining proactive plans? When I think of
my own community, I wince: despite some good activist efforts over the past
couple of years, Sonoma County is really not much better prepared than it
was before we started.
During these past few years, I have had opportunity to observe a few policy
makers at fairly close quarters and to observe how they think, what they say,
and what they do. I've concluded that (with a very few notable exceptions),
regardless of lip service to sustainability, Peak Oil preparedness, or climate
protection, these people's first priority is economic growth. If their attention to
this overarching priority wavers, they soon find themselves out of a job. Thus
as long as business-as-usual (or at least business-as-usual lite) is an option,
it will be favored. However, looming environmental limits require economic
contraction. Peak Oil preparedness is, in essence, the effort to controllably
scale back the pace and scope of society's consumption of energy and
natural resources so as to reduce the impact when inevitable shortages
arise—and also, ultimately, so as to reduce society's material throughput to
a level that is actually sustainable over the long haul.
Policy makers demand growth, while prudent policy (in light of resource
depletion) requires voluntary contraction. This basic contradiction suggests
that real change won't come about until hardship is upon us. And that
judgment is in turn confirmed by the one example we have of successful
adaptation to energy famine—Cuba's Special Period—which was not a
proactive effort, but primarily a reactive one.
Thus as compared to other plans and strategies, Resilient Communities
strategy has a more explicit focus on disaster management.
At the point when maintaining business as usual is no longer an option,
there may be a chance for new strategies to be considered. Officials must
face crises (whether effectively or ineptly); they cannot simply ignore obvious
breakdowns in the societal support system. If a plan can be put forward that
helps officials solve pressing, undeniable problems, that plan has at least a
chance of being considered.
Granted, the strategies most likely to gain favor in the early stages of crisis
are those that promise a return to business-as-usual (even if that promise is
hollow). But as those strategies fail and crisis deepens, nets will be cast
wider. At some point the Resilience Plan will become the strategy of last
resort.
A useful historical example: as the Great Depression gathered gloom, the
New Deal was not the US government's first response (Herbert Hoover
dithered for two years); it wasn't even Franklin Roosevelt's initial strategy:
only after everything else had failed during three to four long years of
economic crisis and misery were more radical ideas tried.
How, exactly, is a Resilient Community different
from a Transition Town or the Powerdown
Project?
There certainly are similarities. Transition Towns do tend to bring
alternatives movements together to design solutions, and Chapter 3 of Rob
Hopkins's Transition Handbook offers an excellent discussion of "why
rebuilding resilience is as important as cutting carbon emissions." The
Powerdown Project (www.powerdownproject.org) did focus at least partly on
disaster management. Indeed, nearly all of the individual elements of the
ten-step program laid out above exist in these and other plans. The virtue of
the Resilient Communities strategy as outlined here is that it puts those
elements together in a new framework that explicitly takes account of the
opportunities that crisis affords.
Transition and Relocalization projects tend to have a hopeful, upbeat,
attractive tone, and that is one of their virtues. By contrast, disaster
management is a sobering subject. Yet while hopeful visions are good and
necessary for motivating communities, the real future that is now unfolding is
one of crisis heaped upon crisis. Effective response strategies must respond
to the facts, however unattractive they may be from a marketing standpoint.
The Resilient Communities strategy faces harsh reality and makes the best
of it by using it strategically.
The point must be stressed: I don't mean to suggest that proactive plans to
alter energy consumption absent a crisis are a waste of effort, even if they
are unlikely to be fully implemented by "business-as-usual" policy makers.
The efforts of cities like Portland, Oakland, Willits, Totnes, and others
deserve to be celebrated and supported.
Moreover, while a Community Resilience Plan would seek to maximize the
opportunity that crisis affords, crisis management can only get us so far
toward our goal of reducing and redesigning the human economy so that it
does not degrade nature's carrying capacity. Broad-scale, proactive plans
are still essential. Once the crisis has hit, once other remedies have been
tried, once the Resilient Communities programs have been adopted, and
once "alternatives" begin to become mainstream, then the long-range plans
for redirecting economies toward true sustainability will become actionable.
Indeed, at every stage along the way we will need some sense of what a
sustainable society would actually look like and how we might bridge the
chasm between the present and that distant goal.
What's in it for people in the alternatives
movements?
Why should they go to the extra trouble? They are already engaged in
important efforts, and are probably overworked.
Folks in the alternatives movements have in many cases been toiling for
decades to research and promote sustainable practices. Where they have
tried to shape public policy, they may have found themselves ignored or
marginalized. The Resilient Communities strategy offers them more than a
soap box: it is a chance to use their knowledge and skills in service to
community during an imminent time of crisis. While previously they may
have found themselves adopting an oppositional or even confrontational
stance in relation to industry leaders and policy makers, this is a chance to
assume the role of representatives and protectors of the community. If the
strategy works, they will cease to be "alternative" and become the "new
normal."
What's in it for the officials?
Won't they just ignore or undermine the effort?
Most public officials will gladly sacrifice interests of the alternatives crowd
that conflict dramatically with those of the business community. But absent a
direct conflict, it is in the nature of politicians to try to keep everyone happy.
Resilient Community planning does not focus on conflicts between diverging
interests within the community; indeed, its main goal is to improve survival
prospects for everyone. If the effort is framed properly, officials should view
it as a gift—an aid in solving potential problems that may actually be looming
much closer than many politicians and business leaders currently realize is
the case.
Resilience in Ecosystems and
Economies
For those wishing to adopt the strategy outlined above, the use of the phrase
resilient community is not mandatory. Nevertheless, resilience has so many
useful implications that it may be useful to spend the remainder of this essay
unpacking and exploring a few.
There is a sizeable and edifying literature on the subject of resilience in
ecosystems; C. S. "Buzz" Holling is responsible for much of the pioneering
work in this regard. An introductory summary of some core ideas related to
ecological and economic resilience is contained in the entertaining essay,
"Diesel-Driven Bee Slums and Impotent Turkeys: The Case for Resilience,"
by Chip Ward.
Briefly, resilient systems are able to withstand higher magnitudes of
disturbance before undergoing a dramatic shift to a new condition in which
they are controlled by a different set of processes. Reducing resilience
increases vulnerability to smaller disturbances. From the website of the
Resilience Alliance (www.resalliance.org):
Even in the absence of disturbance, gradually changing conditions, e.g.,
nutrient loading, climate, habitat fragmentation, etc., can surpass threshold
levels, triggering an abrupt system response. When resilience is lost or
significantly decreased, a system is at high risk of shifting into a qualitatively
different state. The new state of the system may be undesirable, as in the
case of productive freshwater lakes that become eutrophic, turbid, and
depleted of their biodiversity. Restoring a system to its previous state can be
complex, expensive, and sometimes even impossible. Research suggests
that to restore some systems to their previous state requires a return to
environmental conditions well before the point of collapse.
The notion that human communities can benefit from fostering resilience is
far from new; when I did a Google search for "resilient communities" in
preparation for writing this article, over 80,000 hits came up, including
www.resilientcommunities.org—an inactive website related to an initiative in
the late 1990s by Northwest Regional Facilitators and the late economist
Robert Theobald). One other example worth noting: the UN has a "Resilient
Communities & Cities partnership" program, which aims to "increase the
resilience of a city or community to a range of shocks, crises, and disasters
including environmental emergencies, industrial accidents, outbreaks of
epidemics, economic shocks, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and social
conflict." I'll mention a few more examples at the end of this essay.
In their 1982 book Brittle Power, Amory and Hunter Lovins argued for the
decentralization of energy production in order to foster resilience.
More recently, David Fleming—the originator of Tradeable Energy Quotas
(www.teqs.net)—has written and spoken at some length about resilience in
the context of preparations for Peak Oil and Climate Change. With
Lawrence Woodward, Fleming has authored, "Transition, Resilience and
Tradeable Energy Quotas", in which he notes that a resilient community will
need to be "relatively small-scale" and "localized" so that:
* If one part is destroyed, the shock will not ripple through the whole
system.
* There is wide diversity of character and solutions developed
creatively in response to local circumstances.
* It can meet its needs despite the substantial absence of travel and
transport.
* The other big infrastructures and bureaucracies of the intermediate
economy are replaced by fit-for-purpose local alternatives at
drastically reduced cost.
Once these conditions are satisfied, new possibilities open up:
* Local closed systems conserving fertility and materials will become
feasible.
* Local energy production, distribution and storage can be established,
linked by local grids.
* Local social capital and culture can be rebuilt as a necessary
condition for the cooperation and reciprocities needed to achieve the
transition.
One quality of resilience is redundancy—which is often at odds with
economic efficiency. Standard economic theory tells us that if it is cheaper to
manufacture a particular widget in Malaysia than to do so locally, then all
such widgets should come from a factory in Kuala Lumpur. Efficiency
implies both long supply chains and the reduction of inventories to a
minimum. The "just-in-time" delivery of raw materials and parts for
manufacturing reduces costs—but it increases the vulnerability of systems
to fuel shortages.
As we pay more attention to resilience and less to economic efficiency, we
begin to see redundancy and larger inventories as benefits rather than
liabilities. Other resilience values include diversity (as opposed to
uniformity), dispersion (rather than centralization) of control over systems,
and, as already noted, the localization (versus globalization) of economies.
More notable "resilient communities" resources include:
* The organization RESET (Renewable
Energy/Shelter/Environment Training) in the UK (www.reset-
development.org) was recently established to increase
knowledge about climate change and Peak Oil outside the
OECD countries, and to provide training in practical measures
to foster resilience in the face of coming transitions to soaring
energy prices and rising temperatures.
* The University of British Columbia's Resilient Communities
Project, a collaboration of academics, First Nations peoples,
and government:
www.resilientcommunities.ca/
* The University of Minnesota project on Resilient Communities
* Ontario Healthy Communities Project's publication on Resilient
Communities
* Resilient Communities and Cities Coalition
* British Columbia's Disaster Resilient Communities Program
* ICLEI's Climate Resilient Communities Program
* The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation's program on
Creating Resilient Communities
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Re: This List is Too Busy...