BC's Green Juggernaut

I have been trying to understand the reasoning behind the recent announcement from Gordon Campbell on the Green Energy Advisory Task Force.

Campbell has included the "green" word to pretend this energy is clean and it will help with reducing BC' carbon footprint and fight global warming. If you read the News Releases about this Green Advisory Tasks Forces, it says they are “dedicated to ensuring BC remains a leader in clean and renewable energy”.

I am afraid that the core idea behind this Green Energy Advisory Task Force is for more economic growth in BC. And there is no question that there will be huge profits for a few corporations from the recommendations from this Task Force, unfortunately, the companies that will profit from all this will not necessarily be from BC, not even Canadian.

There are four task force groups, reporting directly to the Cabinet Committee on Climate Action and Clean Energy. These groups are:

1. Green Energy Advisory Task Force on Procurement and Regulatory Reform,
2. Green Energy Advisory Task Force on Carbon Pricing, Trading and Export Market Development,
3. Green Energy Advisory Task Force on Community Engagement and First Nations Partnerships, and
4. Green Energy Advisory Task Force on Resource Development

Boy, they know how to make very pompous, complicated titles, indeed!

No matter the way I read all this, I can’t see how these groups will make any improvement for the resiliency, or the sustainability, of this province. They don’t even use those terms, nor they mention anything about reducing our insatiable demand for more energy. To me, that should be priority numero uno for this Task Force.

As far as I understand it, Campbell is creating this "green machine" to justify more growth. For him, that is what progress means.

Let me share a few words from Dr. Richard Bruce Anderson that describes this situation very nicely. In his essay "Resisting the Juggernaut", he writes:

" the imperatives of growth and profit drive the behaviour of the whole system. Like a machine, the economy has all the awesome power of mechanism but also its inhuman indifference to consequences. The machine isn't evil, any more than a shovel or a hammer is evil, but it is complex enough to have its own agenda, which is not a human agenda. Because it's inhuman and because it has amassed so much power, it is, in mythic terms, the Juggernaut, beyond control, growing ever more vast and more destructive.
"To fulfill its simple imperatives for growth and profit, the machine must create insatiable desire. It must cause us to want more than we need, more than we've ever wanted before, and it must continue to do this forever in order to grow and generate profit.
"The influence of the machine is responsible for much of the psychic pain and dysfunction we encounter. Logic and reason have little effect on how it operates. To change our minds and hearts, the machine appeals to the worst aspects of human nature. Greed, pride, fear, sloth, lust --the deadly sins-- are the openings, the doors to demand for more products. The machine exaggerates the normal human tendency towards materialism. It encourages narcissism and self-indulgence. It displaces and subtly discredits healthy human attributes and practices such as compassion and thrift. The influence is more than sufficient to account for the malaise in society, in the same way that the physical effects of the machine's operation are sufficient to explain the destruction of the natural world."

He finishes the essay like this:

" and who's to say that nothing can be done, that we're helpless in the face of the Juggernaut? Our challenge in this time is to live with integrity, to face reality and to save and heal whatever we can"

What we need to understand is that Campbell has created this insatiable desire for more growth as his mantra, as his religion. He doesn’t get that there are actual limits to growth. And we need to stop him.

I expect that at least a few of the members of this Green Energy Advisory Task Force still have integrity, compassion, thrift, that they care for future generations, that they show their reverence for life, that they recognize there are limits to growth, and that they will have enough courage to stop this Green Juggernaut.

Breaking the Cycle

History has shown us that we have had an endless parade of Domination Cultures, meaning many Empires have come and gone. The key characteristics of an Empire are extreme arrogance, greed, lies, male supremacy and stupidity, driven by the belief that unlimited economic growth is possible. Being a conquistador has been a central component of humankind development, and still is.

Part of this Domination Culture is not caring about future generations, something that we may call intergenerational crime. Similarly, a domination culture doesn't care about trashing Nature, or annihilating many other species, and of course, any other culture. Worst of all, enforcing a new religion is frequently used as a legalization for these conquests. Fundamentalist religions still exist today and are at the core of many wars around the world.

These days we are seeing the beginning of the collapse of the present Domination Culture (call it the American Empire if you like). I could say the current Age of Stupid is coming to an end, and we are already seeing the early stages of the next Empires: the Chinese and the Indian...and a new cycle will begin with the same flaws and stupid behaviour.

Unknown and Wicked problems
Many of the problems we are experiencing have been known for years; we have been warned for a long time about them and have chosen to ignore them. Many other problems are known unknowns and there are other unknown unknowns, things we don’t even realize we don’t know. Obviously, when these type of problems become reality we have no idea what they are, nor what to do, and they hit us the hardest.

Now, the standard approach for solving problems is by using the same type of thinking, or same tools and technology, we used to create them. We always try to solve the symptoms; very rarely do we look for the root-cause of the problem. Examples include the economic bail outs to the banking system; or looking for alternative fuels to keep moving our cars. We should recall Einstein’s words: "We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

It is also very common to use a single-focus approach to solve problems, ignoring the inter-dependency they have.

To make it worse, many of the above problems, known or unknown, are also wicked problems, meaning very complex issues that have no standard solutions. A few characteristics for a wicked problem are:

- There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.
- Wicked problems have no definitive solution.
- There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
- Every (attempted) solution to a wicked problem has consequences that may trigger new problems.
- Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
- Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.
- The causes of a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways.

Many of the climate change problems are perfect samples of wicked problems. How many solutions that we have seen have caused new problems after they are implemented?

The Age of Consequences
The current Empire has caused so much damage in so many areas that we are already seeing that many social, economic and ecological systems are collapsing, and because none of these systems is independent, the synergetic result from these intertwined, failing systems is so massive that total collapse is inescapable. At the end of the Age of Stupid, we are now at the beginning of an Age of Consequences.

We are already seeing despair and suffering all over the world. Millions of people are experiencing terrible human conditions. Major corporations and financial systems are failing. Many ecosystems have deteriorated and many are dying because of the dramatic changes in the climate. Many species have become extinct and many more are at the verge of extinction. All these changes are causing tremendous impacts on the poorest countries in the world. Thousands of children in those countries don’t have access to basic things like water, food and shelter and are dying every day for starvation and illnesses.

At the same time there are millions of people still in denial, and are doing nothing more than waiting, or hoping, that all the problems will be solved by the governments, by divine intervention or by technological pipe dreams. Others still use the magical thinking approach of pretending everything is all right, and prefer the status quo.

Without a doubt, the current culture is blindly heading towards a cliff and many people are already taking the leap to the abyss, without knowing how deep it is. How come we fail to see that sometimes progress means taking a step backward?

All we know is that the collapse has indeed begun.

Can we break the cycle?
The situation looks quite awful, doesn't it? Are there any solutions? Can we still save this domination culture from self-destruction? Is it even worth it to try?

Maybe the best thing to do is just let it be. Maybe millions, or billions of humans need to vanish, for the sake of Earth and millions of other species to survive?

We cannot deny anymore the collapse is already happening, but we don’t gain anything by being worried and going into despair. No one can really predict how bad it will be, but many thinkers and scientists are telling us we all have to cope with major changes in our lifestyles, and that there is a high probability that the rich nations will be the ones that will have to change the most. We will need to give up many of the things we take for granted nowadays.

I have found a positive approach to take: instead of continuing to worry about collapse, accept that it is happening and then take action, in preparing myself, and others, to be able to adapt to the upcoming changes. We need to learn to be flexible. In other words, to become resilient.

Resilience is not about preventing change. It is about increasing our capacity to change and adapt. Resilience refers to a capacity for continuous renewal.

Taking this approach gives a new purpose or meaning to my daily life.

The concept of meaning for life became popular by Viktor E. Frankl in his book Man’s Searching for Meaning. Dr. Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist. He was sent to a Nazi concentration camp in 1942 with all his family. In 1945 he was liberated from the camp, but he was the only survivor in his immediate family. He then returned to Vienna and wrote many books with the main theme of suffering and he concluded that even in the most painful situation, life has meaning and even suffering is meaningful.

If Dr. Frankl was able to find meaning in suffering, I can find meaning in collapse, and this gives meaning to my life.

In other words, finding meaning in collapse tells me that, instead of continuing to fight the system (this civilization, this culture); instead of trying to bring it down; instead of trying to save the world; we could just try to be flexible, to yield and find a way to live alongside the failing system, without worrying about it anymore.

"Know when to yield to opposition, and you will overcome challenge" says Lao-Tzu.

If we follow this way we can make the transition to resilience: to a simpler, caring lifestyle and in community.

Working this way we may even break the perpetual cycle of Age of Stupid to Age of Consequences to Age of Stupid once again.

The new age could be called Age of Caring and Community.

Ranking Sustainability in a Small Community

The idea that all small, rural communities are sustainable, resilient and self-sufficient is not necessarily true.

Let me present the case of a few small communities in the West Coast of B.C., mainly in the Gulf Islands. I will rate the sustainability and self-sufficiency level of these communities using a simple exercise.

I will use the conventional categories Social, Economic and Ecological to group all the issues and opportunities.

For the Social component I will include food security, fresh water, health and education facilities, housing for all, waste and transportation. Maybe this is the weakest area of all for these islands, since we import the majority of our food; our fresh, underground water is limited; our health and education facilities are very limited; affordable housing is an never-ending issue; we export all our waste; public transportation is non-existent and the chances to have any is almost null, since our populations are so small that we don’t qualify for any provincial help in that area.

This means we are highly dependent on importing goods and services. At the same time, young families need to move to larger cities for higher grades of education for their children, and Seniors need to travel or move for medical reasons and other facilities and services lacking in the small islands.

The biggest concern is that many of these elements may be considered as "basic needs for survival".

On the other hand, we can also include in the Social area a very important component I like to call "the Caring Component". These are things like community spirit, spiritual and cultural feelings, sharing things and helping each other. Without a doubt, we are very strong in these matters.

The Economic component is also weak for these communities, since local industries and job opportunities are quite limited. The biggest industries are aquaculture and tourism. Forestry used to be very important, but it has decreased tremendously in the past few years. The problems with tourism are that it is not a year-round business and it causes some distress in many of these small communities during its peak Summer season.

The strongest economic component for these small islands may be the unpaid, or underground, local economy, mainly in the form of trading and volunteerism.

It is obvious the Ecological category is fairly well covered in these islands: we care a lot about Nature; we respect and try to protect the forest lands, ecosystems and other species; we have a fairly decent understanding of our inter-dependencies with Nature, and overall, those who live in these islands in a permanent basis try to have a small footprint.

However, if we also include the impacts of Climate Change in this category, the situation is a bit different, since we have a large carbon footprint as we produce lots of greenhouse gas emissions driving our cars and trucks everywhere; the lack of public transit; our ferries; the very large food-mileage of our food, and yes, many of us fly to warmer places in Winter.

Therefore, if want to grade the above components we may end with something like this:

For the Social component we get the following grades:
- Food security we get a D;
- Fresh water we get a C minus;
- Health and Education we get a C;
- Housing we get a B minus;
- Waste management we get a D;
- and for Transportation we get an F.

However, for Caring we get an A plus.

For the Economic component we get:
- Industries and Jobs, we get a C;
- Underground we get a B.

For the Ecological component we get:
- Nature we get an A;
- Climate Change we get a D.

This doesn’t look that good, does it? Overall, we have a failing grade and we can conclude these islands are not sustainable, not self-sufficient. At the same time, we can say we are Caring Communities.

Even if we want, there are physical limitations in these islands; there is no proper infrastructure for things like education, health and public transportation, and probably never will.

However, it is possible to work towards improving areas like food security by growing year-round food, to create alternative housing opportunities and to diversify our local industries and reduce our carbon footprint.

At the least, the above efforts will help to improve our resilience level.

Most of all, we need to understand and accept this truth, we need to recognize the need and urgency for change, and we need to start taking action… yesterday!

Creating a Resilient Community

Let me suggest couple of articles by Dave Pollard with the central theme of Creating a Resilient Community http:

//blogs.salon.com/0002007/2009/08/02.html#a2418

and

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2009/08/09.html#a2421

He talks about Intentional Communities, the Transition Movement, a new Natural Economy, and many more important, interesting points indeed...

Time to De-Grow !

Time to De-grow ? Yes indeed !

I know, De-grow sounds like a concept many of us are truly reluctant to even consider, it sounds so un-AmeriCanadian, right?

However, it makes so much sense. Economist Serge Latouche gives us his viewpoints in this short interview


The Biggest Shift from North to South: 'Time to De-Grow'

Q&A: Claudia Ciobanu interviews economist Serge Latouche

Published on Monday, August 3, 2009 by Inter Press Service


BUCHAREST - Serge Latouche, professor emeritus of economic science at the University of Paris-Sud, is one of the main proponents of "the society of de-growth".

He calls for "abandoning the objective of growth for growth's sake, an insane objective, with disastrous consequences for the environment." The need for a 'de-growth' society stems from the certainty, he says, that the earth's resources and natural cycles cannot sustain the economic growth which is the essence of capitalism and modernity.

In place of the current dominant system, Latouche argues for "a society of assumed sobriety; to work less in order to live better lives, to consume less products but of better quality, to produce less waste and recycle more."

The new society would mean "recuperating a sense of measure and a sustainable ecological footprint," Latouche says, "and finding happiness in living together with others rather than in the frantic accumulation of gadgets."

Author of many books and articles on Western rationality, the myth of progress, colonialism and post-development, Serge Latouche describes the main principles of the de-growth society in his books 'Le Pari de la Décroissance'(The Bet of De-Growth) and 'Petit Traité de la Décroissance Sereine" (Small Treaty of Peaceful De-Growth) published in 2006 and 2007.

Serge Latouche spoke to IPS correspondent Claudia Ciobanu about de-growth society.

IPS: What are the features of the society of de-growth, and are any practices in the world today compatible with this vision?
Serge Latouche: De-growth does not mean negative growth. Negative growth is a self-contradictory expression, which just proves the domination of the collective imagination by the idea of growth.

On the other hand, de-growth is not the alternative to growth, but rather, a matrix of alternatives which would open up the space for human creativity again, once the cast of economic totalitarianism is removed. The de-growth society would not be the same in Texas and in the Chiapas, in Senegal and in Portugal. De-growth would open up anew the human adventure to the plurality of its possible destinies.

Principles of de-growth can already be found in theoretical thought and in practical efforts in both the global North and the South. For example, the attempt to create an autonomous region by the neo-Zapatistas in Chiapas; and many South American experiences, indigenous or others, such as in Ecuador, which has just introduced in its constitution the objective of Sumak Kausai (harmonious life).

All sorts of initiatives promoting de-growth and solidarity are starting to spread in the global North too: AMAP (The Associations for the Preservation of Peasant Agriculture in France, that promote direct links between producers and consumers, and organic agriculture), self-production according to the example of PADES (the Programme for Self-Production and Social Development, developed in France to help individuals and communities produce goods for themselves and others, eliminating monetary interchanges).

The movement of Transition Towns started in Ireland and spreading in England could be a form of production from below which closest resembles a society of de-growth. These towns are seeking firstly energy self-sufficiency in the face of depleting resources and, more generally, promote the principle of community resilience.

IPS: What would be the role of markets in the de-growth society?
SL: The capitalist system is a market economy, but markets are not an institution which belongs exclusively to capitalism. It is important to distinguish between the Market and markets. The latter do not obey the law of perfect competition, and that is for the best. They always incorporate elements of the culture of the gift, which the de-growth society is trying to rediscover. They involve living in communion with the others, developing a human relationship between the buyer and the seller.

IPS: What strategies could the global South pursue in order to eliminate poverty in a different way than the North has, at the expense of the environment and producing poverty in the South?
SL: For African countries, decreasing the ecological footprint and the GDP are neither necessary nor desirable. But from this we must not conclude that a society of growth must be built there.

Firstly, it is clear that de-growth in the North is a precondition for opening up of alternatives for the South. As long as Ethiopia and Somalia are forced, during the worst food shortage, to export feed for our domestic animals, as long as we fatten our cattle with soya obtained after destroying the Amazonian forest, we are asphyxiating any attempt at real autonomy in the South.

To dare de-growth in the South means to launch a virtuous cycle made up of breaking economic and cultural dependency on the North; reconnecting with a historical line interrupted by colonisation; reintroducing specific products which have been abandoned or forgotten as well as "anti-economic" values linked to the past of those countries; recuperating traditional techniques and knowhow.

These are to be combined with other principles, valid worldwide: re- conceptualising what we understand by poverty, scarcity and development for instance; restructuring society and the economy; restoring non-industrial practices, especially in agriculture; redistributing; re-localising; reusing; recycling.

IPS: The de-growth society involves a radical change in human consciousness. How is this radical change going to come about? Can it happen in time?
SL: It is difficult to break out of this addiction to growth especially because it is in the interest of the "dealers" - the multinational corporations and the political powers serving them - to keep us enslaved.

Alternative experiences and dissident groups - such as cooperatives, syndicates, the associations for the preservation of peasant agriculture, certain NGOs, local exchange systems, networks for knowledge exchange - represent pedagogical laboratories for the creation of "the new human being" demanded by the new society. They represent popular universities which can foster resistance and help decolonise the imaginary.

Certainly, we do not have much time, but the turn of events can help accelerate the transformation. The ecological crisis together with the financial and economic crisis we are experiencing can constitute a salutary shock.

IPS: Can conventional political actors play a role in this transformation?
SL: All governments are, whether they want it or not, functionaries of capitalism. In the best of cases, the governments can at most slow down or smoothen processes over which they do not have control any more.

We consider the process of self-transformation of society and of citizens more important than electoral politics. Even so, the recent relative electoral success of French and Belgian ecologists, who have adopted some of the de- growth agenda, seems like a positive sign.

© 2009 Inter Press Service
URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/03-2

Green Shoots of Sustainability

A new research document called Green Shoots of Sustainability is available from the Transition Culture network.

This paper is truly interesting, it provides a fascinating snapshot of the Transition movement, and reveals a great deal about the character, origins, objectives, achievements, obstacles and more of the Transition groups working with this initiative.

A few excerpts from its introduction:

“The first UK Transition Town was Totnes, formed in autumn 2006 and by February 2009 there were 94 Transition Towns, Villages, Cities and Islands in the UK and a further 40 around the world, principally in Australia, New Zealand and the USA (ibid). The Transition movement has to date been very successful at replicating its model of community-led initiatives (Hopkins, 2008). In addition, Transition Network Ltd is a formally-constituted body which supports and coordinates activities among local groups (Hopkins and Lipman, 2009).

“Yet despite this phenomenal growth and the wave of positive publicity the movement has received, there has to date been very little empirical research into the development and character of these initiatives, or the impacts they have achieved and the barriers to be overcome. This information is vital for the continuing development of the movement, both for local Initiatives and for the Network and the movement as a whole. To address this need for knowledge, this report presents new empirical findings from the first survey of UK Transition Initiatives. It was a short survey which used open- and closed-ended questions to collect basic information about the origins, development, character and activities of the UK’s Transition Initiatives. The online survey was conducted during February 2009, with email invitations sent to coordinators of all 94 Transition initiatives in the UK. Two follow-up reminders were sent, and a total of 74 responses were attained (an outstanding response rate of 78.7%).”

The survey reveals several basic information about the movement, such as:
1. the main people and organizations involved in forming these Transition groups,
2. the diverse range of issued that are addressed by the transition initiatives,
3. the level of development and area of achievement of these initiatives, this is according to the 12 step guidelines provided by Rob Hopkins’ Transition Handbook,
4. the challenges they have faced

There is no doubt that the Transition Towns movement has become a major force for change to Resilience around the world. We just read in the past week that even the UK government has revealed their UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, where they talk about the Transition Towns movement.

To read and download this important document, visit the website:

http://transitionculture.org/2009/07/21/the-2009-transition-movement-survey-essential-reading/

Transition to Local Resilience

The Transition Towns initiative from Ireland is currently one of the most important worldwide movements towards resilience. This initiative was created by Rob Hopkins in 2005 when he was teaching Permaculture in Kinsale a small Irish town, and asked his students to draft an Energy Descent Plan (EDAP).

An EDAP is a local plan for dealing with the period leading up to and following Peak Oil. It is not a plan for how to live in a sustainable world. It is a plan for the transitional period of decreasing energy — how to get to that sustainable world. It goes well beyond issues of energy supply, to look at across-the-board creative adaptations in the realms of health, education, economy and much more. An EDAP is a way to think ahead, to plan in an integrated, multidisciplinary way, to provide direction to local government, decision makers, groups and individuals with an interest in making the place they live into a vibrant and viable community in a post-carbon era.

Hopkins continued developing this idea and became the Transition Towns initiative. He wrote “The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to Local Resilience”, he created the Transition Culture website at http://transitionculture.org/ and the rest is history.

His site has many important articles on different transition projects from all over the world. A good set they have post in the past few weeks comes from the town of Totnes, on their Insights on Resilience from the History of Totnes. These are the links to the series:

1. Back garden on food production
http://transitionculture.org/2009/07/07/insights-on-resilience-from-the-recent-history-of-totnes-1-back-garden-food-production/

2. The Market Gardens
http://transitionculture.org/2009/07/08/insights-on-resilience-from-the-recent-history-of-totnes-2-the-market-gardens/

3. Local Farmers and the Town's Markets
http://transitionculture.org/2009/07/08/insights-on-resilience-from-the-recent-history-of-totnes-3local-farmers-and-the-towns-markets/

4. Shopping
http://transitionculture.org/2009/07/10/insights-on-resilience-from-the-recent-history-of-totnes-4-shopping/

Also from Totnes, they have a new report entitled "Can Totnes and District Feed Itself: Exploring the practicalities of food relocalisation"
http://transitionculture.org/2009/07/10/announcing-the-release-of-can-totnes-and-district-feed-itself/ Quite interesting !

It seems to me that in our present difficult times, making a transition to local resilience is becoming a matter of survival for many small towns and cities around the world and the Transition Town model is a good one to follow.

Portraits of Resilience

Now that climate change is causing severe damages to many cities and communities around the world, the concepts of resilience, vulnerability and adaptation are more important than ever. Many organizations are working in helping people in dealing with these threats.

The most disturbing thing is that climate change is already causing severe damage to poor and vulnerable people, who have the fewest resources to prepare and plan for the impacts, and have very few resources to respond and adapt. Several of them are already climate refugees.

Here in Canada, we have no idea how fortunate we are in this perspective. Our main environmental worries seem so trivial when we compare them against the impacts on those poor countries.

There are many groups and organizations reporting on how climate change is already affecting critical areas like agriculture, food security, health, housing around the world. The main focus for respond to climate change is now adaptation.

For instance, check this news on what is happening in Bangladesh:
http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0902/full/climate.2009.3.html

And check these groups working on these matters:

The Rockefeller Foundation : Climate Changer Resilience:
http://www.rockfound.org/initiatives/climate/climate_change.shtml

Climate Resilient Cities:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/0,,contentMDK:21845641~pagePK:146736~piPK:226340~theSitePK:226301,00.html"

Resilience Alliance, Resilience Assessment:
http://www.resalliance.org/3871.php

The Coastal Community Resilience Guide (particularly important !)
http://www.crc.uri.edu/download/CCRGuide/lowres.pdf

Community and Regional Resilience Institute:
http://www.resilientus.org/publications/reports.html

Resilience in British Columbia, Canada

After the recent provincial elections we had in BC, I am afraid we are really heading towards major problems of unsustainability. The Liberal party was re-elected, their main goal is keep the unlimited economic growing. No matter what.

Since the term sustainable development was coined more than 30 years ago, our culture has become anything but sustainable. It seems like on purpose we have gone exactly in the opposite way. I have said before that we, as a culture, have failed to understand and to practice sustainability. This term was coined in the 1987 Our Common Future report as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

I think the fundamental mistake was we misread needs for wants. The situation in BC, and mainly with the Liberal party, is exactly the same as with their unlimited economic growth mantra. This is a recipe for systemic failure; its unavoidable consequences are resource depletion, production of waste, pollution, ecological collapse, climate change; it is destroying many BC ecosystems and it is making the whole province highly vulnerable.

Sustainable economic growth is an oxymoron. It implies maintaining the same growth, without change. Something that is entirely impossible. In a sense, it seems we humans fear change, without realizing that life itself is a continuous change, but we choose to pursue an impossible static state. Life and all ecosystems are in a endless adapting cycle: growth, collapse (change), adaptation, renovation and back to growth.

This is where Resilience enters. Resilience accepts that change is a given. Resilience is about continuous renewal: in our behaviours, in our homes, in our communities. Resilience is about being able to understand and adapt to the never ending changing cycles of life. Everything is always changing: the food, water, forests, air, climate systems.

For instance, because of the changes in climate, food systems are facing constant changes through droughts, floods, disease. Having a resilient food system will include growing diverse local food, supporting our local growers, adjusting our diet for seasonal, local foods.

Similar situation exists to have a resilient water system. In the case of island communities, first of all, we need to know how much groundwater we have; we need to plan for collecting rainwater; we need to set gray water treatment systems; we need to ensure our wells are protected against saltwater intrusion. At the same time, we need to evaluate the level of vulnerability from coastal hazards like sea level rising, storms, coastal erosion and more.

A few characteristics of a resilient water system would be:

Diversity. We need different systems. We should not rely on a single source for freshwater. A single system is a point of failure and makes us very vulnerable.

Redundancy. Besides diversity, it is necessary to have backup systems. For instance if we are only depending on groundwater, when our wells go dry, or when we have a major power failure, we are out of luck.

Decentralization. One central system is vulnerable for failure and it affects everyone depending on that system. A system with multiple, diverse, sources of freshwater is much more resilient.

Transparency. Do not make our systems a secret. Transparency will make it easier to find out where a problem may lie. Sharing our plans makes an open system.

Flexibility. Be ready to change the system when things are not working the way we expected. All systems should be nimble, easy to repair, and to improve.

Foresight. We cannot predict the future. But we can see the signs when a system may have problems. It is required to have good problem determination procedures to facilitate repairs.

In our current times of so many rapid changes, to our social systems, our ecological systems and our economic systems, resilience will help us to deal with these changes, to adjust to them, and in many cases, even to learn and co-evolve with them.

We need to accept that unlimited economic growth will only make things worse, much worse. We need to think, and practice, resilience.

Chasing sustainability has become a fool's errand

The following text is from a lecture that Ian Gill gave to the UBC Sauder School of Business' "Chasing Sustainability Conference" on March 12, 2009, in Vancouver.

March 13, 2009

"Sustainability has become a largely meaningless idea," Ecotrust Canada President Ian Gill tells a UBC Sauder School of Business conference, "and chasing it has become a fool’s errand." Given recent catastrophic events, we should reframe the debate around resilience.

According to Wikipedia, “sustainability has become a complex term that can be applied to almost every facet of life on Earth” – which is a problem. It has mostly lost its meaning.

Twenty years ago, in 1989, the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) articulated what has now become a widely accepted definition of sustainability: "[to meet] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

I think a more useful framework to use is a definition of resilience.

Like sustainability, there are lots of those, but the one I like most is one that Thomas Homer-Dixon used at a conference in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago. He said:

Resilience is the capability to withstand shock without catastrophic failure.
That’s something that seems rather more pertinent to our times than “sustainability.”

With all due respect to our conference sponsors, I would suggest that the world has been “chasing sustainability” for 20 years at least, since the Brundtland Commission, and in some cases long before that – and we have mostly been chasing our tails. Sustainability has become a largely meaningless idea, and chasing it has become a fool’s errand.

Instead, I would argue that like it or not, we are now challenged with discovering resilience. Where are we going to find, or rediscover, the capability to withstand shock without catastrophic failure? Rediscover, because I would submit that First Nations communities that have weathered the shocks of the past 150 years can teach us a great deal about resilience.

So, where are we going to find the capacity for resilience? Other than in First Nations, I’m not actually sure where to look but I know where not to look: on Wall Street, Bay Street, or Howe Street. In Washington, in Ottawa, in Victoria. The fact is that the world is undergoing a spectacular system failure right now, because we became so enthralled by a system, an economy, that was ever more distant from the natural economy – that we overshot.

On almost every measure we can muster, we have overshot. Consumption. Debt. Resource extraction. Debt. Population. Debt. Pollution. Debt. Sprawl. Debt. Emissions. Debt. Bailouts. Debt. Debt. Debt.

I believe we are now in a sort of global debtor’s prison. Nature didn’t put us there. We did. Governments did. Corporations did. Hundreds of thousands of people in North America alone have lost their jobs in the first quarter of 2009. Why? Is the world, is the Earth, is Nature really physically that much different than in was in the first quarter of 2008? Is there that much less soil to be tilled or oil to be spilled? Of course not.

The natural system hasn’t changed much in the past year – but the social systems have. We’ve stopped believing in one of our own creations – the economy.

So, if we have lost faith in the casino economy, let’s use our human ingenuity to build a conservation economy. This is the underlying idea of Ecotrust. We believe in information democracy, the democratization of credit, creating jobs and protecting the environment, new triple-bottom line financial institutions like Chicago’s Shorebank and our own Ecotrust Canada Capital, which has lent $12 million and leveraged another $38 million for BC businesses. We are looking at new ways of valuing ecosystems beyond cutting trees. How do we monetize the natural economy in a way that recognizes complexity, and doesn’t reduce it to simplistic commodities?

Let me return to the theme of debt for a moment. Debt is not all bad.

A confession. I’m a kind of wannabe-banker. I get to hang out with them sometimes. We have partnered with Shorebank whose mission is social advancement in marginalized inner city neighbourhoods. I’m also a director on the board of Vancity. We specialize in debt. But not debt at any cost.

Vancity is a credit union. A cooperative. Here’s what consumer advocate Ralph Nader recently had to say about credit unions in the United States:

While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism.

Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer people "teaser rates" to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford. Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are responsible to their owner-members who are their customers. According to Mike Schenk, an economist with the Credit Union National Association, credit unions are ‘portfolio lenders. That means they hold in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those loans.’

The cooperative model, whether in finance, food, housing or any other sector of the economy, does best when the owner-cooperators are active in the general operations and directions of their co-op.

There are very contemporary lessons to be learned from the successes of the credit union model such as being responsive to consumer loan needs and down to earth with their portfolios. Yet in all the massive media coverage of the Wall Street barons and their lethal financial escapades, crimes and frauds, little is being written about how the regulation, philosophy and behavior of the credit unions largely escaped this catastrophe.

So we can learn from alternative economic models like credit unions and cooperatives. But we also need to learn from the past. From Aboriginal communities, in terms of resilience. And, from our mistakes.

Ronald Wright is the author of A Short History of Progress. He points out that while we are descendants of apes, in the past three million years we have been shaped less and less by nature, and more and more by culture. And that’s not such a good thing:

We have become experimental creatures of our own making. This experiment has never been tried before. And we, its unwitting authors, have never controlled it. The experiment is now moving very quickly and on a colossal scale. Since the early 1900s, the world’s population has multiplied by four and its economy – a rough measure of the human load on nature – by more than forty. We have reached a stage where we must bring the experiment under rational control … it is entirely up to us. If we fail – if we blow up or degrade the biosphere so it can no longer sustain us – nature will merely shrug and conclude that letting the apes run the laboratory was fun for a while but in the end a bad idea.

Consider the words of George Monbiot in The Guardian:

“Without radical action, we will be the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?”

Or finally, the words of that other guy, Ian Gill:

“Without radical action, will we – will you – be the generation that chased sustainability, and yet threw away the key to the debtor’s prison that you inherited, because with all your education and ingenuity, it’s a prison you never figured out how to escape from?”

Source is from www.ecotrust.ca/chasingsustainability

Resilient Community Economics

It is very interesting to notice the shift in the news about the economic crisis and climate change. More and more, people are talking about finding ways of adapting to all the changes already happening, instead of talking about preventing these crises, or preventing and fixing them with pipe dream repairs.

This tells me that we are finally accepting that many of our current systems are vulnerable and are failing, that we cannot continue living the same way, that we need to change.

Of course, there are still many people that keep on ignoring this reality and prefer the illusion that everything is all right. Eventually, those people will have to face reality and they may suffer much more, because they will be ill-prepared for it.

The idea of adapting ourselves, our cities, our communities for these imminent changes is nothing else but building our resilience.

Home-grown or community economics provides alternatives to help with building local resilience in small communities. For instance:

1. Local bartering and local currencies. This is not a new idea. Many cities in Switzerland, USA, Britain, Argentina, Brazil have their own local currencies, accepted by banks and businesses. Even in Canada, there are a few examples in BC. Actually, the now famous LETS, Local Employment Trading System, was first developed in the Comox Valley by Michael Linton in early 1983. He designed a simple accounting system whereby account holders could purchase goods and services, in whole or in part, by transferring accounting points from their account into that of the seller. Linton labelled the accounting points "green dollars" after his vision of the environmental and social benefits that would follow general use of the system. More than 3,000 communities around the world are now using LETS.

2. Co-ops. All sort of co-ops have been working with tremendous success for many years around the world and they are now becoming popular at a local level. From car co-ops to food co-ops and farmer markets to housing and more.

3. Micro-financing. People-to-people lending and microfinance projects are booming in many countries. For instance, Women's World Banking, Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, now emulated in many countries, FINCA and ACCION in Latin America. Credit unions in Canada are becoming more proactive by helping poor people, lending to small businesses and social enterprises which meet social needs while making modest profits.

4. Time-banking. Time banking, a brainchild of Edgar Cahn in the USA is now helping local people connect and share services in Japan, Europe and other countries. Economist Hazel Henderson says: “Neighbours contact each other via a local "time banker" to provide meals and help for shut-ins, baby-sit each other's children, watch over property, mow lawns and share appliances. Car-sharing has now spawned many new companies such as Zip Car in the USA and others in Canada and Europe where people can make ride arrangements rapidly on Blackberrys and laptops.”

The majority of these community economics alternatives are not based on a monetary system. The most important goal is to bypass the greedy banking system and find ways to become resilient by ourselves. Henderson again: “In rural areas in Florida, radio stations have call-in programs where farmers can say ‘I have spare time on my tractor to exchange for fertilizer or pepper, melon, eggplant seeds. The farmer gives her phone number and the trades are exchanged off-line.”

The most important thing about the above alternatives is that they are already working in many places. They are not pipe dream fixes, nor they are depending on governments to lead the way. They are community-based solutions; it is confirmed they work, and yes, they will help in building our community resilience.


Next time: building resilience to climate change!

What a Resilient World Might Look Like

I am afraid we don’t have a good understanding of what a resilient world would look. We talk about the need to slow economic growth, to recognize natural limits, to re-localize ourselves, to reduce our overall consumerism and more, in order to be resilient, to be sustainable. But overall, it is difficult to picture a resilient world.

Brian Walker, author of “Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World“, offers the following visions or values for what a resilient world might look like:

1. DIVERSITY. A resilient world would promote biological, landscape, social and economic diversity. Diversity is a major source of future options and of a system's capacity to respond to change.

2. ECOLOGICAL VARIABILITY. A resilient world would embrace and work with ecological variability (rather than attempting to control and reduce it). A forest that is never allowed to burn loses its fire-resistant species and becomes very vulnerable to fire.

3. MODULARITY. A resilient world consists of modular components. When over-connected, shocks are rapidly transmitted through the system - as a forest connected by logging roads can allow a wild fire to spread wider than it would otherwise.

4. ACKNOWLEDGING SLOW VARIABLES. A resilient world would have a policy that focus on “slow,” controlling variables associated with thresholds. By focusing on the key slow variables that configure a social-ecological system, and the thresholds that lie along them, we have a greater capacity to manage the resilience of a system.

5. TIGHT FEEDBACKS. A resilient world possesses tight feedbacks (but not too tight). Feedbacks allow us to detect thresholds before we cross them. Globalization is leading to delayed feedbacks that were once tighter. For example, people of the developed world receive weak feedback signals about the consequences of their consumption.

6. SOCIAL CAPITAL. A resilient world promotes trust, well developed social networks and leadership (adaptability). Individually, these attributes contribute to what is generally termed "social capital," but they need to act in concert to effect adaptability - the capacity to respond to change and disturbance.

7. INNOVATION. A resilient world places an emphasis on learning, experimentation, locally developed rules, and embracing change. When rigid connections and behaviors are broken, new opportunities open up and new resources are made available for growth.

8. OVERLAP IN GOVERNANCE. A resilient world has institutions that include "redundancy" in their governance structures and a mix of common and private property with overlapping access rights. Redundancy in institutions increases the diversity of responses and the flexibility of a system. Because access and property rights lie at the heart of many resource-use tragedies, overlapping rights and a mix of common and private property rights can enhance the resilience of linked social-ecological systems.

9. ECOSYSTEM SERVICES. A resilient world would include all the unpriced ecosystem services – such as carbon storage, water filtration and so on - in development proposals and assessments. These services are often the ones that change in a regime shift – and are often only recognized and appreciated when they are lost.

We can use the above vision to start drafting our own version of such a world. It shouldn’t be that difficult. And for our own sake, and for the future of our children and grandchildren, we better start working on building such a resilient world.

Assessing Community Resilience

I think it is very important to start evaluating the resilience of our communities, so we can understand how vulnerable we are towards all the upcoming changes. With this in mind, let me share a possible model for doing this, developed here in BC.

Starting in 1998, the Community Resilience Project was set by the Centre for Community Enterprise, out of Port Alberni, BC. The origins of the project lie in the concerns of BC’s small, resource-dependent communities. The main goal of the project was to develop a conceptual framework and process through which resource-dependent communities could work to strengthen their local resilience. In 2000 they delivered the Community Resilience Model to assist communities with assessing their resilience.

They define a resilient community as “one that takes intentional actions to enhance the personal and collective capacity of its citizens and institutions to respond to and influence the course of social and economic change.”

Their model has four interconnected dimensions: people, organizations, resources and community process. Each dimension has a set of resilience characteristics, for a grand total of 23 characteristics. They say these characteristics are not exhaustive, but they have proven to be strongly predictive in assessing resilience.

The following are the resilience characteristics for each one of the dimensions:

Resilient People
- Leadership is representative of the community
- Elected community leadership is visionary, shares power, and builds consensus
- Community members are involved in significant community decisions
- The community feels a sense of pride
- People feel optimistic about the future of the community
- There is a spirit of mutual assistance and co-operation in the community
- People feel a sense of attachment to their community
- The community is self-reliant and looks to itself and its own resources to address major issues
- There is a strong belief in and support for education at all levels

Resilient Resources
- Employment in the community is diversified beyond a single large employer
- Major employers in the community are locally owned
- The community has a strategy for increasing independent local ownership
- There is openness to alternative ways of earning a living and economic activity
- The community looks outside itself to seek and secure resources (skills, expertise, and finance) that will address identified areas of weakness
- The community is aware of its competitive position in the broader economy

Resilient Organizations

-There are a variety of community economic development (CED) organizations in the community such that the key CED functions are well-served

-Organizations in the community have developed partnerships and collaborative working relationships

Resilient Community Process
-The community has a community economic development plan that guides its development
- Citizens are involved in the creation and implementation of the community vision and goals
- There is on-going action towards achieving the goals in the CED Plan
- There is regular evaluation of progress towards the community’s strategic goals
- Organizations use the CED Plan to guide their actions
- The community adopts a development approach that encompasses all segments of the population

Using the above framework, they developed the Community Resilience Manual that describes a process to help communities with assessing their resilience level. The process has 3 major steps, first it drafts a portrait of community resilience, then establishes community priorities and lastly, it selects strategies and tools to decide actions to improve the community resilience.

The Community Resilience Manual is available, free of charge, in the Centre for Community Enterprise website at www.cedworks.com

Building Resilience

In these days of uncertainty and crises, I am quite worried about the future of my grandchildren. Not one day goes by without bad news on the economy, the ecology, or the social scene. It seems as if everything is having a breakdown: the problems from climate change keep worsening day by day; poverty and epidemics are rampant in the poorest countries, where thousands of children die each day for lack of water, food or medicine; and in the wealthy countries, millions of people are losing their jobs, their homes, their way of living.

Trying to make sense of all this is not easy. I often have the ugly feeling no one really knows what is happening. I’ve found that taking a systems thinking approach helps me to make some sense. This is a complex matter, let me share some basic concepts.

A system is a group of interacting, interrelated and interdependent components that form a complex and unified whole. Systems are everywhere -the respiratory system in our body, the banking system, a forest ecosystem, and a health care system. There are many ecological (ecosystems), economic, and social systems. Many of these systems have very close interrelationships and have an effect on each other in many ways. At times this effect is positive, and at other times negative.

All systems have a natural adaptive cycle with 3 main phases: growth, collapse, regeneration, and back to growth. Looking at the way a forest works, we can see an example of the adaptive cycle concept: it stays in a growth phase for many years, then for natural causes reaches its limit (i.e.: a fire, a pine beetle outbreak), collapses, regenerates itself and starts a new cycle.

At the same time that many systems are interdependent and working together, no adaptive cycle exists in isolation. For instance, in his book, The Upside of Down, Thomas Homer-Dixon says, “above the forest's cycle is the larger and slower-moving cycle of the regional ecosystem, and above that, in turn, is the even slower cycle of global biogeochemical processes, where planetary flows of materials and elements-like carbon-can be measured in time spans of years, decades, or even millennia. Below the forest's adaptive cycle, on the other hand, are the smaller and faster cycles of sub-ecosystems that encompass, for instance, particular hillsides or streams.”

What seems to be happening now is that many systems are at the end of their growth phase, almost at the same time, and in many cases we are forcing to artificially over-extend their growth phase. For instance, with the attitude of business-as-usual and the economic bailouts we are trying to extend the growth phase for some systems that are at the end of that phase. By doing this, these systems are getting more complex and highly vulnerable, and no matter what, these systems will eventually collapse in a major breakdown.

Now, when several interconnected systems are at the end of their growth phase at the same time, the overall vulnerability level is very high and the risk of a deep collapse, or synchronous failure, is extreme. A few of the systems with a high vulnerability level are the financial system, the global food system, many ecosystems, the housing system. Several authors have suggested that many of these signs of a potential global collapse are similar to what happened during the collapse of the Roman, the Mayan, the Easter Island civilizations.

The bottom line is that we are facing dramatic system changes, in the economic, social and ecological areas, and we better accept this fact and be ready for them.

Adopting an attitude of resiliency and building resilience is a way that will help us in this transition.

Many systems are currently in a high level of vulnerability. A system is vulnerable to the extent that it is not resilient.

We can say that vulnerability and resilience are two sides of the same coin. We have the opportunity to build resilience in those systems critical to our well being; like food, water, and energy systems. ”

My old Webster’s dictionary defines resilience as “the ability to recover rapidly, as from misfortune: buoyancy.

In an ecological context, resilience is defined as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure.”

The Community Resilience Project Team says, a resilient community “intentionally develop personal and collective capacity of its citizens and institutions to respond to and influence the course of social and economic change.”

I personally like the last definition, because it not only involves all members in a community, but it also says we can influence the course of the change. As Richard Heinberg says “it’s no longer about saving the planet but rather, cooperating with the changes the planet is forcing upon us.”

Building resilience is key to avoiding the synchronous failure. And by building resilience in our systems, the collapse phase may be less violent and disruptive.

Resilience is not about staying the same, nor is it about preventing change. It is about increasing our capacity to change and adapt.

A shorter definition I like says resilience refers to a capacity for continuous reconstruction.

In practical terms, building resilience will mean actions like:

- Working on localization efforts in our communities

- Working on local foods programs via small-scale agricultural systems that build on the knowledge of farmers and local communities

- Curtailing all our consumerism

- Reducing the size of our families

- Having a diversity of land use: farms, community gardens, aquaculture, forests, and orchards

- Promoting local industries

- Supporting the concepts of sharing goods and services, co-ops, collective industries, trading

- Investing in off-the-grid, community-owned renewable energy systems

- Relearning old skills: repair things; raising livestock; cheese making; wild food and medicines

- Working together for common community causes, without being afraid of making mistakes

- Thinking in opportunities and solutions, instead of problems

- Stop whining and take action

Let us accept that the Era of Exuberance and Procrastination is over, and we are in the beginning of the Era of Consequences.

The future of my grandkids looks gloomy, but reason tells me we can still turn those consequences into opportunities for making that transition into something better. Let us start working, today, in building resilience in our systems.

To learn more about Resilience, check these resources:

Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems by C.S. Holling.

The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon.

Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World by Brian Walker.

The Transition Handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience by Rob Hopkins.

Ecology and Society magazine. They offer many free online articles. Check their website at www.ecologyandsociety.org

Resilience Alliance. Probably the most comprehensive site on the subject. Check their website at www.resalliance.org/1.php