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.
-
