Transition Derby

A Transition Initiative working alongside a local authority represents a considerable opportunity for developing sustainability.

Transition Towns – The Beginnings

The Transition Town phenomenon arose primarily from a union of twin threats of Peak
Oil and Climate Change. Transition Initiatives (TI) hope to drive a community led transition from being a fossil fuel dependent, high CO2 emitting society to one having lower carbon emissions and lower oil dependency. In doing so, our society will become more:

• resilient to external shocks and threat,
• able to meet more of their needs locally,
• tackle climate change by decarbonising -
  using less carbon-based fuels
• adapt to climate change (by becoming
  more resilient).

There are now hundreds of communities, not just towns (including cities, villages, hamlets, islands, even forests) both in the UK and in other parts of the world that have decided to apply this approach and are in the process of becoming a Transition Initiative. To respond to the demand, a Transition Network has been set up to inspire, encourage, support, and train Transition Initiatives all over the world.

Key Steps to the Transition Process

The following steps are considered by the Transition Network as being pivotal to successful implementation of a Transition Process:

• Set up a Coordinating Group: to coordinate the local process.
• Raise Awareness: Spend time and effort letting people know about:
  
  • The problem (Peak Oil, energy uncertainty, climate change, lack of resilience, etc.)
  • How the TI group and its process can help
• Laying the Foundations: There will already be environmental activities going on locally. These individuals, businesses and organisations need to be included in the TI
• Set up Themed Working Groups: Each tackling a different aspect of life that will be affected by Peak Oil, e.g. Energy, Food, etc., identifying actions and projects that will improve resilience
• Shared Community Vision: identified by involving as many people as possible. Whilst it will never be necessarily ‘agreed’, it will provide a reference point for the group’s work
• Develop Practical Visible Outcomes: groups should develop actions that yield visible results, to help raise awareness and recruit more people into the process
• Facilitate the ‘Great Re-skilling’: Resilience meansRelocalisation which involves relying on community resources. Communities need to learn, or relearn, many skills that not so long ago we would have used daily
• Build a Bridge to Local Government: TIs will need to forge strong links with its local town, county or borough council, where considerable expertise and support exists across different departments
• ‘Honour the Elders’: Working on the fact that older people were alive before the ‘addiction’ to oil got going, they hold a key to rediscovering how communities work with less carbon
• Use Existing Energies: Change only happens where concern or interest makes it happen. Small communities may have one or two themed groups but all contributions are important
• Create an Energy Descent Action Plan: All of the above steps, particularly the work of the themed groups, will culminate in the preparation of an EDAP (or EDP). This commonly lists actions and ideas that the process (and its themed groups) have identified as necessary to increase the communities resilience and decarbonise over a period of 20 to 30 years.

Whilst many TIs are still beginning their work, typically the kind of actions being developed
by UK TIs include: car sharing, allotments, composting, DIY solar clubs, energy efficiency, seed saving, reskilling evening courses, local food schemes, local currency, local market, energy efficient light bulb library, micro brewery, school walking bus, municipal or public space crops. Many others are being developed.

Key Points to Remember when working with a TI

Fundamental Aims: of a TI is to improve resilience and reduce carbon use in its community. Resilience over Sustainability: not all actions being undertaken in pursuit of sustainable development will necessarily add to a community’s ability to withstand external shocks (e.g. centrally, or nationally organised recycling does little to improve a community’s resilience - the TI perspective would want to see local reuse or recycling of waste etc.). However all the actions developed by a TI will typically contribute towards sustainable development.

Autonomy: the 12 steps above are not intended to be prescriptive, neither is there any
single starting point. Most TIs adapt the process to meet their own situation.
Project Support: the local TI typically does not ‘own’ solutions or prescribe what
should be done. Rather, they are a catalyst or banner under which like-minded activities in
the community can emerge, develop and be supported by one another.
Positive over Negative: One reason why TIs have become so popular is the alternative, more positive approach to the problem of climate change. Climate change is perceived in terms of long term, intangible and global effects involving sacrifices to solve. The TI approach is very practical and solutions orientated which focuses on tangible improvements to local quality of life and
so seems to present a more positive and constructive way of tackling climate change.
In between Government and Individual: By focusing on ‘community’, TIs inhabit an important space between government, (that is often perceived to ‘act too slowly’) and individuals (who may feel too insignificant to make change).
Inevitability of Change: Whether change is considered desirable (to tackle climate change) or unavoidable (to address Peak Oil) TIs work from the point of view that change is inevitable. Climate change makes transition imperative, Peak Oil makes it inevitable; therefore it makes sense to plan.
Precautionary Principle: A TI represents a very good example of the precautionary principle at work and underlines the public’s willingness to see actions towards sustainable development
take place.
Filling the Vacuum: For many participants, it is a response to a feeling of powerlessness and frustration that more isn’t happening, or being seen to happen nationally to address the challenges of climate change and societal breakdown.
An Open-ended Process: Whilst much energy and creativity exists within TIs they are run by volunteers with other responsibilities, so timetables and expectations will be prone to alteration which can be frustrating to paid officers.
Support, not Control: Local government can play a key role in helping TIs achieve all they are capable of. However, in delivering this support, it is important for the authority to remember that the TI remains the driving force behind the process.

Relationship to Local Authorities

The relationship between a TI and a local authority , needs to be handled very sensitively. From the TIs point of view, a local authority may be perceived with suspicion or as a stumbling block and it may not appreciate the breadth of ways in which an authority can help or support them. From an authoritiy’s perspective, a TI may appear unpredictable or unrealistic in its activities and aspirations.
Corporate and Departmental Objectives of the Authority: Many, if not all of a TIs activities, aims or objectives could be very similar to those of your own authority. For example, TIs aim to improve local economic, social and environmental resilience and decarbonise by building or improving local economic and social activity that is based on the use of local resources, skills and products and protecting local environmental resources. Typically, they seek to do this by: reducing their carbon footprint by lessening their dependence upon fossil fuels, including as many people as possible in the process of determining the future of the community; building and enhancing peoples skills and abilities, and working with other groups or agencies whenever appropriate. A successful TI would, therefore, result in a community and a population that is more adaptable to change; that possess more skills, abilities and civic cohesion; that reduces or reuses waste; and meets increasing amounts of its own needs. Other indirect effects may well include better physical and mental health and healthier diets.
Community Strategy – Opportunities and Overlaps Local Vision - the Statutory Guidance on Developing and Delivering Community Strategies contains numerous opportunities and potential overlaps for a local authority working with a TI. For instance, the three aims for a Community Strategy identified in the Local Vision correlate with those of a TI.  All of the activities of a TI
can, therefore, be interpreted as contributing towards these aims, in some way or another. The most significant difference lying in the desired endpoint – improved service delivery
for an authority and improved resilience for a TI.

Climate Change and Carbon Reduction

A Role for Local Government - The Government’s Climate Change Act 2008 has set legally binding targets to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and reductions of at least 26% of carbon dioxide against a 1990 baseline. This last target will be reviewed shortly to reflect the 2050 target of an 80% cut in greenhouse gas emissions.

A Role for Transition Initiatives - Decarbonising their communities is fundamental to any TI. As such, they will provide an important ally for any climate change or carbon reduction activity that the local authority may initiate and could be in a position to contribute towards achieving the authority’s targets in areas such as energy efficiency, fuel poverty, and even traffic reduction. For example, a number of TIs have developed or used Carbon Auditing procedures (such as Community Carbon Foot-printing etc.) within their community. Opportunities for trialing new approaches, schemes and partnership working are therefore considerable.

Sustainable Development

Whist actions towards sustainable development do not necessarily add to an individual community’s resilience, the opposite is often true. For example: In the process of becoming more resilient, TIs aim to lessen dependence upon oil and other fossil fuels and the products they include. By doing this, they will be substituting it with local, more readily available (and usually more renewable) resources and materials such as human effort, recycling, reusing or repairing waste materials and trying to use less. Almost by definition, these kind of activities, especially if they are in lieu of fossil fuels, will contribute towards the aims of sustainable development. In addition, the TI process is also proving to be a powerful way to engage people in the challenge of addressing sustainable development and tackling climate change.

Emergency Planning

Opportunities for collaboration between Authorities Emergency Planning or Resilience Teams and TIs would enable TIs to learn from local government risk scenarios. TIs could likewise contribute to Emergency Planning functions through their resilience focus and community links, e.g. by helping to prepare community responses.

Individual Departments

TIs aim is to address all aspects of daily life, so it is therefore highly likely that before long they will need to engage with a number of council service areas or departments. To manage this process effectively, authorities should consider how best to facilitate communication between the TIs and the council, e.g. perhaps via a central ‘gatekeeper’ role or single contacts within each department.

It is better to view a TI as an opportunity for you to add value to their work, than it is to view it as an opportunity for them to add value to yours. If handled well, the TI will achieve much more within its community than it or the authority could on its own. The authority can support a committed group of dedicated grassroots activists in pursuit of a vital part of its corporate aims.