Transition Network looks to the next 5 years - “bouncing forward” on climate disruption, demands for racial and social justice, and pandemics
Interesting playlist of videos (embedded above) from the Transition Network (their news blog on the transmissions here).
Helped by their co-founder (and now imagination activist) Rob Hopkins, the four videos and discussions aim to explore what TN’s response should be to declarations of climate emergency, protest movements like Black Lives Matter, and of course the pandemic. As their intros put it:
Video 1: “How best to be in service to the scale of ambition the climate emergency demands of us, the urgency of demands for racial and social justice, as well as the need to ensure individuals and groups have the emotional and collective resilience for times that will be turbulent, fast-moving, and always surprising?”
Video 2: “Join representatives of Transition Kentish Town, Transition New Mills and Ealing Transition to hear how they are finding new and unexpected openings to work with their local councils in response to declarations of climate emergencies… Listen out for tales of empty cafes transformed into community hubs for the imagination, community 'What Next' imagining events, and ambitious plans for decarbonisation by 2030.”
Video 3: “Join representatives of Transition Liverpool, Transition Llandrindod Wells and Transition Letchworth to explore how three Transition groups having been using these days of COVID-19 to dream big about what comes next and to take imaginative steps towards it… Expect tales of takeovers of car parking spaces, a reimagining of how a town feeds itself and a bold and audacious plan for cycle lanes everywhere!”
Video 4: “Join representatives from Crystal Palace Transition Town, Hythe Environmental Community Group and Transition Town Wellington to explore how their projects are adapting to recent events, to pandemics, and to the upsurge of concern around climate change. Chaired by Yaz Brien of Transition Network… Expect tales of Libraries of Things, award-winning Food Markets, food gleaning projects, Repair Cafes and so much more. Prepare to marvel and what groups of motivated people can achieve.”
Rob Hopkins wrote an introductory essay on these events - an extract below:
Let’s have a quick reality check. We know that to have any chance of staying below 1.5 degrees of global heating requires huge changes. We know that the changes we have seen during the lockdown have led to cuts of just 5.5% globally this year, and that what is actually needed, according to the UN, is cuts of 7.6% every year, starting now.
What COVID-19 has shown us is that things can change fast, we can build new infrastructures very fast if needed, that communities are capable of amazing acts of mutual support, and of reimagining the future in ways that many in current positions of leadership appear unable to.
George Monbiot recently wrote a piece that spoke to the growing calls to #BuildBackBetter. He argued we should “Bail out the people, not the corporations. Bail out the living world, not its destroyers. Let’s not waste our second chance”. Central to the Transition movement from the outset has been the idea of resilience.
Usually framed as the ability to ‘bounce back’, it is seen in the Transition movement as being better imagined as the capacity to ‘bounce forward’, i.e. to use it as the opportunity to move forward to something better. How then to ‘bounce forward’ from COVID-19 in such a way that we also move to a way of doing things consistent with the scale of the climate crisis?
The Transition movement has been an experiment focused around this question for almost 13 years now. So what is it? Transition Network refers to it as “a movement of communities that are reimagining and rebuilding the world”. Transition groups work with a particular set of principles. They:
Respect resource limits and create resilience
Promote inclusivity and social justice
Adopt subsidiarity (self-organisation and decision making at the appropriate level)
Pay attention to balance, creating space for reflection, celebration and rest to balance the times when we’re busily getting things done.
Are part of an experimental, learning network, seeing Transition as a real-life, real-time global social experiment.
Freely share ideas and power, a grassroots movement where ideas can be taken up rapidly, widely and effectively because each community takes ownership of the process themselves
Collaborate and look for synergies
Foster positive visioning and creativity
It is true that there is much here that governments can do and must do, hence the need for movements such as Extinction Rebellion to bring sufficient pressure to bear. But as communities, as neighbourhoods, streets, workplaces, community organisations, there is so much we can do. Things that governments and other top-down institutions seem unable to even dream of.
Indeed COVID-19 has shown that while many governments have taken their time (with a handful, like New Zealand, showing what a more mature approach could look like), communities have come together, organised remarkable networks and support infrastructure in very little time (something Transition Town Media (US) reflect on here).