6. Inner and Outer Transition: Worldviews and belief systems can change and
create something different and need not cause fear.
7. Subsidiarity: Self-organization and decision-making at the appropriate level
(Hopkins and Lipman 2009: 7–8).
We can clearly see how many of these principles fly in the face of mainstream
models. Actors are explicitly requested to change their way of thinking and being
and to share instead of compete. The processes of providing energy and food are
intentionally made less efficient so that they become more resilient. The economic
system is analyzed as a subset of SES’s that can and should fundamentally change
if it hurts the balance of ecological reproduction circuits. It is therefore not the
resilience of the economic system that successful development strategies should
pursue but that of the ecological systems with biophysical qualities that can be
irreversibly altered.
This point is important because otherwise ‘resilience,’ as a concept, might be
used in as undifferentiated a fashion as ‘efficiency.’ Resource efficiency is basically
always desirable, but making efficiency a core value in and of itself, for all processes, is taking it too far. The same holds true for resilience, as the financial system
shows nicely. From a sustainability perspective it is utterly damaging, but its
immaterial qualities mean that very quickly many new financial products and
instruments emerge if others are ruled out. It thus shows a great self-organizing
capacity and has bounced back from the 2008 crisis without significantly changing
its functions, structure, identity or internal connections. Instead, the financial system
would require a decrease of resilience so that transformation could take place.
Thus, the goal of improved resilience can only be of added value for sustainability when the purpose and setup of the system in question is one in line with
what sustainable development on the macro scale requires. The Transition Town
principles make this distinction (see point 5) and the idea has been exported to
many places across Europe. Out of the ongoing experiences a number of guidelines,
ingredients and practical steps have emerged on how to set up a community initiative. These can be found on transitionnetwork.org. Each transition or transformation of a community is expected to take 20 years or longer. The website also
includes a map of where initiatives from across the world are registered, and in
mid-2015 it had 479 official initiatives in 43 countries, which can be located
through an interactive map at http://www.transitionnetwork.org/initiatives/map.
From the MLP point of view, these initiatives form perfect niches ready to build
coalitions for regime change. Yet, some critics lament the absence of a more
explicit political agenda that would be able to reach just that. They find the ‘anything goes’ character behind the initiatives too lofty and the building of windmills,
barter trade networks and permaculture gardens too individualistic. Moreover, even
if single towns become more resilient this would not necessarily change the
overarching regime structures that push economies out of Planetary Boundaries.
Some of this criticism may be true, in particular when rich communities work on
making their own backyard lovely but do not feel much responsibility for those
worse off.
4.2 Pioneering Civil Society: Transition Towns for Resilient Local Solutions
129
create something different and need not cause fear.
7. Subsidiarity: Self-organization and decision-making at the appropriate level
(Hopkins and Lipman 2009: 7–8).
We can clearly see how many of these principles fly in the face of mainstream
models. Actors are explicitly requested to change their way of thinking and being
and to share instead of compete. The processes of providing energy and food are
intentionally made less efficient so that they become more resilient. The economic
system is analyzed as a subset of SES’s that can and should fundamentally change
if it hurts the balance of ecological reproduction circuits. It is therefore not the
resilience of the economic system that successful development strategies should
pursue but that of the ecological systems with biophysical qualities that can be
irreversibly altered.
This point is important because otherwise ‘resilience,’ as a concept, might be
used in as undifferentiated a fashion as ‘efficiency.’ Resource efficiency is basically
always desirable, but making efficiency a core value in and of itself, for all processes, is taking it too far. The same holds true for resilience, as the financial system
shows nicely. From a sustainability perspective it is utterly damaging, but its
immaterial qualities mean that very quickly many new financial products and
instruments emerge if others are ruled out. It thus shows a great self-organizing
capacity and has bounced back from the 2008 crisis without significantly changing
its functions, structure, identity or internal connections. Instead, the financial system
would require a decrease of resilience so that transformation could take place.
Thus, the goal of improved resilience can only be of added value for sustainability when the purpose and setup of the system in question is one in line with
what sustainable development on the macro scale requires. The Transition Town
principles make this distinction (see point 5) and the idea has been exported to
many places across Europe. Out of the ongoing experiences a number of guidelines,
ingredients and practical steps have emerged on how to set up a community initiative. These can be found on transitionnetwork.org. Each transition or transformation of a community is expected to take 20 years or longer. The website also
includes a map of where initiatives from across the world are registered, and in
mid-2015 it had 479 official initiatives in 43 countries, which can be located
through an interactive map at http://www.transitionnetwork.org/initiatives/map.
From the MLP point of view, these initiatives form perfect niches ready to build
coalitions for regime change. Yet, some critics lament the absence of a more
explicit political agenda that would be able to reach just that. They find the ‘anything goes’ character behind the initiatives too lofty and the building of windmills,
barter trade networks and permaculture gardens too individualistic. Moreover, even
if single towns become more resilient this would not necessarily change the
overarching regime structures that push economies out of Planetary Boundaries.
Some of this criticism may be true, in particular when rich communities work on
making their own backyard lovely but do not feel much responsibility for those
worse off.
4.2 Pioneering Civil Society: Transition Towns for Resilient Local Solutions
129