[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Resilient Communities

[Bill Totten]

A Guide to Disaster Management

by Richard Heinberg

MuseLetter #192 / April 2008


Resilience: The ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or
misfortune; buoyancy; the ability to absorb shocks.


The following is a proposal to help make communities better able to
respond to the coming economic shocks from resource depletion, beginning
with Peak Oil, and perhaps also to shocks from other causes (such as the
ongoing subprime mortgage and credit collapse). In searching for a name
for the strategy, I have settled on the phrase "Resilient Communities",
which comes with considerable baggage - useful baggage in this instance.
Once I have described and discussed the proposal, I will offer some
background materials regarding the terms resilience and resilient
communities, mentioning some other projects that have used the same
title or that pursue similar goals.

Making existing petroleum-reliant communities truly sustainable is a
huge task. Virtually every system must be redesigned - from transport to
food, sanitation, health care, and manufacturing. Some fine efforts are
under way in towns such as Kinsale, Ireland; Totnes, England; Portland,
Oregon; and several cities in northern California to catalog the needed
changes and initiate the transformative process. The Powerdown Project,
Energy Descent Action Plans, and local Climate Protection initiatives
are all important efforts in this direction. However, even in places
that began such work two or three years ago, actual oil dependence
remains largely unaffected. The transition that is required will take
many years, huge shifts in both private and public investment, and
fundamental changes in public policy at higher levels of government in
order to succeed. Do we have enough time? Will the investment capital be
available?

Meanwhile, global oil production appears already to have entered its
plateau phase, with a gradually steepening decline in total production -
and a much more rapid drop in export capacity among nations with any oil
to spare - likely to commence within the next two or three years. It
appears that the time available for adaptation is probably far too short
to enable needed work to be accomplished. Meanwhile, the financial
solvency crisis initiated by the US subprime mortgage fiasco threatens
to obliterate trillions of dollars of investment capital, impeding
whatever efforts might be undertaken toward energy conversion. Thus few
if any communities - including those that have initiated worthwhile
projects - will be prepared for the shocks of high fuel prices and fuel
shortages that will inevitably follow in the coming years. What to do?

A few months ago, on the day following the most recent "Peak Oil and
Community Solutions" conference in Yellow Springs, Ohio, some of the
speakers and organizers gathered to compare notes and strategize. At
some point during the lively conversation, Faith Morgan, the Director of
the film The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil {1},
reminded us how, early in Cuba's crisis period, organic farming
advocates had provided crucial advice that helped quickly transform the
nation's food system; without the input of these previously marginalized
alternatives advocates, the nation probably would not have survived. I
was certainly familiar with the story: I have recounted it in print and
in lectures on many occasions. Nevertheless, as Faith spoke, a
(compact-fluorescent) light bulb flickered somewhere in my murky skull.
Perhaps something similar could happen in other nations or communities -
and not just with regard to food, but all the other aspects of modern
existence. There are plenty of marginalized "alternatives" advocates who
for decades have been researching and promoting low-energy ways of doing
things that will make perfect sense in a post-petroleum environment.
What if these folks could be mobilized and coordinated, their knowledge
made readily available to local officials and the public at large, in
preparation for the imminent period when existing systems start to fail
in ever more obvious ways?

The notion solidified as I read Naomi Klein's recent book, The Shock
Doctrine (2007), which details how savvy politicians and business
leaders have used natural disasters, wars, and economic upheavals as
propitious moments for the introduction of neo-liberal economic policies
- privatization, free trade, slashed social spending - that are
themselves disastrous (though immensely profitable for the few), and
that would normally be rejected. In the current instance, as we
contemplate a global mega-disaster-in-the-making, it is not difficult to
envision neo-liberal or neo-conservative power-holders licking their
collective chops over the prospect of doing away with all labor and
environmental regulations as citizens everywhere clamor for strong
leaders who can implement bold policies to restore relative normalcy.

In other words, crisis equals opportunity - for those who are prepared
to seize the day. Unless sensible plans to manage disaster are
formulated and put forward now, the opportunity afforded by crisis will
be hijacked by a familiar cast of characters.

What follows, then, is a strategy to take advantage of the gathering
storm to steer communities in a direction that will make them more
sustainable over the long run. I must emphasize at the outset that,
while I am making the case for this new strategy as strongly as I can
(that's a writer's job), I do not wish people already hard at work on
proactive energy transition strategies through Relocalization and
Transition projects to get the impression that I am saying, "Stop
everything you're doing now, rush to the other side of the boat, and
start doing this other thing". In fact, all I hope to accomplish with
this essay is to introduce a new strategic perspective that can be
useful to activists as they continue and expand the work in which they
are currently engaged.

Anyone can adopt this strategy; however, existing Peak Oil response
groups and networks are probably in the best position to do so. Groups
wanting to explore this strategy can join the Relocalization Network
{2}, if they are not already affiliated, and use that network for
sharing information and other resources. Groups could also link
Resilient Communities work with the Transition Network {3}, Step It Up,
Mayors for Climate Protection Campaign, Climate Action Network, and
Sierra Club's Cool Cities program.

What is needed is not just another trademark for yet another activist
campaign, but an additional strategy that can be used by any existing
organization.


Try This

The strategy I am envisioning might be composed of the following series
of steps:

1.  Establish a working group for the purpose of formulating a Community
Resilience Plan. The size of the group will depend on who is available
and motivated, and on the size of the community. It will be helpful if
the individuals involved have experience with organizing efforts and are
already trusted, active members of the community. If there is a
sufficiently large pool of potential members, group membership could
rotate. This could be an entirely new group, or it could be a new
project for an existing group. At the very earliest stage, establish a
connection with the Relocalization Network.

2. Identify organizations, businesses, and individuals in your community
that have some skill or capacity that will be needed in the post-Peak
Oil environment. Look for people who are already working in food
production and distribution, health, transport, water delivery, waste
disposal, home heating, communication, and crisis management who are
able to supply goods or services in their respective field using less
energy and fewer imported materials, or who have concrete proposals in
this regard. Examples include organic farming and Permaculture groups;
herbalists and others able to provide health care in the absence of
high-tech equipment; car-share organizations; and bicycle advocacy groups.

3. Approach these people, inform them that you are formulating a
Community Resilience Plan, and ask for their help and participation.
Tell them about Peak Oil - if they don't already know - and help them
understand the implications. Point out that their "alternative" skills
and knowledge, which they may have grown weary of promoting in the face
of general systemic preference for "mainstream" approaches, will soon be
crucial to community survival and well-being. In effect, you must appeal
to their self-interest as a way to motivate them to expend some extra
effort on behalf of a Community Resilience Plan.

4. Work with these groups and individuals to develop a contingency plan
in their respective areas of action and expertise. The plan should
answer the question: If your community were suffering from a crisis
(unaffordable energy prices, fuel shortages, and knock-on effects such
as empty store shelves and rampant unemployment), how could your
expertise be rapidly deployed on a large scale to help reduce the
impact? What assistance and resources would you need? What steps would
have to be taken, and in what order? For example, Permaculturists might
have a fine way of producing food locally, but in order to expand their
efforts significantly they might need to train teams of gardeners to
roam the city planting garden beds on vacant lots or in the front and
back yards of willing homeowners. How would these teams be financed and
coordinated? How might a surge in demand for garden tools and seeds be
satisfied? In each essential field, look for ways to build redundancy
with regard to provision of goods and services.

5. As you are doing all of these things, also contact city disaster
management officials, letting them know what you are doing and why. Ask
for their input and inquire how what you are doing can be most useful to
the community at large. Make sure they have copies of Post Carbon
Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty, by Daniel Lerch {4}.

6. It might also be useful to contact leaders in some of the mainstream
organizations (government agencies as well as private companies)
currently responsible for food, water, transport, and energy
provisioning and inquire if they have any plans for the time when fuel
becomes scarce. If they perceive your project as a threat, they are
likely to try to block or undermine it in various ways. However, if they
see the project for what it is - an effort to enable the survival of the
community in circumstances where current support systems cease
functioning - they may be moved to contribute. If they simply deny that
any problems are on the horizon, you may have no choice but to continue
what you are doing without their input. Again, make sure these leaders
have copies of Post Carbon Cities.

7. Assemble the various suggestions into a coherent Community Resilience
Plan. Some sort of document is always useful as a touchstone for
collective action. The plan should be comprehensive, modular, and
staged. It should offer suggestions for slow-onset as well as
rapid-onset disasters. It should also be consistent with proactive plans
for the long-term post-carbon transition of society (such as the report
of the Portland Peak Oil task force). It should be in a form that can be
upgraded and revised continually. And it should be widely available to
the public (that is, published on an easily accessible web site).

8. Once a document has been formulated, go back to civic leaders and
disaster management officials and present the document. At the same
time, stage a public roll-out of the plan, arranging newspaper articles
and radio interviews as well as a public event at which all of the
contributors, and local officials, can offer brief presentations.

9. When shortages develop and the economy comes unhinged, work with
contributing groups and local officials to implement the plan. Without
implementation, the effort will have been wasted. This stage will no
doubt entail the hardest and most demanding work. It is difficult to
foresee the exact circumstances in which that work will be taking place;
nevertheless, the more thorough the preparatory efforts, the more
successful the implementation is likely to be.

10. Work with groups in other communities to coordinate programs across
regions and nations. Again, the organizations most likely to be helpful
in this are the Relocalization Network and the Post Carbon Cities
program of Post Carbon Institute, and the Transition Network.
Communities should be encouraged to share their experiences, and to
share other resources wherever possible. At the earliest opportunity,
meta-plans for resilience should be initiated at the state, national,
and international levels.

11. Granted, formulating a plan along the lines I have suggested is a
huge task, and the process I have described may not be robust enough and
sufficiently engaged with all facets of the community in order to
succeed. I welcome input on how to deal with these shortcomings.
However, the general thrust of the strategy is logical and strategically
sound. Obtaining local government support and public or private funding
will be extremely advantageous, as attempting such a task on a purely
volunteer basis will create obvious pitfalls of overwork and
underperformance.


Why? - and Other Questions

Why do we need another strategy?

I have been directly or peripherally involved in many Peak Oil response
efforts over the past five years. Some I would characterize as top-down
(starting by trying to convince and enroll policy makers such as city
officials), some bottom-up (starting from a grass-roots base of
concerned citizens and activists). All begin or end with a long-range
plan for reducing the community's reliance on oil and other fossil fuels
- a plan that entails a redirection in investment of public funds, the
shifting of priorities, changes to zoning regulations, and so on.

The Resilient Communities strategy is based on observations of what
worked in those previous efforts and what didn't. It is also based on
the fact that, even in situations of apparent success (where much
publicity was garnered and city councils adopted Peak Oil action plans),
nagging doubts remain. What if these efforts are too little, too late?
What if society is broadsided by an economic collapse from other sources
before the effects of Peak Oil become obvious, undermining proactive
plans? When I think of my own community, I wince: despite some good
activist efforts over the past couple of years, Sonoma County is really
not much better prepared than it was before we started.

During these past few years, I have had opportunity to observe a few
policy makers at fairly close quarters and to observe how they think,
what they say, and what they do. I've concluded that (with a very few
notable exceptions), regardless of lip service to sustainability, Peak
Oil preparedness, or climate protection, these people's first priority
is economic growth. If their attention to this overarching priority
wavers, they soon find themselves out of a job. Thus as long as
business-as-usual (or at least business-as-usual lite) is an option, it
will be favored. However, looming environmental limits require economic
contraction. Peak Oil preparedness is, in essence, the effort to
controllably scale back the pace and scope of society's consumption of
energy and natural resources so as to reduce the impact when inevitable
shortages arise - and also, ultimately, so as to reduce society's
material throughput to a level that is actually sustainable over the
long haul.

Policy makers demand growth, while prudent policy (in light of resource
depletion) requires voluntary contraction. This basic contradiction
suggests that real change won't come about until hardship is upon us.
And that judgment is in turn confirmed by the one example we have of
successful adaptation to energy famine - Cuba's Special Period - which
was not a proactive effort, but primarily a reactive one.

Thus as compared to other plans and strategies, Resilient Communities
strategy has a more explicit focus on disaster management.

At the point when maintaining business as usual is no longer an option,
there may be a chance for new strategies to be considered. Officials
must face crises (whether effectively or ineptly); they cannot simply
ignore obvious breakdowns in the societal support system. If a plan can
be put forward that helps officials solve pressing, undeniable problems,
that plan has at least a chance of being considered.

Granted, the strategies most likely to gain favor in the early stages of
crisis are those that promise a return to business-as-usual (even if
that promise is hollow). But as those strategies fail and crisis
deepens, nets will be cast wider. At some point the Resilience Plan will
become the strategy of last resort.

A useful historical example: as the Great Depression gathered gloom, the
New Deal was not the US government's first response (Herbert Hoover
dithered for two years); it wasn't even Franklin Roosevelt's initial
strategy: only after everything else had failed during three to four
long years of economic crisis and misery were more radical ideas tried.


How, exactly, is a Resilient Community different from a Transition Town
or the Powerdown Project?

There certainly are similarities. Transition Towns do tend to bring
alternatives movements together to design solutions, and Chapter Three
of Rob Hopkins's Transition Handbook {5} offers an excellent discussion
of "why rebuilding resilience is as important as cutting carbon
emissions". The Powerdown Project {6} did focus at least partly on
disaster management. Indeed, nearly all of the individual elements of
the ten-step program laid out above exist in these and other plans. The
virtue of the Resilient Communities strategy as outlined here is that it
puts those elements together in a new framework that explicitly takes
account of the opportunities that crisis affords.

Transition and Relocalization projects tend to have a hopeful, upbeat,
attractive tone, and that is one of their virtues. By contrast, disaster
management is a sobering subject. Yet while hopeful visions are good and
necessary for motivating communities, the real future that is now
unfolding is one of crisis heaped upon crisis. Effective response
strategies must respond to the facts, however unattractive they may be
from a marketing standpoint. The Resilient Communities strategy faces
harsh reality and makes the best of it by using it strategically.

The point must be stressed: I don't mean to suggest that proactive plans
to alter energy consumption absent a crisis are a waste of effort, even
if they are unlikely to be fully implemented by "business-as-usual"
policy makers. The efforts of cities like Portland, Oakland, Willits,
Totnes, and others deserve to be celebrated and supported.

Moreover, while a Community Resilience Plan would seek to maximize the
opportunity that crisis affords, crisis management can only get us so
far toward our goal of reducing and redesigning the human economy so
that it does not degrade nature's carrying capacity. Broad-scale,
proactive plans are still essential. Once the crisis has hit, once other
remedies have been tried, once the Resilient Communities programs have
been adopted, and once "alternatives" begin to become mainstream, then
the long-range plans for redirecting economies toward true
sustainability will become actionable. Indeed, at every stage along the
way we will need some sense of what a sustainable society would actually
look like and how we might bridge the chasm between the present and that
distant goal.


What's in it for people in the alternatives movements?

Why should they go to the extra trouble? They are already engaged in
important efforts, and are probably overworked.

Folks in the alternatives movements have in many cases been toiling for
decades to research and promote sustainable practices. Where they have
tried to shape public policy, they may have found themselves ignored or
marginalized. The Resilient Communities strategy offers them more than a
soap box: it is a chance to use their knowledge and skills in service to
community during an imminent time of crisis. While previously they may
have found themselves adopting an oppositional or even confrontational
stance in relation to industry leaders and policy makers, this is a
chance to assume the role of representatives and protectors of the
community. If the strategy works, they will cease to be "alternative"
and become the "new normal".


What's in it for the officials?

Won't they just ignore or undermine the effort?

Most public officials will gladly sacrifice interests of the
alternatives crowd that conflict dramatically with those of the business
community. But absent a direct conflict, it is in the nature of
politicians to try to keep everyone happy. Resilient Community planning
does not focus on conflicts between diverging interests within the
community; indeed, its main goal is to improve survival prospects for
everyone. If the effort is framed properly, officials should view it as
a gift - an aid in solving potential problems that may actually be
looming much closer than many politicians and business leaders currently
realize is the case.


Resilience in Ecosystems and Economies

For those wishing to adopt the strategy outlined above, the use of the
phrase resilient community is not mandatory. Nevertheless, resilience
has so many useful implications that it may be useful to spend the
remainder of this essay unpacking and exploring a few.

There is a sizeable and edifying literature on the subject of resilience
in ecosystems; C S "Buzz" Holling is responsible for much of the
pioneering work in this regard. An introductory summary of some core
ideas related to ecological and economic resilience is contained in the
entertaining essay, "Diesel-Driven Bee Slums and Impotent Turkeys: The
Case for Resilience", by Chip Ward {7}.

Briefly, resilient systems are able to withstand higher magnitudes of
disturbance before undergoing a dramatic shift to a new condition in
which they are controlled by a different set of processes. Reducing
resilience increases vulnerability to smaller disturbances. From the
website of the Resilience Alliance {8}:

Even in the absence of disturbance, gradually changing conditions, for
example, nutrient loading, climate, habitat fragmentation, et cetera,
can surpass threshold levels, triggering an abrupt system response. When
resilience is lost or significantly decreased, a system is at high risk
of shifting into a qualitatively different state. The new state of the
system may be undesirable, as in the case of productive freshwater lakes
that become eutrophic, turbid, and depleted of their biodiversity.
Restoring a system to its previous state can be complex, expensive, and
sometimes even impossible. Research suggests that to restore some
systems to their previous state requires a return to environmental
conditions well before the point of collapse.


The notion that human communities can benefit from fostering resilience
is far from new; when I did a Google search for "resilient communities"
in preparation for writing this article, over 80,000 hits came up,
including www.resilientcommunities.org - an inactive website related to
an initiative in the late 1990s by Northwest Regional Facilitators and
the late economist Robert Theobald. One other example worth noting: the
UN has a "Resilient Communities & Cities partnership" program {9}, which
aims to "increase the resilience of a city or community to a range of
shocks, crises, and disasters including environmental emergencies,
industrial accidents, outbreaks of epidemics, economic shocks, natural
disasters, terrorist attacks, and social conflict". I'll mention a few
more examples at the end of this essay.

In their 1982 book Brittle Power, Amory and Hunter Lovins argued for the
decentralization of energy production in order to foster resilience.

More recently, David Fleming - the originator of Tradeable Energy Quotas
{10} - has written and spoken at some length about resilience in the
context of preparations for Peak Oil and Climate Change. With Lawrence
Woodward, Fleming has authored, "Transition, Resilience and Tradeable
Energy Quotas" {11}, in which he notes that a resilient community will
need to be "relatively small-scale" and "localized" so that:

* If one part is destroyed, the shock will not ripple through the whole
system.

* There is wide diversity of character and solutions developed
creatively in response to local circumstances.

* It can meet its needs despite the substantial absence of travel and
transport.

* The other big infrastructures and bureaucracies of the intermediate
economy are replaced by fit-for-purpose local alternatives at
drastically reduced cost.


Once these conditions are satisfied, new possibilities open up:

* Local closed systems conserving fertility and materials will become
feasible.

* Local energy production, distribution and storage can be established,
linked by local grids.

* Local social capital and culture can be rebuilt as a necessary
condition for the cooperation and reciprocities needed to achieve the
transition.

One quality of resilience is redundancy - which is often at odds with
economic efficiency. Standard economic theory tells us that if it is
cheaper to manufacture a particular widget in Malaysia than to do so
locally, then all such widgets should come from a factory in Kuala
Lumpur. Efficiency implies both long supply chains and the reduction of
inventories to a minimum. The "just-in-time" delivery of raw materials
and parts for manufacturing reduces costs - but it increases the
vulnerability of systems to fuel shortages.

As we pay more attention to resilience and less to economic efficiency,
we begin to see redundancy and larger inventories as benefits rather
than liabilities. Other resilience values include diversity (as opposed
to uniformity), dispersion (rather than centralization) of control over
systems, and, as already noted, the localization (versus globalization)
of economies.

More notable "resilient communities" resources include:

* The organization RESET (Renewable Energy/Shelter/Environment Training)
in the UK {12} was recently established to increase knowledge about
climate change and Peak Oil outside the OECD countries, and to provide
training in practical measures to foster resilience in the face of
coming transitions to soaring energy prices and rising temperatures.

* The University of British Columbia's Resilient Communities Project, a
collaboration of academics, First Nations peoples, and government {13}

* The University of Minnesota project on Resilient Communities {14}

* Ontario Healthy Communities Project's publication on Resilient
Communities {15}

* Resilient Communities and Cities Coalition {9}

* British Columbia's Disaster Resilient Communities Program {16}

* ICLEI's Climate Resilient Communities Program {17}

* The J W McConnell Family Foundation's program on Creating Resilient
Communities {18}

Links:

1   www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php
2   www.relocalize.net
3   www.transitiontowns.org
4   www.postcarboncities.net
5   www.transitionculture.org/shop/the-transition-handbook
6   www.powerdownproject.org
7
www.tomdispatch.com/post/174826/chip_ward_how_efficiency_maximizes_catastrophe
8   www.resalliance.org
9   webapps01.un.org/dsd/partnerships/public/partnerships/103.html
10 www.teqs.net
11
www.transitionculture.org/2007/08/14/transition-resilience-and-tradeable-energy-quotas
12 www.reset-development.org
13 www.resilientcommunities.ca
14 www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/familydevelopment/DE7565.html
15 www.healthycommunities.on.ca/publications/factsheets/resilient.htm
16 www.pep.gov.bc.ca/hrva/hrva.html
17 www.iclei.org/index.php?id=6687
18 www.mcconnellfoundation.ca/default.aspx?page=156&lang=en-US

Read more about Richard's book, Peak Everything at
http://www.richardheinberg.com/books

Post Carbon Institute - 6971 Sebastopol Avenue - Sebastopol - California
- 95472 - USA

http://richardheinberg.com/museletter/192

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