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PacificEdge Paper 2
June 2008
Towards localisation
Written by Russ Grayson A report on the 2008 Go Local conference
This is a report on the two day, May 2008 Go Local conference,
held in Brisbane.
The report does not attempt to be comprehensive because it
was not possible to participate in all of the Open Space and
other workshops on offer. Those attended, which inform this
report, were chosen on the basis of their relevance to the
New ideas for emerging Transition Town or Transition Initiative methodology
sustainability of social change that is starting to attract attention in
Transition Towns, localisation and Australia.
the role of the social entrepreneur
are concepts now familiar to more
people following the May 2008 Go
First, a little background
Local conference in Brisbane. New and existing terms were used at the conference to describe
the types of initiatives people are undertaking around the
Probably the first large conference
in Australia called to discuss country and the roles involved in them. Understanding these
localisation and Transition Towns, will make clearer the main learnings coming from the
Go Local raises the profile of the conference.
Transition Initiative idea among A social entrepreneur is an individual who makes use of the
Australia’s change agents.
business model for goals other than profit. Although profit
About the author making can be part of social entrepreneurship, other goals are
Russ Grayson is an editor and paramount, such as the social or environmental. Judy Wicks, a
journalist presently working in US restranteur who addressed the conference, is a
community garden policy businesswoman and social entrepreneur who uses some of her
development for local government profits to support social enterprises that have been developed
and in international development from her food business.
with the TerraCircle group,
A social enterprise is an initiative, based on the business
www.terracircle.org.au.
model of operation or that of the NGO (non-government
More on localization and organization), not-for-profit or community group structure that
sustainability at: has social goals to its operation.
www,pacific-edge.info
TOWARDS LOCALISATION PacificEdge Paper 2 | June 2008
Presentations and dialogue at the Go Local Food and water supply, energy and a
conference included the role of social enterprise preference for locally owned business and
and social entrepreneurship in the emerging services are some of the social infrastructure
transition town or transition initiative that may be capable of localisation. An aim is
model of social change. Both of these ideas stem to improve the viability of the local economy
from the pioneering work of UK sustainability and create livelihoods based on, as far as is
educator, Rob Hopkins, first in Kinsdale, practical, the servicing of local needs.
Ireland, and presently in Totnes in the UK Improved local economic self-reliance
(Transition Town Totnes strengthens communities and provides a
http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org). degree of buffering against changes occurring
Transition town refers to a community-based in the global economy as well as those likely
strategy of preparation for the anticipated to come from global warming, peak oil and
impacts of global warming and the peaking of their potential impact on regions, cities and
the global oil supply, after which the price of towns.
anything making use of oil (such as our food The desired outcome of localization and
system) is expected to continually rise as transition initiatives is increased community
demand for oil outstrips supply. An output of a resilience in the face of change, whether that
transition town strategy might include a report change stems from political or economic
such as an ‘energy decent strategy’ that factors or from broader environmental
proposes measures for adapting to a situation of change.
higher prices and reduced supply of fuel and
goods. The transition initiative strategy is
sometimes described in terms of building
In his manual on setting up and managing resilient communities as this is regarded
transition town initiatives, The Transition as an easily understood concept.
Handbook (2008, Hopkins R; The Transition
Handbook; Green Books, Totnes UK. ISBN 978
1 900322 18 8), Hopkins proposes ‘transition The conference
initiative’ as a more accurate description as The Go Local conference was organized by
initiatives are taking place in locations other the Ethos Foundation, a sustainability-
than towns. That term has been adopted in this directed organization employing the social
report. enterprise/social entrepreneurship model.
One of the tactics for adapting to a future with The estimated 250 attendees came from
more expensive fuel and products is that of along the East Coast, from Townsville to
sourcing as many needs as possible from the Melbourne. They included a diversity of
region. The process is called ‘localisation’, people from community organisations —
sometimes ‘relocalisation’, however opinion some already engaged in transition
suggests localization as the more accurate term activities, such as those from the Sunshine
because relocalisation implies return to local Coast — as well as people from local
sourcing that may not have been present in the government, the community financial sector,
past. Sometimes, the word ‘regional’ is used in permaculture associations, school
place of ‘local’ in regard to localization. There is educational garden projects, small business
no overall definition of what makes up ‘local’. It and consultancies as well as the otherwise
would mean different scales for different places. interested.
Localisation is not unlike the idea of The conference was held at the Riverside
bioregionalism, originally a US concept, that conference centre at New Farm, on the banks
was popularised during the 1990s by the of the Brisbane River. Although it was the
permaculture design movement. first called specifically on localization, it can
also be regarded as the second localisation
conference in Australia, the first being the
food-themed Feeding Our Future conference
in Lismore in March 2008.
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A personal aside —
discovering Ethos
My journey to the Riverside conference centre started a couple
months earlier and a couple hundred kilometres to the south,
when Lismore City Council and Southern Cross University
invited me to make a presentation on the social, environmental
and economic value of local food systems to the Feeding Our
Future conference in Lismore. That, probably, was Australia’s
first major conference to address localisation.
A few days after receiving the invitation, I was contacted by
Kali Wendorf, editor of the parenting magazine Kindred (which
has a substantial sustainability focus —
www.kindredmedia.com.au). Kali wanted an article on
community food gardens for the upcoming edition and invited
me to join a panel at a Byron Bay seminar to discuss Cuba’s
experience of post-peak oil adaptation (which occurred after the
collapse of the Soviet Union) and food production with visiting
Local food production is an important Cuban urban agriculturist, Roberto Perez.
part of the localisation process. On the panel with me were a local organic farmer and Robert
Indonesian guavas from Doug Bailey’s Pekin from Brisbane’s innovative local food system, Food
urban food forest in Sydney. Connect CSA (www.foodconnect.com.au CSA means
Community Supported Agriculture, essentially a subscription
farming set-up linking city eaters directly to farmers in the
region). Robert and my paths would cross a number of times
over coming months.
The Byron Bay seminar was organised by the publisher of
Kindred, TROPPO (a local organic farming agency) and the
Ethos Foundation. And that is how I met Ken McLeod, from
Ethos.
It was the following morning that we met at the Riverside Café
in Brunswick Heads, on the banks of the curving, shallow river,
twenty minutes up the highway from Byron Bay. The
Food Connect’s Robert Pekin.
proprietors of the Riverside try to cook with as much locally
Food Connect is Australia’s largest grown and processed food as they can obtain. That isn’t always
CSA (Community Supported easy, however, and others were later to echo their comment.
Agriculture) enterprise. Our meeting was scheduled as a morning tea but extended to
over four hours to encompass lunch and beyond.
There was much to discuss — the idea of US restauranteur,
Judy Wicks, speaking at UNSW for Randwick City Council’s
sustainability program and a proposed conference in Brisbane
to be called Go Local.
That conference sounded promising. At last, it seemed, the idea
of localisation and transition initiatives was about to go
national.
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Message one:
There is a need for models CERES
There is a need to develop models of the Located in East Brunswick, Melbourne,
systems, schemes, tools, technologies and CERES offers:
ideas that we propose as part of a sustainable
future. They need to be easily accessible to the • community allotment gardening
public so they can see that they are safe, • community chicken keeping
practical and desirable. • the CERES organic markets
• training programs for migrants and
Demonstration sites are needed. As well as the labour market, some of it based
fulfilling a public educational function, they in the commercial, organic market
are locations where ideas can be prototyped garden which sells produce at the
and trialed to at least the proof-of-technology CERES markets
stage. • the Urban Orchard project for the
exchange of excess home grown fruits
Examples exist and vegetables via swap or sale at
As in other things, the conference found that the organic market
the future is already with us in microcosm — • a substantial schools’ program
there already exist versions of the models we • celebrations, such as the annual
need to propagate and multiply in our towns return of the kingfisher event
and cities. • the CERES organic café
Northey Street City Farm • a childcare facility
• and a great deal more.
Located on the banks of Breakfast Creek in
the Brisbane suburb of Windsor, Northey Both of these community enterprises utilize
Street City Farm is such a model. It offers: a social entrepreneurial methodology and
are only two of other similar, but more
• community food gardening
modestly scaled social enterprises around
• a Sunday morning organic grower’s
the country.
market
• a schools program Community gardens
• community education — workshops, A number of community food gardens have
accredited permaculture training and assumed a role in sustainability education,
more making them appropriate models that could
• celebrations be replicated and multiplied as transition
• the Chai Café hubs in our towns and cities.
• the Growing Communities consultancy,
a social enterprise set up to stimulate The gardens can be regarded as the training
school and community gardening grounds of a cadre of educators who, in the
• a place where the public can visit, walk event of a crisis that threatened the viability
around and meet of the urban food supply, would go out to
• labour market training assist new community food gardens and
• an organic permaculture nursery scale-up community-based urban
selling direct to the public. agriculture.
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John Champaign
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