Local Government ‘ALERT’ from the MAV Transition Community Working Group

From Victoria, Australia...

This ALERT is predicated on four factors:

1. The human race is facing its greatest challenge.
2. Individual communities need to collaborate to address the challenge and transition to a reduced-carbon, sustainable future. The time to act is now.
3. Local government needs to support communities in planning to address this challenge. Local government is likely to bear a significant proportion of the brunt of climate change, peak oil and other related impacts, and the sector is most effective when it collaborates to address major challenges.
4. The Transition Community approach is an empowering local response to crisis situations and offers the hope of achieving an improved local economy and improved social cohesion.

The MAV Transition Community Working Group, comprised of interested Councillors and officers, was formed to assess the Transition Community framework, developed in the UK and now spreading rapidly around the world, and its relevance to Victorian local government and communities. The Working Group has now considered the matter and has determined to issue an ‘ALERT’ to Councils across Victoria. The ‘alert’ refers to the need for Councils and their communities to be aware that:

Communities will face an unprecedented number of significant (global) challenges in the relatively short term and need to develop the necessary resilience to cope with these issues, which include:

a. water shortages/drought (increasing cost)
b. more expensive energy (including global demand for oil exceeding supply). CSIRO modelling has forecast petrol prices of up to $8 per litre by 2018. Also please see (attached) the recent comment from the International Energy Agency (IEA), a division of the OECD, which is warning that oil prices could reach $200 per barrel within the next 2-3 years.
c. more expensive food
d. the impacts of climate change
e. economic constraints in the wake of the global financial crisis

See the attached for the full text of this alert...