Transition Town Totnes

Name: Transition Town Totnes
Location: Devon, UK
Years 2006-present
totnes.transitionnetwork.org
Transition Initiatives were founded to increase public awareness of sustainable living as well as to build communities that are more resilient to the impending decline of oil and gas supplies. Transition Town Totnes (TTT) was founded by Rob Hopkins and Naresh Giangrande in 2006 and is the first community in the United Kingdom to embrace the Transition Initiative and actively try to increase its local resilience to an energy crisis.
The position of Transition Towns is that global warming and peak oil present an unavoidable challenge which should be dealt with sooner rather than later through various energy saving initiatives to increase the survival rate of our towns. Over the next two years, TTT aims to create an Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP) to lay out where the town wants to be in terms of energy dependence in twenty years’ time. The main goals of the EDAP are to reduce carbon emissions as well as dependence on fossil fuels and to increase the town’s resilience to an increasingly volatile global market and community through self reliance. TTT believes that for the EDAP to work, it must be a collaborative effort between all members of the community, private and public, old and young.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete". Buckminster Fuller
TTT has started various initiatives to increase its self reliance. It has begun the Totnes Pound Project which is an internal currency to promote economic localization which benefits the local community in many ways, including supporting local trade and food producers, reducing food miles, keeping money in the community and encouraging tourism, all of which contribute to the town’s self-reliance. Other projects include: Garden Share which involves connecting people without their own gardens with growing space; Local Food Guide, which promotes local and independent producers; The Great Re-skilling, a practical program to teach people basic food production skills and other sustainable food production groups.