Portobello Energy Descent and Land Reform Group (PEDAL), Edinburgh, are organising a Community 'Open Space' forum for Sunday the 27th of November from 1.30-5.30pm. This will aim to build on the success of the Portobello Campaign Against the Superstore. The purpose of the day's forum is to develop a range of imaginative initiatives — including pushing for a community buy out of the superstore site — as part of creating a sustainable future for Portobello, and creating a radical urban role model that other communities and cities could follow.
At the heart of the forum will be plans for community use of a piece of land which was recently at the centre of a fierce battle between the local community and developers who wanted to build a superstore on it. The superstore was very unpopular with local people, and the community scored a victory when planning permission was refused at a public inquiry earlier this year. Unfortunately, though current legislation in Scotland gives rural communities the right to buy land they need to sustain their way of life (e.g. the community buy-out of the Isle of Eigg in 2002); urban communities do not have this right. PEDAL are hoping that the community in Portobello can put pressure on the Scottish Parliament to change the law so that the community can make constructive use of this land. One possible future use for the land would be to establish socially affordable and ecologically imaginative housing as part of a broader Sustainability Centre which might include a Centre for Alternative Futures similar to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, or the Eden Project in Cornwall. This might include exhibition space focusing on sustainable city designs and hands-on exhibits bringing together pressing issues and community solutions to problems such as climate change and the challenge of transforming society from an economy based on oil to one based on ecologically and socially satisfying and sustainable practices. Such a Centre could create a range of new local jobs and attract a whole new form of urban ecological tourism to the area. The Centre could also provide a focus for the further development of the community sustainability blueprint, possibly centred on a 15-year step by step Energy Descent plan for Portobello.
We are proposing a community "Open Space" forum, to be held on Sunday 27th November 2005, 1.30 – 5.30 pm, at St James' Church Hall, Rosefield Avenue, Portobello. The Open Space meeting format which we will be using for the public workshop is designed to make meetings fun. It is based on the model of an extended tea breakon the assumption that the most useful and interesting part of any workshop or conference is the tea break rather than the important speeches by the so-called experts! After a brief orientation to the themes, purpose and structure of the Forum, we will break into small discussion groups - each focusing on different themes people will have identified as important at the start of the workshop. The idea is that these discussions will be facilitated but that people will move between these groups. The main points of each groups discussions will be recorded on a flip chart and both the discussion and suggested plans for action will be reported back to the whole group at the end of the workshop. In this way we hope that an inclusive Energy Descent Plan might be created by and for the Portobello community.
The first of these Energy Descent Plans was created last year in the town of Kinsale in the west of Ireland, and the idea has spread internationally since then. At Kinsale participants focused on the need to address the problem of Peak Oil. Peak Oil refers to a time, possibly in the near future, possibly already upon us, when all the easily available oil has been used up. From that point in time oil prices will increase to the point where our current way of life becomes impossible. This is not science fiction: it is being discussed as a real problem by governments across the world, because we not only use oil to drive ourselves around — the way we live today relies almost entirely on oil. Our food is transported using oil; the fertilisers and pesticides used on it are oil-based, and the farm equipment which harvests it could not be made without oil. From medicines to the raw materials for building houses, we rely on oil for much of what we need to sustain our current lifestyles.
Because we rely for our food on supermarkets that get their supplies from all over the world, rather than from local farmers or market gardens, we could be very vulnerable even in short term crisis situations. As the tragic recent events in New Orleans showed, communities who are not adequately prepared and cannot pull together, can end up helpless and self destructive instead of mutually supportive.
Kinsale participants worked to develop a 15-year Energy Decent Plan to help the community take a step-by-step approach to reducing its reliance on oil. In this approach, participants look at a range of areas of importance to their community (such as food production, energy production, transport, housing, livelihoods...) and generate ideas about how to use progressively less energy in meeting their needs. This offers a new model for communities to make changes which address mounting threats such as climate change and peak oil in a way which will not only give them the best chance to successfully manage potential future crisis situations, but also increases community cohesion and empowerment in the meantime. In a time when central government seems unwilling to take serious action on these issues, and individual action can feel woefully inadequate, community action of this kind is inspiring and empowering.
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There will also be a showing of The End of Suburbia the day before the workshop, which you are welcome to see. It is a film about the possible consequences of Peak Oil on the lives of ordinary people in America, which has clear implications for all of us. This will be shown at Evergreen, Portobello High Street on Saturday 26th November: 5.30 - 7pm.