Starting a Project for Real on PEI for Local Resiliency

[Rob Paterson]

I live on a small Island Prince Edward Island - Canada's smallest province and the site of the conference. Ironically I have just been retained by the government to raise awareness for the peril that we will be in this winter when more than 50% of residents will not be able to eat, drive or heat.

Here is my opening post that may give you a sense of what you might be coming too this December - a real time experiment - a dash for independence. I am hoping that working with you might help us all do a better job. For none of us has done this before.

If you have tough work to do too - please let us help you

[Bruce I. Gudmundsson]

For the past day or so, I've been puzzling over the question of the relationship between "local resiliency" (as described by Rob Paterson) and the ideas of John Boyd. In particular, I've been wondering whether the "dash for independence" might be at odds with one of Boyd's central theses - that strategy is about making lots of positive connections for oneself while isolating enemies (or, to be more exact, assisting enemies to isolate themselves.)

One answer to my conundrum is that the move from monoculture (growing lots of potatoes ) to multiculture (growing lots of different things) is very much in keeping with Boyd's thinking about the importance of multiple positive connections. What is true for agriculture, moreover, is also true for energy. Moving from a single source of energy (petroleum) to many sources (wood, wind, biodiesel etc.) greatly increases positive connections in that realm.

So far, so good.

Why then, am I still left with the sense that there is a disconnect between the idea of "local resiliency" and the thinking of John Boyd? The culprit, I suspect, lies less in what Rob wrote than in the history of the idea of the self-contained agricultural community. For quite some time, idealists of many stripes - Thomas Jefferson and Osama Bin Ladin come to mind - have tried to create such communities. One of the central features of these attempts was the desire to isolate the communities, whether they be as large as the United States of the early nineteenth century or as small as Tora Bora - from the rest of the world.

This leads me to my point. If Rob's proposal is to succeed, those who describe and implement it have to avoid "isolationist temptation." That is to say, "local resiliency" should not be about cutting off Prince Edward Island from the rest of the world, but of replacing a small number of fragile relationships (selling potatoes and buying petroleum) with a larger number of healthy ones. For example, the kind of multiculture that Rob proposes will create all sorts of opportunities for gastronomic tourism (farm restaurants of the type found in many parts of rural France), luxury food exports (Harry and David, please call your answering service), and agricultural education. Similarly, biodiesel will be a highly exportable commodity.

In short, "local resiliency" is not about absolute independence. It is, at least in part, about new forms of interdependence.

[Rob Paterson]

Thanks Bruce - I agree wholeheartedly with you - I see a network of nodes. History tells us that being locally completely independent leads to starvation when the inevitable weather/pest event occurs.

I obviously "over egged the pudding".

The challenge of describing this is that we slip into centralization so quickly.

Actually the Founders had the right model didn't they? Of a loose confederation?