Llandeilo has been grabbing headlines recently with talk of launching its own currency under the banner of being the first transition town in Wales. The transition town movement concerns itself with tackling two major challenges, Peak Oil and Climate Change. The approach to tackling these challenges is by broadly applying permaculture principles, considering energy efficiency and methods for local self sufficiency in food, waste disposal and manufacturing. The goals are to reduce the carbon footprint of transition communities and to prepare them to be better disposed to weather any negative effects of a future impacted by reduced availability of oil and oil based products.
The Llandeilo project began in Spring 2007 and has since spawned a number of sub-groups:
* Allotments
* Food and Farming
* Renewable Energy
* Permaculture
* Afallon Teilo – a project to encourage the local production of apples
* ‘Heart and Soul’ – the psychology of Energy Descent
* Diwylliant a Iaith – (Welsh) culture and language
In terms of analogy and comparison, Jonathan Dawson in an article for the New Statesman draws an elegant branch on the family tree of sustainable communities between small transitional communities (ecovillages to use Jonathan’s terminology) and medieval monasteries.
Interesting times and interesting opportunities.
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