Introduction

If you live on Waiheke Island, this blog is for you.

Use the label categories on the right to navigate to areas of interest.

When you find a post that picques your interest, read the comments and add some of your own. This may require setting up a google account (but they make it easy and its a once only thing).

When a topic has reached a level of seriousness and if the project's actions need more support, there is a web based project tool available, which is proving very helpful.

Taking care of business

From a friend, Harvey Jones:

The article below was in our local newspaper last night. Eketahuna is a small town of only about 1,000 or less people, nearby my home town of Pahiatua (pop 3,000).

There has been a running down in New Zealand of various local services. At Eketahuna the local community are taking things into their own hands. A few years ago the petrol station burned down and none of the oil companies wanted to be part of any rebuilding.

The town created a community trust which all local members were invited to contribute to. From this, they funded the building of a new service station. Now there is no need to travel 25 kms to fill the tank.

A hardware store was similar funded. There is no doctor in the town so they organised a community nursing service to provide a front line service and reduce travel needs. Now a banking service as well.

I noted that there is no history of their previous accomplishments in the article below. Now we have to find ways to grow the movement and share the expertise.

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Original source URL:
http://stuff.co.nz/manawatustandard/4108644a6502.html
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
Do-it-yourself banking arrives

The small Tararua town of Eketahuna is taking Do It Yourself to whole new levels.

It didn't have a supermarket, so it created its own. It didn't have a petrol station, so it set one up. Now, the town is taking banking into its own hands as well.

After all the major banks refused to put either a branch or automatic teller machine in Eketahuna, locals decided to set up a money exchange. The exchange was the brainchild of Tararua district councillor Claire Matthews, a banking studies senior lecturer. She said Eketahuna's population of about 500 made it too small for a bank. "It's purely a question of profit. It would not be economically viable." An exchange was the obvious solution, after seeing similar systems in other small towns. "A bank branch is only of use if you are with that bank, and an ATM really only allows withdrawals, which may attract higher fees for customers of other banks. I suggested a money exchange, as I had seen in Northland." Mrs Matthews said not having banking services was frustrating for people in Eketahuna, where the nearest bank facilities were 25km away in Pahiatua.

The exchange will be run by staff in the council's service centre and will aim to break even rather than make a profit, with the council subsidising the operation for the first six months on a trial basis. It will provide access to cash through an eftpos machine, change for businesses, cash or cheque deposits, and cheque cashing for approved customers. Deposits will go by courier to banks in Masterton. It is expected to be up and running by August.

Car Sharing

How it works?

The UK example: Customers sign up and pay a one-off lifetime membership fee of GBP 25. Booking takes place online or by phone, and a confirmation with the car's details (exact location, colour, license plate number) is sent to the customer both by email and sms. An sms is also sent to the car, to tell it who will pick it up.

To unlock a car, customers hold a smart card up to the windshield. Door opens, and they'll find the ignition key in the glove compartment. Monthly bills give a detailed breakdown of all journeys, and show how much was saved by not owning a car. The entire process is extremely customer-friendly, and nice touches include an iPod connector in every car, as well as a hands-free car phone that users can forward their own mobile phone to.

• ...fragmented car ownership is a highly promising business concept: increasing numbers of consumers are more interested in experience than ownership, no longer viewing cars as the ultimate status-symbol, but as a utility. Serving them and being green doesn't mean forsaking profits: Streetcar went into the black 18 months after launching. And every car shared results in 6 private cars being taken off the road. May sharing proliferate!

Community Owned Power

Here are some useful links showing what other communities have done and are doing in this area of taking care of their own energy needs. I looked at quite a lot of sites and have picked these as some of the gems. I havent read any of them in detail - I am a generalist :) but hope that you will find some of this useful as the process matures and we move it forwards into the real world.

I sense from the quick perusal, that this is very do-able and that others have shown the way to move projects like this forward steadily, and that each step is a step closer to realising the vision of an island that takes responsibility for its own energy needs. It is an evolving process.

Enjoy . . . .

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Grassroots organizing for organizing for community energy self-sufficiency - Minnesota. This PDF document begins by describing how it all began and is very heartening as it shows the true grass roots nature of the project. As you scroll down you get a mix of information, some of it specific to their situation, but then lots of photos which tell the story in very human terms - very inspiring!

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TREC (Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative) has learned that it is not easy to be an innovator in a field dominated by long-established organizations, many of whom saw TREC’s vision as challenging. TREC has learned that several considerations are important in bringing about change in the face of opposition:

• You must be able to communicate clearly your exciting vision;
• You need committed people, often volunteers, who share a common vision and get along well with each other;
• You need to communicate your vision to everybody who has a stake in your project, including citizens groups, government agencies, and private sector companies;
• You need to be creative in presenting your message, in making partnerships with other agencies who share your vision, in using the media to get your message out to the public, and in presenting your case to organizations who may be sceptical or even oppositional;
• You need to build a network of influential persons and organizations which will support you in your pursuit of your goals;
• You need to be prepared to "hang in" for as long as it takes to accomplish your goals;
• You need to be true to your principles and vision;
• You need to have in your membership, the diversity of skills required to put in place your vision: technical, management, communications, legal, financial, environmental and community-outreach skills are all required.

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The only mains-connected community owned wind farm of its kind in the UK was launched on Friday 21 January 2005, by the Isle of Gigha, which is itself community owned.

In recognition of the importance of the project for the future of the island ‘the Dancing Ladies’, as the windmills have been dubbed by the islanders, were switched on by local school children...

... Whilst wind farms are often deeply contentious, the decision to go ahead in Gigha was made by the islanders in a unanimous show of hands by islanders in the village hall.

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Ontario's 1st community-owned wind farm. This talks about Canadian legislation that was implemented to promote community power generation projects of 10 MW or less. It shows an example of a letter that was drafted to help citizens communicte their needs to the lawmakers.

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Some detailed news about the efforts and approach of a collective promoting wind generation. Some items talk of the public meetings and others of the methods of funding the projects, such as sales of shares.

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Ontario Sustainable Energy Association describes lots of individual projects that are on the go. There is a brief summary of each one and a link for more information and contact details. Looks like a wealth of useful information here.

Why Localisation

Behind the idea that it is better to manage local affairs locally, and this includes self-governance as well as supplying most essential needs from within the community, is the assumption that people are very creative when set a challenge, the outcome of which will affect their quality of life.

So rather than surrender decision making to large (often inflexible, rule-driven, slow-to-respond) centralised organisations, people who engage with each other in respectful dialogue are likely to solve local problems in very creative ways. When people in a community know each other, and understand the broad pool of skills and resources that are available, they will often come up with solutions that use those people and resources in unusual ways.

Localisation will either be taken up by a community which understands the challenges that are likely to confront us in the coming years, or the community will be forced into localisation by necessity as dwindling natural resources are less abundantly available to support our energy intensive way of life.

More people are saying it

This clip of a slide show from David C. Korten is brief and to the point.

The DVD - From Derek and James

Derek Hayward and I (James Samuel) recognised a need for a DVD which offered a summary overview of the key issues and challenges that we human beings face in a world that is changing faster than we seem to be evolving and adapting.

You can watch it here.

We wanted to introduce people to some of the films that have spoken loud and clear to us in our search to better understand the world we live in. So we worked with a friend and film editor to bring you an introduction to them. Included in this DVD are some brief comments from Derek and myself about possible responses to the challenges, that we could be making here on Waiheke.

Here is a list of the films and a description of the specific short clips which are included in this 34 minute compilation:

From: The Power of Community - A succinct history of Peak Oil and how Cuba came to their own Peak Oil moment with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980's. It shows a little glimpse of the grass roots response to the need to feed their population, when their oil-dependent agriculture was no longer able to do so.

From: Oil Smoke and Mirrors - Richard Heinburg, author of The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, and the book Powerdown: Options and Action for a Post-Carbon World, expresses how easy it is, even for him, to fall into a level of denial about the significant changes that are almost certainly headed our way. A few other highly reputable politicians, business people and a geologist speak about dependence on Oil, the potential for global economic upheaval, and an explanation of why the media is largely quiet on these subjects.

From: David Attenborough's BBC documentary, Can We Save Planet Earth - CO2 is made visible in a clever graphic display and explanation of its sources and effects. We hear about China's direction and their part in the growing total of CO2 that is being released into our atmosphere.

From: Denial Stops Here - Michael Ruppert offers his insights into the global economic environment and makes some startling suggestions about the implications of the current situation.

From: An Inconvenient Truth - It is hard to go past Al Gore's big CO2 and Global temperature chart for the last 650,000 years, without asking what might be in store for us.

From: The End of Suburbia - despite this being the oldest film in the line-up, with footage taken from the Paris meeting of ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) in 2002, it's contribution is valuable. This puts recent world events into perspective, and helps explain some of the lead up to them.

We hope this compilation (in all its amateur and jerky wonder) captures the essence of key issues which are already facing us as we race towards a global population of 7 billion persons. A key message is that each of us needs to learn how to reduce our footprint on this earth, and find ways, through cooperation and mutual support to meet our needs without disadvantaging future generations.

Don't be fooled by the nice looking label (if yours has a label), there is nothing refined about this production. It is our humble effort to share information with you. Now if you know of anyone who wants to throw some money at this project, and have it made into a cleaner presentation, we are more than happy to help. But this was the result of some concerned citizens who squeezed in a few late nights in their busy schedule to put this together with limited technology.