Growing Regional Resilience by Jamaica Stevens
Excerpt from “ReInhabiting the Village: Co-Creating our Future”
“IF OUR GOAL IS A PEACEFUL, JUST SOCIETY, SELF-RELIANCE AT THE HOME AND COMMUNITY LEVELS MUST BE A CENTRAL FOCUS OF OUR LIVES.” Ben Falk
Regional Resilience means different things depending on the context. One perspective of resilience is focused on a region’s economic adaptability and buoyancy, or whether its systems of infrastructure can attend to the changing needs of a populous. From another vantage point resilience is the biological capacity for an ecology to adapt and thrive under adverse environmental conditions. Another lens is perhaps a community’s preparedness to respond to a crisis. Resilience is also based in individual capacity to navigate changing circumstances while continuing to grow and flourish.
One way to approach resilience is to consider whether the needs of people local to an area can be met without dependence on outside resources, regardless of the conditions of economic hardship, environmental crisis, or infrastructure collapse. Resilience indicates that a community’s process of rebound, adaptation, and recovery from any systemic or sudden shift can sustain the means of survival for its inhabitants.
Consider your region, your city or town. Would you be able to say that you feel your area to be resilient? Do you feel that the system you live in has considerations to provide services and resources regardless of challenges it may face? Does your local government have a strategy in place to attend to a disaster? What about your personal resilience? Do you feel secure in your knowing of how to navigate a crisis, disaster or large-scale shift in circumstances? Do you feel connected with your neighbors or community or have a plan on how to support each other if there are considerable changes to your region?
These inquiries are essential to addressing our personal and regional resilience. How do we fortify ourselves and our communities to be sustaining regardless of shifting times and the access to the comforts and resources we have all grown so accustomed to? Who have we cultivated relationships with that we can work with in times of need? What skills have we cultivated or resources have we gathered so that we are self-reliant and prepared for any kind of unexpected shift? Living in a state of fear is not a healthy way to live, especially when there is no way to really know what life may bring. Yet when we address the reality of changing times and climate conditions, consider these questions, work to build strength in ourselves and our community and proactively engage strategies we have the potential to feel empowered and capable of navigating the unknown.
Resilience can only really come from individuals gaining a sense of sufficiency who then can focus on localized, community-led initiatives that include multi-stakeholder perspectives, linking grassroots with civic leadership to implement strategies that can attend to the particularities of that region, of its unique environmental, economic and cultural considerations. This requires inclusion of all peoples, not just those of privilege and also of the inhabitants of the bioregion itself, not only human life.
Communities need secure food systems and watersheds, strategies for meeting energy, infrastructure, transportation and housing needs, access to medical care and supplies, preparedness planning and most importantly strong leadership that can attend to an unpredictable shift. Strong leadership bolstered by a populous who is interconnected and participatory in the well being of its neighborhoods, its village, and its ecosystem with access to information, to solutions, to strategies and to the resources to make changes through the existing infrastructure are all essential.
One step further would be to preemptively avert a negative reaction to crisis by motivating a populous to choose to simplify, to grow inter-connectedness, to nourish cooperative culture and to choose to make changes that create thriving conditions for a community regardless of calamity. How can we use the same principles of resilience and make choices to create positive impact, to vision and dream together in order to become inspired by what is possible? What can we learn from the threat of crisis that can inform us of pathways to become more engaged, more empowered, more thoughtful of our systems and strengthen where we see weakness? From a permaculture framework, how can we turn a challenge into an opportunity? Really the question is, how do you WANT to live?
We can choose now to use the current systems that are dependent on finite resources in order to intentionally create regenerative local areas- on a global scale- that bring the wisdom of time-tested living principles together with the best of technological advancement and propel us as a species into a future that is more harmonious with our natural environment, more interconnected with each other, built to last for all generations, not only a few.
Concepts like re-skilling, neighbor to neighbor trade of services, community gardens and tool sheds, food banks, protecting local watersheds, supporting farmer’s markets, CSA’s and co-ops, urban permaculture, up-cycling reused materials, bike friendly transportation routes, investing in local credit unions, investing in children and education, asset mapping local resources, shared housing and intentional living communities, shopping for locally sourced goods and uplifting local economy and artisans are all part of fostering resilient communities. Additional approaches to building regional resilience are implementing green energy strategies that reduce our dependency on finite resources, preserving green spaces and ecological diversification, celebrating diversity and working towards equity, creating public convergence points to share information, build relationships, and strengthen mutuality.
A dream some members of my community have is to open land-based “retraining centers” focused on intergenerational, immersive whole systems education where one could learn how to grow food, work with tools, build infrastructure and housing, apply innovative science to energy or water needs, be trained in basic first aid and holistic health, along with leadership and communication skills, practices for personal balance, and a deep ecocentric reconnection.
What if the threat of effects from climate change, reaching peak oil, natural disasters, creation of environmental refugees from drought, economic collapse, pollution of water sources, threatened food security, and more all became fuel for humanity CHOOSING to change the way we live on this planet? What if in our moment of crisis we saw a widespread movement of efforts made to create balance, abundance, and connection in local regions? What if those local regions shared what they were learning, their successes, approaches, best practices and mentored other areas facing similar issues to create a global network of support empowering more communities to engage with direct action? What if we looked these challenges right in the eye and unified across dividing social lines to come together and create the conditions for a regenerative renaissance of HUMAN FLOURISHING? Now is the moment where possibility can become realized through those who open their hearts, use their intelligence, offer their hands in service, get involved, eliminate separation, turn challenges into opportunities and choose to make it so.
“In an age where community involvement and partnerships with civil society are increasingly being recognized as indispensable, there is clearly a growing potential for cooperative development and renewal worldwide.”- Kofi Annan
JAMAICA STEVENS
Jamaica Stevens is Author and Curator of the multi-media project “ReInhabiting the Village: CoCreating our Future”. As an Organizational Design Consultant and Steward with VillageLab, Jamaica works with Regenerative frameworks and Whole Systems principles to empower people, projects and organizations to THRIVE!
She is also an experienced event producer, workshop leader, group facilitator, educational program designer, community organizer, project manager, writer and life coach. She is currently the Educational Program Manager for the Lucid University and has been the Co-Founder of Protectors Alliance, Program Manager for Lucidity Courseweek, Creator of Tribal Convergence Gatherings, Co-Founder of Tribal Convergence Network, Educational Program Coordinator with the Novalis Project, Executive Producer of Awaken Visionary Leadership Summit, as well as a Contributing Producer with Lucidity and other festivals. Passionate about earth stewardship, collective evolution, village ethos and collaborative culture, Jamaica is in service to supporting the conditions for planetary flourishing and a regenerative renaissance. Learn more at JamaicaStevens.com
