Sustainability and Resilience

The references on this page are about two concepts central to Transition - sustainability and resilience. Sustainability is the capacity of a system to endure into the future; resilience is the ability of a system to withstand shock.

The goal of the Transition movement is to create communities (cities, towns, neighborhoods, spiritual groups, etc.) that are both sustainable and resilient. That is, those communities need to be able to continue into the future with the resources and the environment of the future. Specifically, they need to be able to withstand the shocks that are coming - the end of the age of cheap fossil fuels and the beginning of the age of a significantly changed global climate - and not only survive, but thrive.

Sustainability

• What is sustainability?
  The definition of "sustainability" from an article on the topic on Wikipedia; the Principles and concepts section is also worth reading.
  
  
• Five Axioms of Sustainability
  From the book Peak Everything by Richard Heinberg. These five axioms, though simply expressed, together make it obvious that "sustainability" is a goal that we will not reach easily.

Resilience

• Resilience Thinking
  This article by Transition founder Rob Hopkins appears in Resurgence Magazine, the November/December 2009 issue. In it, he defines resilience as "the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance while undergoing change, so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks."
  
  
• Transition, Resilience and Tradeable Energy Quotas
  An article from TransitionCulture.org that discusses the need for localized control of carbon emissions, using "tradeable energy quotas."
  
  
• Community Resilience Toolkit
  The Toolkit is designed for groups ... to prepare their communities to weather tough times. It places a special emphasis on economic and climate instability." From that page you can download the PDF version of the book, a 17 MB file.
  
  
• The Resilient Household
  This is a quick summary of the things a household should do to be resilient to the shocks that are likely to come in the future.