The document discusses the failure to adequately address poverty, climate change, and environmental destruction due to the priorities of the current global economic system. It argues that truly tackling these issues requires supporting community-level solutions like renewable energy projects and sustainable forest management, as well as enabling communities in the Global North to localize their economies through policies like carbon caps and subsidies for self-sufficient systems. Relocalizing economies could impact the Global South by altering trade, but could also weaken elites and help strengthen democracy and land rights.

1. Transition in Europe and Africa: Erasing the Global North/ South Divide? Justin Kenrick University of St Andrews + Forest Peoples Programme Pedal: Portobello Transition Town + Holyrood350.org

2. Making Poverty in Africa and the World:2005 and 2008, speculation in world food prices > huge profits, and pushed 250,000,000 people into food insecurity and starvation (> 1 billion).2 years after 2005 G8 summit/ Make Poverty History, Geldorf said: “If this is how they keep their word to the needy, who trusts them on climate change?” The problem is not poverty in Africa, - it is the system driving impoverishment Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

3. Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

4. CO2 targets guarantee catastrophe:“Even if all the current promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions are honoured, the world will still see global temperatures rise by an average of 4°C by the end of the century. . . This is hot enough to make most of the world uninhabitable.” Professor Jacqueline McGlade EU European Env AgencyUK has ‘cut’ emissions by 198 megatonnes CO2e since 1990, by outsourcing 253 mt ( & jobs)The problem is not climate change,- it is the system driving climate change Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

5. Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

6. Failure of Copenhagen Climate Change Summit (Copenhagen) Dec 2009 Failed to tackle rising emissions in industrial countries, focused on REDD (on tackling deforestation in Global South) instead. UNFCCC meeting (Bonn) June 2010: All industrialised countries push for REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation) to be funded through the carbon market, allowing business as usual in the Global North. Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

7. Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

8. Four Stages in societies response to destruction of our life support systems Denial > ‘Business as usual’ Fantasy > ‘Techno-explosion’ 3. Bargaining > ‘Sustainable consumption’ 4. Accepting need for dramatic change, and that ‘Living within means’ enables abundance for all Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

9. Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

10. Boom and Bust vs. Sufficiency Excess > Scarcity Sufficiency > Abundance Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

11. In tackling the causes of climate change: are communities what matter most? Communities can thrive & cut fossil fuels through: Scotland: community renewables/ food growing Cameroon: owning/ managing forest, Both involve: reclaiming rights, building self-sustaining systems, creating rolling funds. We need to develop new (or protect longstanding) community ownership systems Community material base (see system as problem) not behaviour change (seeing people as problem) Local to local support (Global/ Regional/ Local) Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

12. Political changes Communities need In Global North to make localisation possible If Governments are incapable of stopping economic growth treadmill, do we need to ensure: Cap and Share: cap and rapidly reduce fossil fuels passing through economy into atmosphere Govt support for communities expanded to enable them to develop their material base > Resilient mutually supportive communities not infinite economic growth on a very finite planet Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk

13. Impact of Re-localisation on Global South? Problem 1: Raw materials and Cheap products from Global South would be priced out of market (by tariff on all goods not internalising carbon costs) + Problem 2: International (un-Fair) trade maintains undemocratic elites, impoverishing majority (taking land/ paying little/ controlling politics) = Solution: Removing this source of elite’s wealth diminishes their power; helping democracy and community land rights – South and North Transition in Europe and Africa JustinKenrick@yahoo.co.uk