One of the most useful visioning and policy guiding tools we have available to capture and direct these positive potentials may be the local Energy Descent Action Plan.
Essentially an EDAP is a local plan for dealing with the period leading up to and following Peak Oil. It is not a plan for how to live in a sustainable world. It is a plan for the transitional period of decreasing energy — how to get to that sustainable world. The first EDAP was written in 2005 by permaculture students at a further education college in the small Irish town of Kinsale.
The document broke down the issues which arose locally from peak oil into sections, such as health, education, transport, housing, youth and community, food and energy. Each chapter presented an attractive vision of the town in relation to that issue, followed by a timeline of steps on how the town might get there.
The plan ‘Kinsale 2021: An Energy Descent Action Plan’ is available for download here.
It includes ideas like turning the town supermarket carpark into an eco-centre, new ecologically sensitive housing development legislation, permaculture studies as part of school curriculum, community gardens, a youth council, a community currency and trading network, and lots more.
As testimony to the way the plan, while visionary, retains a feeling of practicality, late last year the Kinsale town council officially adopted the plan.
Of course visioning and planning is just the begining, but it’s useful to reflect on how the authors of the Kinsale plan developed it and won widespead support.