Categories of developing expertise in the future include:
- Development of high tech but low energy and carbon footprint value chains. Eg software, portable technology and communications
- Reconfiguration of the financial economy
- Community resilience and transition
- Re engineering of our current systems and way of life to a low energy and low carbon one
- Regeneration of ecosystems
What we think will be required is the development and congregation of clusters of people with strong complementary capabilities (not necessarily tested) in delivering meaningful change at community level.
This is the most testing environment and is the cauldron where real change will happen (and must happen because it is how we live now).
Expertise in this environment will need to include:
- Being able to articulate purpose and direction clearly - The why
- Coming from the truth as the basis for intention, motivation, and evidence-based action
- Living the experience of those they are working with
- Learning with those they are working and transitioning with
- Being trusted over a long period and are committed to long-term and sustained change.
- Able to think critically and translate the expertise they have into real action and change
- Able to hold the space required for others to maintain cohesion and transition activity
These pan-capability groups would be required to embody general principles that lead towards wellbeing, such
as:
- Te ao Māori – partnership and guardianship of the natural world
- Regeneration of the biosphere including soil, water and carbon cycles
- Real reductions in energy consumption and GHG emissions production
- Social and community development, cohesion and change at scale
As a team working in the field of Transition, between us, we have acquired hundreds of reference books, read thousands of articles, trained hundreds of people and delivered assignments/projects in different countries totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, over many years and across many sectors and disciplines.
Do we think this makes experts? Yes, but only when we are working in a way that is aligned with the context as
outlined above.
Understanding how to do this requires significant expertise in itself.
What we have learned over the past three years is that change and transition is and will become increasingly location and community specific. There is often a big gap between what the folks on the
ground need and what mal-adapted experts 'helicoptering' from above can provide.
So if you are intent on creating the 'A team' of experts that can be your savior, or are hearing that story from a large consulting firm or the government, you are now aware of why
it's likely to be more wishful thinking than reality.
Remember to keep your transition moving with SOS+ and don't get caught on the MAT (it's unsafe)