• Local children enjoy being transported to the primary school in a horse- drawn covered wagon. Horsepower is also used for garbage collection, some public transport, and on the land to help produce food.
• A local activist group is calling for the closure of the nearby Fessenheim nuclear power station.
FOOD SOVEREIGNTY Another important area is food sovereignty. An eight-hectare organic market garden employs 30 young people. This supplies 250 weekly baskets of produce, and every day an on-site kitchen produces 500 meals for primary school children who eat 100% organic meals and snacks during their school day. This local food economy extends to a cannery for preserving surplus produce, and there are future plans for a malting plant and a brewery.
ONTO THE ECO-VILLAGE A further project involves a co-housing eco-village, situated on the edge of the village on land owned by the commune. Ungersheim had been inspired by the pioneering BedZED housing project in South London that was designed to operate on a zero-emissions basis. This led the town to run a competition for the design of a zero-carbon development, incorporating a checklist of other
sustainability criteria. Straw bale is being used for the walls, local timber is sourced for the frames, and the houses are being built to Passive House standards (a very strict energy efficiency standard for temperate climates where heating energy requirements are typically 90% lower than a comparable dwelling). Other initiatives have involved a ban
on pesticides and herbicides from public areas, and a ‘biodiversity atlas’ covering the commune. As a Fair Trade Town, it supports the sale and purchase of certified fair-trade commodities. It has even gone so far as to launch a note-based local currency in four denominations that is known as the ‘radish’, and which is accepted by a number of businesses. To stimulate local investment in eco
projects, and to serve as a hub, the Multicarte Cooperative was set up in 2013. One of its policies is for profitable projects to be used to subsidise others that are less economically viable. Financial savings from the sustainable energy projects in particular have translated into rate discounts for locals.
FROM ENGLAND TO FRANCE AND TO AUSTRALIA Ungersheim’s example has inspired six nearby towns and villages to
join the Transition Movement. Its sustainability journey led the film- maker Marie-Monique Robin to make the documentary Qu’est qu’on attend? (What are we waiting for?), which involved revisiting the community at intervals throughout the space of a year, and which was released in late 2016. As Transition is a group activity, it is
less of a challenge in modestly-sized communities such as Ungersheim where the population is less individualistic and materialistic, where the priority is the long-term greater good. In Australia, there are numerous
Transition initiatives scattered around the country that are actively pursuing similar, probably less ambitious, plans and which can be tracked down via the Transition Network website. n
RESOURCES Transition initiatives
www.transitionnetwork.org/transition- near-me
Connect with other readers & comment on this article at
www.livingnow.com.au
Martin Oliver is a writer and researcher based in Lismore.
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