In June, “Schumacher Conversations: Envisioning the Next 50 Years” continues by considering equitable approaches to green energy transition. The full recording of “Activating Stagnant Capital to Catalyze Local Transformation” is now available on our website and YouTube.
This month, Naomi Davis of Blacks in Green, David Sturmes-Verbeek of the Fair Cobalt Alliance and Stuart Cowan of the Buckminster Fuller Institute joined in conversation. Our own Greg Watson moderated, connecting dots among this constellation of experts.
“I can’t wait to share this information with my teams and allies,” Naomi Davis proclaimed after hearing her fellow participants’ opening remarks. Given the urgent need for new directions in planetary stewardship, we couldn’t agree more.
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“What is the cost of a reorientation? We might remind ourselves that to calculate the cost of survival is perverse. No doubt, a price has to be paid for anything worth while, [and] requires primarily an effort of the imagination and an abandonment of fear.” — E.F. Schumacher
Highlights from our June Conversation
Naomi Davis on community agency in the energy transition
The conversation began with an impassioned account by Naomi “from the trenches,” as founder and director of Blacks In Green. In the early 2000s, Naomi authored the group’s eight principles of green village building. The resulting Sustainable Square Mile concept she calls “a whole system solution to whole system problems,” encompassing production, transportation, and care within a walkable village. This model of self-sufficiency, Naomi explained, is a legacy of Black Great Migration communities.
The second of these principles concerns energy: “each village produces and stores its own energy for light, heat, and transportation, and owns its means of production.” She describes the group’s ambitious initiative to incorporate a Green Energy Justice Cooperative: “a huge step into the future of what’s possible for generating and benefitting from our own energy.” This 12-Megawatt electric generation project is designed to be community-owned and run — bringing the dream of shared renewable village power into reality.
Finally, Naomi imparts some wisdom on visionary community organizing:
“I think in life, we want to find what calls us, what turns us on and keeps us going. [My] experience of persistence was born out of a sense of a calling… I just chose to believe [in] this thing called the walkable village—that the disintegration of the Black community could not, shall not, be permanent…
Once you are called, and then you persist and you have a vision… people just begin to get that energy, and you will magnetize the resources, the relationships that are yours to claim for the mission that you’re devoted to.“
David Sturmes-Verbeek on the lives of mining communities in the Congo
There can be no transition to wind, solar, and hydro power without precious metals. And Africa, David reminds us, is a “cradle of mineral wealth, powering most of the appliances we’re already using” in the Global North. While sober about the hazards and exploitation associated with mining on the African continent, David seeks to dispel some of misperceptions around labor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s cobalt sector.
Being in-country, David instead relays a positive vision held by Congolese people. Most small-holder miners, he says, are not forced to mine out of desperation. Rather, artisanal mining can be a relatively well-paid—if dangerous—living. Like people all over the world, miners work, play, socialize and dance. As David shares, they want to make a dignified, self-directed livelihood mining these critical minerals. If invested in, this sector could actually anchor a robust middle class in this underdeveloped nation.
Through his work with the Fair Cobalt Alliance, David works to bring responsible investment for the safety and appropriate technologies artisanal miners need to thrive. How can those in the West support small-scale miners in Africa? By pushing for more internationalist policies on renewable technologies, he says:
“…[A]s consumers, we should request from companies to showcase what they are doing to be part of the solution, not to withdraw from that responsibility…
… [H]ow can we make sure that national policies do not restrict them access to the very technologies needed for an energy transition? [C]urrent domestic policy restricts the export of critical mineral technologies and green energy technologies in an effort to transform the U.S. first… let’s do it in a way that inclusive of the communities where the minerals originate.”
Stuart Cowan on bio-regional resilience and a “critical path” commons
With deep and diverse experience in systems change and design, Stuart sees great promise in connected energy systems, from micro- to planetary scale. The vision of an interconnected global energy grid dates back to the 1930s, and is attributable to Buckminster Fuller. Bucky, Stuart reminds us, was one of the mid-20th century’s most brilliant futurists— and a deep commons thinker.
As Stuart has recently taken the reins at the non-profit Buckminster Fuller Institute, he lays out the goals of the organization’s new Design Lab initiative, which aims to bring Fuller’s visionary theory into practice by supporting emerging fields of innovation. One is called the “Bioregional Resilience and Regeneration” track:
“Much like the Schumacher Center, we believe that the key is enabling bioregions to unleash both local (first) and external investment (as needed), using new types of nature-aligned models at the pace and scale required to avoid collapse and jump to new levels of coherence, health and resilience…”
Finally, BFI’s “Critical Path Commons” track seeks to put technologies critical for bioregional resilience and thriving into the creative commons. The organization is looking at energy, carbon storing and removal technologies, AI, and an emerging field of atmospheric hydrology— a science which promises to help restore the vitality of ecosystems. Stuart says BFI looks forward to collaborating with those interested in these directions.
The next 2023 Schumacher Conversation, “Developing Convivial Technologies for Right Livelihood,” will take place Thursday, July 20 at 2:00 PM EST. Featuring:
- Dorn Cox of Wolfe’s Neck Center
- Toby Hammond of FuturePump
- A representative (to be announced) of U.K.-based Practical Action
The Conversation will be hosted by Sebastian Wood, managing director of engineering practice Whitby Wood, descendent of E.F. Schumacher, and member of the Schumacher Center’s Board of Directors. Participants will be announced soon. Register for this upcoming event below.