Conservation Congress ratifies glocal outlook

Author: Andrea Glaessner

"Conservation Congress" conjures up an image of a room full of Vermonters drawing up legislation and making decisions on local environmental issues. Against the backdrop of society's current fixation with climate change and national politics, "conservation" could only mean environmental conservation, and "congress" obviously alludes to decision making and action.

Yet at the end of the day, the Addison County Conservation Congress did not produce laws, nor did the group spend hours debating the merits of wood pellets over clean coal energy. Instead, participants of the Congress walked out of Mount Abraham Union High School in Bristol singing the lyrics of a song called "Hope" in a three-part harmony.

"It was ephemeral, it's about learning. [It was] never intended to be an institution or to have a life beyond the day," explained David Brynn, one of the main organizers of the event. "The idea is that people can just relax, it's not about policy setting, not about voting. [It's] a chance for people to sit around and just get to it."

Co-sponsored by the Addison County Relocalization Network (ACoRN) and Vermont Family Forests (VFF), this year's event opened up to encompass a range of topics. Focusing on three issues - peak oil, the financial crisis and climate change - the 150 attendees divided into 12 rooms to discuss these issues through the lens of various aspects of the community from food and farming to heat and power to faith and spirituality. Each room's discussion was led by an expert or leader in the respective area.

Rather than placing environmental conservation at the center of the discussion, it was taken as a given. "We basically made the point that we were assuming that we were going to take excellent care of the land, that we view land as the foundation of the community and that all our plans would keep in mind that we needed to sustain the health of the land," explained Brynn.

Brynn has been organizing these Conservation Congress forums for community dialogue since the 1990s. The first Congress was held in 1993, and Brynn continued organizing the forums annually for the next five years before taking 10 years off. "The idea, initially, was that we needed a place where the community could come together and discuss controversial conservation issues in an environment that's respectful, but get right to some of the major conservation issues facing us," said Brynn.

Last year's Conservation Congress marked the first one in a decade, and focused on community energy. As successful as it was, Brynn decided to keep the tradition going, hence the decision to organize this year's Conservation Congress, imbuing it with a new theme entitled "Visioning Our Community in 2020 and Mapping the Next Steps to Get There."

Initially, the Congress forums tended to focus exclusively on "conventionally defined conservation sustainable forestry and energy," said College Professor John Elder, who led the "visioning exercise" in this year's event. But according to Elder, the context of this year's event was more inclusive than that of years past.

"[The environmental movement] has evolved quite a bit in the last quarter century, and while wilderness conservation and biodiversity are all still highly important, we have a tendency now to integrate them with the needs for social sustainability and the human community; we see them all as inextricable," said Elder, "I think this is good because it makes environmental movement feel pertinent to a broader range of society, some of whom were inclined to think it elitist before."

The idea for this year's theme came about over a typical afternoon coffee break at the Bristol Bakery and Café. "It actually started right here, almost a year ago now," said Jonathan Corcoran, who helped Brynn organize the event.

Corcoran's connection to the event comes through ACoRN, which promotes awareness about local sustainability, primarily through food and energy.

"We're just a loose network of people who are really interested in rebuilding the local economy around our basic needs," said Corcoran, explaining ACoRN.

Corocoran described the context for this year's Congress as "The Great Turning." Arguing that we are "on the cusp of this change that some say is as big as the shift from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance," Corcoran believes humans, and Addison County more specifically, are gradually shifting dependence back toward local and regional economies.With the context in place of future change and transition to local - as opposed to global - economic interdependence, Brynn and Corcoran began delving into the details.

"From there, David and I started talking about bringing the community together to vision our future in 2020. We started with 12 rooms, [going] from our most basic material needs, to our social needs, to our spiritual needs. We really tried to basically represent the entire community. The idea is that people would go into these rooms and spend several hours visioning 2020, and then come out of that with a common vision," said Corcoran.

The vision for the congress conjured up in the Bristol bakery was realized one year later. Over 150 participants engaged in deep discussion over the future of Addison County and how to design its destiny.

Yet several features of the daylong discussion were innovative additions to the old Congress model. The introductory "ohm" chanting, the "localvore" lunch made from Vermont's best local goods, the envisioning exercise led by John Elder, and the "cranky show" (a type of moveable animation) at the end of the day were a few of the new, exciting additions.

According to Elder, "In each group there was a highly skilled artist who tried to boil down some of our objectives and put it into a kind of moveable animation. Then they made a kind of movie in which the images of our conversation formed a continuous sequence."

"If you can envision the future you want then it's easier to make it a reality and bear in mind how you want to achieve that ideal," said Elder.

As for the physical results of the Congress, each group produced a "vision statement" inclusive of major ideas discussed, along with three decisions of how to implement that vision within each individual's respective household, town and within the county.

"To sum it up, it was really about celebrating community and celebrating what we have and just recognizing what a beautiful, rich place we live in, and at the same time, making it clear that we really have come to a crossroads, and that its up to us to create our future," said Corcoran.