My transition town

Upon our arrival in Sète last August, we started to notice announcements for a Forum des Associations. A good opportunity, I figured, to get to know some local activities. From the height of my previous status as a citizen of a city of 3 million, my expectations for Sète (population: 44,000) was to see twenty kiosks and a couple of activities. But no… we could hear the buzz of activity several streets before arriving at the Plaza des Salins. It was filled as far as the eye could see with hundreds of kiosks, each decorated with photos and posters, run by friendly volunteers with leaflets and sign-up lists. Hiking and cycling clubs, tennis and rowing centres, nature conservation projects, immigrant support organizations, activities to counter senior isolation, Spanish, Italian, English, guitar, piano, singing, tango and salsa courses, all kinds of sports, several choirs, five different yoga classes, a old ship restoration group, an art borrowing library, a bridge club — and the list goes on. Dance and singing performances and sports demonstrations rounded out the scene. I left exhausted, loaded with pamphlets, but inspired. 

Sète has the reputation of being traditional and rather insular, reinforced by its slogan lifted from the Sète-bord poet Paul Valéry, l’île singulière (the singular island). Founded relatively recently during the reign of Louis XIV (around 1666), Sète has since known successive waves of  italian, spanish, algerian and moroccan immigrants. Over the past ten years, waves of retirees from more northern France in search of warmth have also settled here, adding to the crowds that flood its beaches and festivals in summertime, but also adding a new dynamic to its social life. It is perhaps no coincidence that it has been six years since Sète en transition has taken off.

It’s thanks to the Forum des Associations that I came across Sète en transition, a citizen group informally linked to the transition town movement. It ‘aims to promote alternatives to the current ways of living, acting and thinking in the city of Sète in order to increase community resilience in the face of future crises’. The founders never imagined that the next crisis would be a virus…

Faithful to its aim to be a project incubator, Sète en transition has supported a dozen initiatives over these six years. Some of them have developed and achieved independence and stability; others are continuing their work slowly and on a small scale, still others have died out. The Coop singulière is a participatory grocery store with a storefront and ordering system for local and organic food (we have become active members). La roue libre de Thau is a popular cycling promotion organization that combines bike tours and repair workshops with advocacy activities to improve cycling conditions in the city. The Zéro déchets group recently opened a community compost bin; a Local Exchange Trading System does what its name suggests, and as of a few months ago, Sète has its own local currency which it shares with Montpellier, called la Graine.

Sète en transition started with a small group of citizens full of ideas who met regularly to develop them. Little by little, concrete projects became independent and energy shifted toward them. Stéphane Thiers was part of this group of initiators since his arrival in Sète six years ago. He participates in certain projects and also coordinates communication for Sète en transition, producing a newsletter every week. It’s a concise and stimulating compilation of news and activities from the different projects, accompanied by his personal reflections. “But I can’t and don’t sign for the collective; I express myself as an individual. I let others speak when I can, and I try to highlight their work”, he says.

“Sète en transition has become like a donut,” says Stephane, “all the action happens on the outside and the middle is empty”. The image that comes to me is rather that of a set of wheels of different sizes, each propelled by its own energy and running at various speeds. Stephane and the few others who carry out welcome, communication and general awareness activities oil the wheels, fluidify interactions, incite the projects to help each other and support the creation of new small wheels.

The transition town approach is based on the idea that citizens take the future into their own hands with concrete solutions and an inclusive approach. Projects start small, gain visibility and learn from their mistakes and successes. In Sète en transition, there has never been a global strategy — it’s always been spontaneous.  “I’m there to shake things up and stimulate, I don’t act on anyone’s behalf and if activities go ahead, it’s because of reactions from others.” says Stephane. “One of the biggest difficulties with all these projects is that it’s not the same people at the beginning as the end. People move, become parents, get sick, change jobs — and it’s not easy to keep up the momentum”. 

Faced with the objective of a large-scale societal transition, local alternative projects have always attracted me with their positive vision and concrete action; it’s what motivated me to join the Coop singulière and the Roue libre de Thau. I also joined a broader and more political (but non-partisan) initiative: the Pacte pour la transition. Not to be confused with the Quebec initiative of the same name, the Pacte was created in the context of the 2020 French municipal elections by 60 non-profit organizations through a broad citizen consultation and with a committee of experts. Its program includes 3 principles and 32 locally relevant environmental and social justice ‘measures’ or policies, covering all facets of municipal life from transportation to school canteens and housing. Each of the measures was created by groups with topic expertise and is accompanied by an explanatory sheet with references and examples of municipalities that have already undertaken similar policies. 

In hundreds of municipalities across France, citizen groups have formed to take ownership of the Pact, challenging the electoral lists in their town or city to commit to it. According to Agnes Gerbé, a member of the local group in Sète, “The Pact is a great tool that allows ordinary citizens to reflect at their own level on the situation in their town, to take an interest in it in a broader way, to ask themselves questions and to share their thoughts with others — in short, to become politicized, in the noble sense of that word! »

In Sète, there were six lists of candidates running for election, plus a seventh which was added too late to be part of our process. Our local group sent the Pacte to all these lists and met with each of the heads of lists (and often several team members) to discuss it. The result: all the lists contacted signed the Pact. There was significant variation in the number of measures they committed to (ranging from the required minimum of 10 measures to all 32 measures) and the level of commitment (each measure has three variations, from minimal to strong). 

I had the opportunity to participate in three meetings with electoral lists that could roughly be categorized as left, centre, and right. But one thing became clear: here, the environment is not an issue belonging solely to the left. All parties, including the ‘Union des droits et citoyens’ supported by the far right Rassemblement national, have committed themselves to many ecological measures including support for active mobility and public transportation and increasing the amount of organic, local and fair trade food in schools and daycares. 

The dividing line is clearer for social policies. For example, the measure to ensure non-discriminatory access to public space, including for the most vulnerable people, was rejected by the right-wing party but supported at the highest level by the left-wing coalition as well as the socialist party. However, the devil is in the detail: the idea of citizen participation seems to be accepted by all, but the experience of the last mandates in Sète, run by the centrist Sète comme au premier jour, shows that one can say one thing (being open to citizen engagement) and do quite another (being very opaque in decision making). On the issue of citizen engagement the very open and participatory process of the Alternative sétoise party (including candidates from the European green party, the far left France insoumise, and the communist party) stood out from the others. It organized multiple opportunities for citizens to participate, for example in committees to develop its platform and even in the selection of candidates.

In the end though, for change to happen, commitments have to be kept. The importance is not simply which team is elected and its commitments, but also, regardless of the winner, that local groups (NGOs, businesses, researchers) and citizens follow the change process closely — it won’t happen all by itself. With the municipal elections suspended between rounds, we still don’t know which team will lead Sète for the next five years. “The work of the citizens and local groups supporting the Pact only really begins in the wake of election results,” says Agnes.

Whether it’s initiating projects for new bike paths and local currencies or influencing municipal policies as part of a national initiative, the common thread I see is the power of small groups of citizens. The Corona crisis is highlighting the painful inequalities in our societies, the need to tackle them and to strengthen our local economies even as we maintain our global connections. It’s reminding us of the need to transform the ways we live, eat and move to truly respect the environment on which we depend, and the vital importance of anchoring our global transition in local action.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead