5. Know Your Neighbours
How getting to know the people around you can support climate resilient communities, plus our fave cookie recipe (for making friends) and some inspiring resources to help you get going.
Most (89%) Australians live in cities. Fewer than 10% live in small towns. A common consequence of modern city living is that households can become silo-ed, both in a social and practical sense. Without social cohesion, people feel compelled to have ‘one of everything’ in order to get through life. This sort of social fragmentation can be wasteful. It feeds higher demands to consume. It results in disconnection, reduced safety, less support through tough times, and it can make people rely more on things that occur far away to meet immediate needs, increasing carbon miles.
Whether you live in a city or rural area, there are environmental and social benefits to knowing your neighbours. Think of interactions between people in a traditional village sense. Buying food from a local grocer, getting shoes repaired by a local cobbler, sharing skills and knowledge with neighbours, helping a neighbour build a chook house or make soup, or caring for neighbour’s children or pets. When needs are met within a local area, there are fewer energy demands for travel, and there are more ‘backups’ systems (e.g. stronger food security) to help through tough times. Community is key to a resilient, low-impact future.
It is difficult to overstate the potential climate benefits that could result from positive neighbourly interactions. But an act as simple as sharing fruit with your neighbour can be a radical and powerful act. You’d be bucking the dominant food production system, which is notoriously wasteful and highly-greenhouse gas emitting. You’d be collectively taking greater control of your lives in a low waste way. If you get along well with neighbours, you may consider taking down your fences, such as in Joe’s Connected Garden.
For this week’s #52climatesolutions, we ask you to get to know your neighbours. It might be an immediate neighbour, or the ones ‘over the back’ or down the street. See if you can strike up a conversation about your gardens, or your suburb or town. Are there ways you can support each other to save having to take a drive into the city for something? You might like to start or join a local group around waste, climate action or the Transition movement and multiply your positive impact, together!
Let us know how you get to know your neighbours this week by tagging us on social media or commenting here, and share this post so others can follow along with 52 climate solutions, too!
Read on for our favourite ANZAC bickies recipe to share with the neighbours, and some great resources for other neighbours working together. Also this week’s colouring page printable.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Spiral Garden to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.