The Great Transition

The Great Transition ∞ project was initiated and developed by nef in response to recent economic and environmental crises, but builds on over 25 years of new economic thinking and practice. 

The Great Transition ∞  is a new kind of campaign. It began with report called The Great Transition in 2009, but the campaign’s time horizon runs until the middle of the century. By then we must re-engineer our economies to tackle debt fuelled over-consumption, accelerating climatic instability and volatile energy prices underpinned by the approaching peak in global oil production. It means re-thinking how we bank, generate energy, travel, and grow the food we depend on. It is a massive task that needs lots of organisations and people working together. A big part of the campaign is helping to make that happen.

The Great Transition report set out why the transition to a new economy is not only necessary, but also possible and desirable. Keeping in mind the big picture, at different times the campaign will focus on particular issues. For example, without a financial system to support the necessary transition, little will happen. So, reforming the banks is an urgent priority.

Achieving the Great Transition has been put at the heart of all of the work that nef does, but we cannot achieve the Great Transition on our own. From our understanding that change can only be built collaboratively, the Great Transition is embarking on a new phase of work with a growing range of partners and collaborators.

All of nef’s work is about aspects of transition, but the Great Transition initiative has three key new elements: setting up a new economic commission, the development of a new economic model to guide the Great Transition; and a campaign to make it happen.

The Great Transition is a growing movement of individuals and organizations that recognize that a different world is possible if we work together to make it happen, because there is no Planet B.

The story of the Great Transition
The Tellus Institute launched their Great Transition Initiative in 2003 as a global network of academics and activists.  The Transition Towns Movement is applying many of these ideas in a practical way in a growing number of villages, towns and cities across the world. nef’s Great Transition Initiative complements this work by building a broad movement for change in the UK.

The Great Transition also builds on a rich and powerful body of work stretching back to Karl Polyani’s The Great Transformation. The economist Kenneth Boulding used the phrase in relation to the change required to keep economic development within the finite limits of the planet in a speech at Carroll College, Wisconsin in 1963.

"The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destinations." - John Scharr, Futurist