One planet living in the suburbs

About the report

Co-authored by BioRegional Consulting and WWF, this report focuses on communities and housing in suburbia where around 86 per cent of the UK population lives. It examines the challenges and opportunities of creating a more sustainable society and identifies some of the real hurdles facing the UK government in its commitment to cut carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.

Published November 2006
Pages 116

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BioRegional is a registered charity – if you would like to make a donation for this report please visit www.justgiving.com to do so securely on-line – suggested donation £4.00.  

Your support will help us to continue developing vital solutions for sustainable living.

Introduction

THE CHALLENGE
WWF’s Living Planet Report tells us that if everyone around the world consumed natural resources and polluted the environment as we currently do in the UK, we would need three planets to support us.

The Living Planet Report uses Ecological Footprinting (EF) analysis to reach this conclusion. EF is an accounting tool that represents the environmental impacts of a process or a person’s lifestyle in terms of the area of land or sea that is required to produce sustainably a particular natural resource or to absorb waste from its consumption; or, in the case of energy, to absorb the corresponding CO2 emissions generated, using prevailing technology. EF measures the area of biologically productive land that is required to meet the needs of a given product, person or population; it compares this area with the available area on Earth, and informs us whether we are living within the Earth’s regenerative capacity. The areas of land or sea calculated by EF could be anywhere in the world, and Ecological Footprints are measured in ‘global hectares’.

Ecological Footprint figures in the Living Planet Report inform us that it currently takes around 5.6 global hectares of biologically productive land to support each person in the UK. A sustainable Ecological Footprint or ‘Earth Share’, taking into account the protection of biodiversity and areas deemed unproductive, is approximately 1.8 global hectares per person; this figure is falling due to decreasing bioproductivity and increasing human population. Hence, it can be concluded that if everyone on the planet consumed as much as the average person in the UK, we would need three planets to support us.

We need to develop sustainable lifestyles that help us reduce our Ecological Footprint to a level that our one planet can sustain – this is vital to ensure the health of our planet and our long-term survival.

OUR IMPACTS AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
It is evident that all aspects of our lifestyles that contribute towards our Ecological Footprints are inextricably linked to our local and regional physical infrastructure and built environment. We travel to work and school, for leisure, and to access services; we travel to purchase food, which is made available to us through a system that uses roads, warehouses and airports; we use energy and water in our buildings as well as on our roads and in public spaces; we use services such as schools and hospitals that are part of our local built environment and with which we share infrastructure such as energy, waste and telecommunications networks.

The built environment offers us many opportunities to live sustainably but also throws up potential barriers to doing so. When our local services are not close by, we tend to drive to them; poorly insulated buildings make us consume more energy than is necessary. However, when given the opportunity, many people choose sustainable lifestyle options: we increasingly choose organic products as they become more easily available in ordinary markets; incentives such as the Clear Skies Grant catalysed actions from a variety of stakeholders and made a substantial contribution to micro energy generation; at BedZED the car club helped residents cut their transport related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 1.3 tonnes per resident per year. It is thus crucial that we create places, and put in place incentives, that make it easy for residents and users to choose sustainable lifestyle options.

New house-building initiatives (such as the new ‘sustainable communities’ in growth areas such as the Thames Gateway) offer clear opportunities to capitalise on sustainability thinking and put in place energy-efficient, wellconnected neighbourhoods, where residents will find it easier than average to live in a sustainable manner, with a reduced Ecological Footprint. These opportunities have been documented in detail by two BioRegional Development Group studies, One Planet Living in the Thames Gateway (2003) (conducted with WWF), and ZSquared: Enabling One Planet Living in the Thames Gateway (2004)ii.

Given the predicted timescales of the environmental challenges and climatic changes we face and the significant impact of existing dwellings, we cannot afford to focus solely on new house-building initiatives.

EXISTING STOCK IN THE SUBURBS
Existing housing stock in the UK contributes 27% of national CO2 emissions, uses half of all public water and generates 8% of total waste. In addition, renewal rates of existing housing stock are low, at approximately 1% a year, and it is predicted that two-thirds of the dwellings that will be standing in 2050 are already in existence. Improving the performance of existing communities is therefore vital in helping to reduce the ecological footprint of the UK as a whole.

A recent study by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) examines the CO2 emissions and Ecological Footprint of existing and new buildings in the Leeds city region, looking at how 15 different policy scenarios will affect the CO2 emissions associated with housing between 2003 and 2026. The study concludes that “retrofitting the existing housing stock is the single most important housing policy with regard to CO2 reductions– on a per household basis as well as in reducing long-term overall emissions. The potential net carbon savings are between 19% and 39% compared to business as usual.”

The Sustainable Communities Plan, produced by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (now Department for Communities and Local Government – DCLG), does consider improving some existing communities through proposals for significant regeneration and refurbishment and the market renewal pathfinder projects, however these regeneration areas account for only a small percentage of our total housing stock. Here, similar opportunities to the new house-building initiatives are available, such as achieving higher densities, providing more amenities and providing a significantly better urban environment. Regeneration also often considers improvements to existing stock, and here there are opportunities to ‘retrofit’ buildings, infrastructure and services to make it easier for residents to live sustainably.

Housing owned by councils and Housing Associations is also receiving attention across the country. For example, initiatives such as Decent Homes are helping to make affordable housing more energy efficient, and various efforts are being made to put in place facilities for easy recycling in social housing. Government policies on issues such as fuel poverty have driven measures to achieve energy efficiency as part of regeneration and retrofit projects in low income areas. However, as the Energy Saving Trust points out, this is not the same as reducing overall energy consumption and emissions. The majority of domestic energy use is by households that are not fuel-poor. There is therefore a need for the government to focus on wasteful households among the fuelrich. Many of these are owner-occupiers (who account for 70% of households in the UK), many of whom live in the suburbs.

It is clear that there is substantial effort concentrated on making certain types of housing stock more sustainable: new housing; council and Housing Association stocks; and that which is part of regeneration initiatives. However, there is another category on which it is worth spending similar effort: private suburban housing. An estimated 86%7 of the UK population lives in suburbs and, as outlined later in this document, there are high environmental impacts associated with many affluent suburban areas.

The hypothesis of this study is therefore that perhaps the greatest challenge is to consider how, in existing suburban communities that have not been identified for significant regeneration or planned growth, to retrofit with infrastructure and services that will enable residents to lead sustainable lives.

Download report PDF
........................................................................................................
BioRegional is a registered charity – if you would like to make a donation for this report please visit www.justgiving.com to do so securely on-line – suggested donation £4.00.  

Your support will help us to continue developing vital solutions for sustainable living.