The Global Target: One Planet Living: easy, attractive and affordable by 2040

This graph from WWF’s Living Planet Report shows three alternative future scenarios for the planet. The red line shows the historic increase in our collective Ecological Footprint. “Business as usual” sees the Footprint continuing to rise steadily where we accumulate massive ecological debt as forests, fisheries and atmospheric stability continue to decline. The solution is to bring our consumption of natural resources within the bounds of what the planet can naturally sustain long-term. That is, to live off the interest of the earth’s natural capital, not off the natural capital itself.

The yellow line represents the best case scenario of business, government and individuals responding effectively to the challenge. Once our consumption falls below the one planet level sustainability is achieved. There is growing evidence that the faster we act the cheaper, easier and more secure the transition to a sustainable state will be. Longer-term stabilizations such as the orange scenario carry with them increased associated risks and difficulties, the worst being a global warming tipping point causing the planet to “flip” to a much hotter stable state.

In our One Planet Living Communities we will enable a high quality of life within the carrying capacity of the planet. Our work is not to spread doom and gloom but it is to create action towards making One Planet Living easy, attractive and affordable. Our progress towards this is detailed below.

One Planet Living Communities Central

The OPL Communities team went up to Gland in Switzerland to participate in the One Planet Living Steering Group meeting there. Hosted by WWF One Planet Living Director Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud and chaired by WWF International COO Paul Steele, the meetings were very constructive and the team moves forward with renewed energy. It was also an opportunity for BioRegional to meet WWF International staff and build working relationships, which proved very successful - BioRegional will also now be actively contributing to WWF’s One Planet Leaders programme.

BioRegional are pleased to have become sponsoring partners of the Global Footprint Network. Joining the network has a range of benefits for OPL Communities. We will now have access to more and better national data allowing more accurate calculations of baseline footprints, and we will have the expert technical support we need to use footprinting as a technical tool.We took advantage of senior Network members’ presence in the UK for the last annual footprinting conference (held in Cardiff this May), to hold a 2 day technical training workshop at BedZED. We are also now holding discussions with WWF and Stockholm Environment Institute in the UK on the wonderful REAP tool that they have developed. We look forward to increasing our use of Ecological Footprinting as a technical tool to analyse our One Planet Living Communities as well as continuing to use it as a very effective tool for communications and education.

The wealth of networks
We were very pleased to host a range of existing and potential One Planet Living partners at BedZED over the past few months – from the UAE, Latvia, Netherlands, Switzerland, USA, Canada, China, Portugal and a range of other countries from North and South. We have had wide ranging discussions in addition to introducing them to some of the key players in the UK and overseas. Our UK developer partners have also hosted their fair share of visitors interested in their projects. The network is getting busy.

One Planet Living NORTH AMERICA

Sumeet Manchanda, Greg Searle and Geof Syphers (Codding Enterpises) stand amidst the vast (1Ha) rooftop solar PV array at Sonoma Mountain Village.

Sonoma Mountain Village by Codding Enterprises, Sonoma, California
In California, One Planet Living is helping a family-run real estate business re-invent itself as a market leader in green mixed-use development. Codding Enterprises have been building suburban homes and shopping malls (like “Coddingtown Mall”) in Sonoma County since 1950. Codding recently relocated its offices to a retrofitted headquarters at Sonoma Mountain Village, their flagship $1 billion project.

In May, BioRegional North America (BNA) executive director Greg Searle and senior consultants Rodney Wilts and Lindsay Cole conducted a 2-day Sustainability Action Planning “charrette” workshop for 45 design team and municipal stakeholders at Sonoma Mountain Village. The creative output of the workshop was a dynamic framework for Sonoma Mountain Village that identified community assets, design strategies, and timelines for each of the Ten Principles of One Planet Living.

At the beginning of June, Codding Project Director Richard Pope and Chief Sustainability Officer Geof Syphers joined Greg and the BioRegional UK technical team at BedZED in London to put the finishing touches on their Sustainability Action Plan for Sonoma Mountain Village, paving the way for the project to receive official One Planet Living endorsement. Codding, which is adaptively reusing over 700,000 sq ft of existing buildings on the 175 acre site of a former Hewlett Packard high-tech campus, is creating a new town square, commercial complex and mixed use neighborhood of almost 1900 homes for the suburban municipality of Rohnert Park – powered by one of California’s largest private solar farms.

Sustainability Action Plan for Montreal project
BNA has also been engaged to develop a Sustainability Action Planning for a prominent Montreal developer. Later in June, BNA are participating in a charrette workshop in Montreal to develop a strong sustainability vision for their unique, exciting urban project – which we hope to be able to tell you more about very soon.

Baltimore developer SBER visits BedZED
In early June Greg and the BDG-UK team are also hosting at BedZED a delegation from Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse (SBER), lead by Bill Struever , SBER’s CEO. SBER are a Baltimore-based triple-bottom-line firm that has developed a national reputation as America’s “largest recycler of industrial buildings”, with a 30-year history of discovering urban neighborhoods and historic buildings that hold enormous potential for change, and then renewing and reinvigorating them. BioRegional are very excited about opportunities for partnership with this innovative American developer.

One Planet Living CHINA

Sue Riddlestone and Jason Hu sign a letter of intent for strategic collaboration at BedZED this month

Xiaohong Chen, One Planet Living Country Manager for China, has been working alongside China Merchants Property Development in Guangzhou since April, to progress work on their Panyu project masterplanning.

In early June China Merchants brought over a local government delegation to BedZED to understand more about BioRegional and One Planet Living. The team was given an extensive tour of the development and had useful discussions with Director Sue Riddlestone. China Merchants and BioRegional signed a letter of intent for strategic collaboration in south China during their visit.

One Planet Living UK

Construction is scheduled to start on the Brighton project in the New England Quarter development this summer!

One Planet Living in the London Borough of Sutton
Following work by BioRegional, Sutton Council (the local council where BioRegional’s head office is at BedZED) adopted the idea of One Planet Living for their Sustainability Agenda in May 2005. BioRegional are now working with Sutton Council and the local community to develop a Sustainability Action Plan for the local area, aiming towards creating a sustainable One Planet Borough by 2025. The initiative will begin with the One Planet Living in Hackbridge project - working with local service providers and the local community to provide sustainability audits and subsidized retrofit measures to reduce the ecological footprint of local households. BioRegional are currently fundraising in order to work on this.

Construction is scheduled to start on the Gallions project, selected for Mayor Ken Livingstone's flagship zero carbon sheme in the Thames Gateway in spring 2008.

One Planet Living SWITZERLAND

WWF Switzerland and International have identified interesting sites in the Geneva area and have been approached by several local authorities and private stakeholders to explain to them what OPL is about. Switzerland which has already done a lot in terms of sustainable construction (with the Minergie standard for instance), high recycling rates, relatively low water consumption (130 litres per person per day), seems to be ready to go further in that direction. We believe that OPL could be the framework for this next step forward. Recently, BioRegional and WWF met with Novatlantis who have launched the “2000 Watts society project” in order to discuss potential collaboration on sustainable developments in Switzerland. Together we visited two sites near Geneva. Further discussions with Novatlantis will take place in June 07.

One Planet Living AUSTRALIA

Interest in the West of the country continues with Kendal recently invited to present at the WA Urban Development Institute of Australia's May luncheon in Perth. She gave an "extremely enlightening and very informative" presentation to 225 delegates. Many attendees were inspired by the work BioRegional is doing and in fact, Kendal may have even convinced the UDIA to have a car-free, meat-free luncheon next time!

One Planet Living SOUTH AFRICA

Sarah Alsen and Pooran Desai returned from a trip to South Africa in March where further workshops were held in Johannesburg and Durban. The Johannesburg workshop, introducing One Planet Living to the audience and relevant lessons learnt from overseas One Planet Living projects, was hosted by the South Africa Cities Network (SACN) and included a comprehensive audience of local, provincial and national government representatives as well as architects, academics, WWF South Africa and local media.

Leads in Johannesburg were also reconfirmed for two potential One Planet Living developments, Northern Farm and an inner city proposal for both commercial and residential development.

In Durban, a two day workshop was organized by WWF South Africa on behalf of Moreland Developments as a follow on to the introductory workshop held in Durban last year. In-depth discussion was had on the draft Outline Sustainability Action Plan which has already been written for the proposed Sibaya development of 6000 homes, just north of Durban. Local consultants made presentations on each of the ten principles of the Sustainability Action Plan and how they might be applied to Sibaya such that Common International Targets are met for the development by 2020. Discussion was fruitful as relevant local municipality representation was present as well as champions for each principle and utility providers such as national energy company ESKOM. The Environmental Impact Assessment for Sibaya was submitted soon after the workshop and if approved, the plan is to start the phased construction on the Sibaya site early in 2008. In the meantime the Sustainability Action Plan for Sibaya is being finalised.

Discussion is ongoing with Moreland re signing up as the first One Planet Living developer in South Africa.

THE TOPIC: Value

For millennia, humans have measured success by the ability to accumulate wealth. Be it food, shelter or tools, accruing value from nature confers an evolutionary advantage. Today, in the developed world, with all our basic needs easily met the accumulation of resources remains an indicator of success despite worsening ecological debt and despite evidence that over-consumption has a range of negative impacts both physiologically as well as psychologically. This is institutionalised by the fact that most economic analyses use consumption as a proxy for utility (or well-being). The primal urge to maximise our extraction from nature has become maladaptive now that 6 billion humans strive to attain ever more “wealth” on a finite planet.

The challenge of One Planet Living is to accrue more utility per unit of nature. That is, to seek out increasing value from a decreasing quantity of natural resources. This may turn our primal urges on their head but it is not an impossible task. Many of the things that people enjoy most don't need to have a significant eco-footprint at all. For example, sport, art, gardening and inter-personal relationships. Arnold J Toynbee outlined the Law of Progressive Simplification describing how as a civilisation evolves it will transfer increasing value from the material to the non-material side of life through developing culture, both in the sense of music art, drama and literature and in the sense of improved self-governance and a culture of compassion and stewardship.

There are many ways that OPL communities can deliver a higher quality of life while helping residents live with the earth’s carrying capacity. Local farmer’s markets on site can provide better food with lower impacts (and price) than imported supermarket goods. By using aspirational cars in car-clubs, people can have a better car experience whilst overall car ownership is slashed. Developing neighbourhoods where people can fulfil the majority of their life requirements within walking and cycling distance builds stronger, happier communities... for a fraction of the eco-footprint of the auto-centric, delocalised model that has become ubiquitous. Residents are freed to invest more time and energy in other aspects of life in the neighbourhood.

The tired argument that becoming sustainable is a sacrifice is giving way to a far more optimistic vision of the future. There are a multitude of ways that the measures required to respond to our ecological challenges actually benefit our well-being and social cohesion. One Planet Living presents an opportunity to reassess what we really value and prioritize these elements of our lives. If unsustainable consumption is out; what will we replace it with? The choice is ours.

MM