Extinction Rebellion is just common sense – but what is the best response?

The related extinction and climate crises that are threatening the survival of life on earth can only be solved by reducing our ecological footprint – systematically curbing impacts and repairing nature to a level that sustains us within the planet's means.

“We are facing a climate catastrophe.” These are not just the words of tree-hugging Gaia-worshippers. They were said this week by the Legal & General insurance company, the UK's largest money manager, which last year blacklisted many companies for being unsustainable.

"As financial policymakers and prudential supervisors we cannot ignore the obvious physical risks before our eyes. Climate change is a global problem," they said in a statement.

Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, and Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Banque de France, said the same in an article in the UK Guardian newspaper this week, as they called upon financial institutions everywhere “to raise the bar to address... climate-related risks and to “green” the financial system”.

The wave of protests sweeping around cities across the world – International Extinction Rebellion – is simply asking for common sense to prevail in the face of the overwhelming threats facing the planet.

 

The plain fact is that all money spent everywhere must now be only spent sustainably: to meet our needs while also rebuilding & repairing our planet.

Not unlike the immediate French and worldwide response to the devastation of Notre Dame Cathedral, we must all, especially our leaders, pledge to take urgent action. Watching this global icon go up in flames has struck the hearts and souls of people around the world; within a few days almost €1 billion have been pledged to rebuild it.

Rebecca Johnson, a former Greenham Common anti-nuclear protestor compared this to the extinction crisis on BBC News: "Imagine millions of Notre Dames, all over the world, and not just art and history, but full of people, animals, plants and insects, the biodiversity. That is what the protesters are concerned that leaders are doing nothing about."

The movement's articulate young visionary, Greta Thunberg, told an assembly of European members of parliament this week: "We need cathedral-like thinking".

Watch this speech. She cries as she laments the rate of extinction of species. "Forget Brexit, tackle climate change," she tells the MEPs, to a standing ovation. “Our house is falling apart and our leaders need to start acting accordingly and they are not.”

As she was speaking, and all this week, the streets of European cities are being blocked by Extinction Rebellion protesters, who have pledged not to stop blocking traffic until their demands are met.

 

 Some city leaders are already responding.

About 100 cities and towns in the UK have already passed resolutions declaring a climate emergency.

The website climatemobilisation.org is attempting to keep track of all cities in Switzerland, North America, Australia and the UK which have done so and has so far logged about 460 of them, including 18 in Australia, such as Darebin, Yarra, Vincent, Victoria, Gawler, Mariby, Hawkesbury and Adelaide Hills.

In California, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Richmond, Oakland and Santa Cruz have also done this, to name but a few.

 

The question for everybody, is what does a council do to follow up, having passed the resolution?

To meet the demands of the resolution they have to become carbon neutral by 2030 at the latest. They also have to include the population in their decision-making.

This will necessitate action on many fronts.

There is a solution.

 

All towns, regions and cities must become 'one planet'.

A campaign is beginning to persuade cities, towns and communities to declare “one planet" status that allows them to plan and track a path into the “safe and just space” defined by the work of Kate Raworth and others, where the basic needs of citizens are met without damaging the planet.

The framework proposed is a way for any town and city to work out how to #MoveTheDate of their Earth Overshoot Day (a measure of unsustainability) to become more and more sustainable over time using a framework like this.

I am beginning in my own part of the world with #OnePlanetSwansea, #OnePlanetCarmarthen and #OnePlanetLlandeilo. Work is underway to tackle Cardiff, the capital of Wales.

You can start this process in your own town, wherever you live.

The aim is to make all cities regenerative, based on circular economies and renewable energy, to ensure we live within our means. The solutions already exist. Policies to support them must be based on evidence, not upon ideology, belief systems or loyalties, because we are all in this together.

Policymaking has not caught up with the fact that humanity crossed the threshold of “one planet” living and began living in deficit way back at the beginning of the 1970s. This is why we need data, indicators and a coherent plan to relate our activities to what the biosphere of our planet can tolerate.

 

The six-step path towards One Planet Cities and communities 

1.  Obtain community buy-in and feedback at all levels

Hold a series of public meetings and online and off-line consultations to explain the context and aims in order to obtain feedback and community buy-in.

2. Decide which standards and objectives to use

These will include a methodology and accounting system and be applicable to all sectors such as soils, biodiversity, water, energy, buildings, transport, well-being, etc. They must include ecological footprinting.

3. Set baseline – the current situation

Use data and surveys to ascertain the starting point from which goals will be set: On the supply side, the productivity of its ecological biocapacity (greenspace and water bodies). On the demand side, the ecological footprint – assets/resources required to produce the natural resources and services it consumes.

4. Set targets for each sector over realistic timescales

A system similar to that applied by the UK Climate Change Act could be adopted, along with the Global Footprint Network’s Net Present Value Plus (NPV+) tool to test the results of different scenarios. A set of five year plans may result, each with a budget and a set of targets. The overall target could be, say, 30-40 years away, to meet everybody’s basic needs within planetary limits. Each short-term target will be a step closer to the overall one. Each sector (biocapacity, water, food, energy, buildings, transport, industry, etc.) will have its own schedule.

5. Set in place ways to measure them

This should be based on what data is easy and cost-effective to gather, and relate to the baseline situation, chosen metrics and sector targets. The data should be transparent and publicly available. Everybody should be able to view the progress being made.

6. Ratchet down consumption over one or two generations.

Each five-year plan will have its own evaluation period to check that all expected benefits are resulting, to share experiences, to accommodate criticisms, to potentially revise plans, and to celebrate successes.

 

If a population’s ecological footprint exceeds the region’s biocapacity, that region runs an ecological deficit.

...which almost all regions now do. A region in ecological deficit meets demand by importing, liquidating its own ecological assets (such as overfishing), and/or emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It must therefore identify the origins, destinations and impacts of consumption.

It would then be possible to model the effects of changes of policy and practice towards a circular economy upon the related biocapacity.

Tracking the Human Development Index (a measure of how human needs are being satisfied) against the ecological footprint over a time period can indicate the direction of progress.

Government agencies at all levels can manage their capital investments in a fiscally responsible and environmentally sustainable way by using ecological footprint accounting and the Global Footprint Network’s Net Present Value Plus (NPV+) tool.

The traditional net present value (NPV) formula used by economists adds up revenue and expenditures over a period of time and discounts those cash flows by the cost of money (an interest rate), revealing the lifetime value of an investment in present terms.

GFN’s NPV+ tool adds to this calculation currently unpriced factors, such as the cost of environmental degradation, and benefits like ecological resiliency.

 

 All costs and benefits – even those where no monetary exchange occurs – thereby can be seen as “cash flows”, and can be evaluated using different future scenarios.

This will provide a more accurate and useful guidance on the long-term value of the investment, because it makes reference to the ecological footprint of the project in question.

The ecological footprint can therefore help to identify which issues need to be addressed most urgently to generate political will and guide policy action. It can improve understanding of the problems, enable comparisons across regions and raise stakeholder awareness.

 

By identifying footprint “hot-spots”, policymakers can prioritise policies and actions, often in the context of a broader sustainability policy.

Footprint time trends and projections can be used to monitor the short- and longterm effectiveness of policies.

By understanding where the best long-term value is, policies can be oriented toward better outcomes, building wealth, avoiding stranded assets and leaving a better legacy for future generations.

The standard PAS 2070 can assist with monitoring cities’ carbon footprints of consumption and production. ISO standards cover environmental management, energy management and life-cycle analysis to help put in place procedures for reducing impacts.

At the same time, all citizens and politicians need to do more to raise awareness about the issues.

More information at http://theoneplanetlife.com/

If you want support in doing this in your neighbourhood, get in touch.

We can do this. It just needs a massive, concerted effort.

David Thorpe is the author of the book The 'One Planet' Life and the forthcoming book 'One Planet' Cities.

''One Planet' Cities: Sustaining Humanity within Planetary Limits

I'm thrilled that my important new book, 'One Planet' Cities: Sustaining Humanity within Planetary Limits, will be out next May.

It addresses the crucial question of how the essential needs of the growing human population can be met without breaking the Earth's already-stretched life-support system and is the product of years of research, thinking, and conversations. It builds on the work of Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economics and the Global Footprint Network.

With four out of five people predicted to be urban dwellers by 2080, ‘One Planet’ Cities proposes a pathway to genuine sustainability for cities and neighbourhoods, using an approach based on contraction and convergence.

Utilising interviews with key players, including the Global Footprint Network, World Future Council, WWF, mayors and officials, and case studies from across the globe, including Europe, North and South America, Australia, Sweden, South Africa, China, and India, David Thorpe examines all aspects of modern society from food provision to neighbourhood design, via industry, the circular economy, energy and transport through the critical lens of the ecological footprint and relevant supporting international standards and indicators.

Recommendations on managing supply chains and impacts, how the transition to a world within limits might be financed, and a deep examination of the Welsh Government's pioneering efforts follow. It concludes with an imagined vision of what a genuinely sustainable future might be like, and an appeal for 'one planeteers' everywhere to step up to the challenge.

This book will be of great interest to practitioners and policymakers involved in governance, administration, urban environments and sustainability, alongside students of the built environment, urban planning, environmental policy and energy.

I'm delighted that it has a foreword by Herbert Girardet, founder of the World Futures Council.

From January 2019 I'll be publishing biweekly extracts to generate momentum for the launch. Watch this space!

You can pre-order the title here: https://www.routledge.com/One-Planet-Cities-Sustaining-Humanity-within-Planetary-Limits/Thorpe/p/book/9781138615106

Has the world reached peak ecological footprint?

Humanity’s ecological footprint may have levelled off after decades of consistent increase, according to new data released last week by the Global Footprint Network.

[A version of this piece appeared on The Fifth Estate website last week.
For more information on this topic, see: theoneplanetlife.com]

Mathis Wackernagel, founder and CEO of Global Footprint Network, speaking in an interview with me from Oxford University just before the launch, said, "We may have reached peak eco-footprint, after years of expansion. For example, China underwent a rapid expansion of its footprint, and now it has flattened. This could be a real trend."

Peak consumption? In 1961 China was consuming the equivalent of 0.31 Earths of biocapacity, but since then rocketed to 2.21 Earths, where it has sat for the last two years of data.

What is ecological footprint?

Ecological footprint is a shorthand way of understanding the relationship between our consumption of resources and the capacity of the planet to provide them and absorb the pollution we cause.

Every individual, a community or nation has their own ecological footprint. It is the biologically productive space needed to renew all that we demand from nature. For the world as a whole, it was in the early 1970s when humanity started consuming more than the planet could regenerate. From then on we have been in deficit, implying that we cannot carry on consuming at this level without ever-stronger risk of ecological crises.

Global Footprint Network has been providing this country and planetary level data for many years but last week’s launch also saw the launch of a new data platform and an open source system, meaning that anyone can now freely explore and interrogate the data on global or national bases.

The new data is compiled from statistics provided by the United Nations and, being complicated to collect, is always three or four years behind the current year. The first year in which the data was collected was 1961. The new website currently provides time series of data for every year between 1961 and 2014.

This is what the world’s ecological footprint looks like over this period:

From 1961 to 2014 we have gone from exploiting 0.63 Earth-equivalents to 1.69, approximately flatlining for four years.

 The horizontal line represents the total biocapacity of the planet. Before about 1970 we had ecological reserves to spare. Ever since then our ecological deficit has been rising. But it is noticeable that since about 2011 the rate of increase has levelled off.

“We don’t know whether or not this is a blip or a trend. It is too early to say,” Wackernagel said.

Mathis Wackernagel

 “But even if we stayed at the same level as last year, we’d still be in a severe global storm. So the question is, how good is your boat? For instance, even though India has a small per person footprint on average, it is still larger than what their ecosystems can renew. While this may be unfair, the reality is that this puts them at significant risk – and ignoring it at even larger.”

Individual country data compares consumption data to biocapacity data. What Wackernagel is referring to here is that India, despite having a total per capita footprint of 0.67 Earth-equivalents, is in deficit in relation to what it is able to supply itself to feed its consumption, and is therefore using biocapacity from other countries to fuel its rapid pace of development.

The data is compiled from UN information on population and the amount of built-up land, carbon emissions, cropland, fishing grounds, forest products and grazing land.

For the world as a whole, the peak was in 2011. It is interesting to compare the statistics for 1961, 2011 and 2014 to see what has changed to cause this overall peaking:

Year	Built-up land	Carbon emissions	Cropland	Fishing grounds	Forest products	Grazing land	Total
1961	0.026	1.005	0.465	0.096	0.431	0.265	2.288
2011	0.061	1.779	0.533	0.087	0.281	0.147	2.888
2014	0.064	1.707	0.550	0.093	0.278	0.144	2.835

The world’s ecological footprint per person in 1961, 2011 and 2014. The units are global hectares (gha) – these are a biologically productive hectare with world average productivity for a given year, to account for the fact that different land types have different productivities.

The amount of built-up land has steadily increased over the entire period, but carbon emissions have recently slightly decreased. While the amount of fishing grounds, forest products and grazing land have all continued to decline, the amount of cultivated land is almost back to the level of 1961.

Biocapacity is also shrinking quite rapidly per person, so even though per person ecological footprint has not changed that much, its ratio to biocapacity has become ever more unfavourable.

This implies pressures on biodiversity. It does not tell us about the nitrogen and phosphorus pollution caused by this increase in agriculture. For this we have to look for other statistics not covered by the ecological footprint metric, but covered by a different metric – planetary boundaries, collated annually by the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

As can be seen in the above diagram this is one of the four boundaries that have been exceeded.

Australia and the UK

The website allows anyone to play with the data. Let’s compare, for example, the ecological footprints of Australia and the UK.

Australia is using the resources of 4.09 Earths, down from a peak of 5.15 Earths in 2011.

The UK is using the resources of 2.85 Earths, down from a peak of 3.55 Earths in 2011.

In addition, both of these countries’ ecological footprints of consumption (in global hectares divided by population) have declined slightly since their peaks, in 2008 and 2007 respectively:

Australia's ecological footprint in terms of the number of Earths needed to sustain it, if everyone on the planet had the same level and impact of consumption as Australia does.

The UK's ecological footprint, pictured the same way. The UK's has reduced since the financial crisis of 2007.

In the UK’s case, if we drill down to the category level, the reason for the fall is solely a reduction in carbon emissions (which is largely due to a switch for gas to coal-powered electricity generation, but also due to a cut in fishing grounds due to previous over-fishing). The area of built-up land has just over doubled since 1961:

UK time series:

Year	Built-up land	Carbon emissions	Cropland	Fishing grounds	Forest products	Grazing land	Total
1961	0.068	3.835	0.803	0.396	0.297	0.751	6.150
2007	0.139	4.240	0.815	0.103	0.623	0.324	6.245
2014	0.156	2.996	0.832	0.082	0.483	0.250	4.799

UK's ecological footprints in 1961, 2007 and 2014.

In Australia’s case, again there was a decline in carbon emissions. The area of built-up land has almost tripled since 1961:

Australia time series:

Year	Built-up land	Carbon emissions	Cropland	Fishing grounds	Forest products	Grazing land	Total
1961	0.024	3.026	0.527	0.049	1.031	2.813	7.471
2008	0.047	5.867	0.872	0.127	1.206	0.872	8.992
2014	0.063	4.700	0.679	0.122	0.863	0.458	6.886

Australia's ecological footprints in 1961, 2007 and 2014.

Other trends are not improving, however.

What can be done?

Despite the levelling out, Wackernagel remains alarmed by humanity’s unsustainable activities.

“People don’t look at this stuff. Instead, they’re buoyant about labour productivity, but this came about because of cheap energy and resources. Now we need to maintain our quality of life but reduce resource use.”

But he sees a way out.

“Total and ever-lasting decoupling of economic growth from resource consumption is not possible. Some may be possible. But it takes resources to run an economy. Our data shows how the resource dependence of most countries have increased, even though we have more efficient technology. For instance, we can calculate the average resource intensity in the world – or nations or cities – by sectors. This points out which sectors are within resource intensities that are consistent with the one-planet budget, and which ones are on a collision course.”

Cities are beginning to employ ecological footprinting methods to track the demand on nature of different types of development. To do this other sources of data are added to those on the website.

“We are starting work with six cities in Portugal. We are also in conversation with the Wuppertal Institute, Germany, to run a campaign on all the larger German cities and drive up demand for sustainable solutions,” Wackernagel said.

“They recognise there is a danger of stranded assets due to having exceeded planetary boundaries.

“The framing of the argument is important. The ecological footprint calculator may come over as negative, generating a sense of sacrifice and suffering. We should ask: what is the best move to secure lasting development improvements for us? The alternative – encouraging expansionism – is dangerous.”

Cities can use their own detailed information, he says, to compile a “consumption land use matrix for a city”.

“This details how various consumption activities contribute to the overall demand. Then, using local consumption statistics, this can be extended into the past and future to evaluate trends in the city’s resource performance.”

This has been done already in Calgary, Canada, where consultants worked with a planning department to reduce the level of impact of a new housing development.

The ecological footprint is a useful tool alongside other tools. Although time will tell whether the impact of human consumption on the planet has peaked, it is still at an unsustainable level. It will take much work to actually reverse the rise of the last decades to a sustainable one, especially given the inexorable rise of human population and urbanisation.

For more information on this topic, see: theoneplanetlife.com

David Thorpe is the author of The One Planet Life, about living within planetary boundaries, Passive Solar Architecture Pocket Referenceand Sustainable Home Refurbishment.

What are the Best Indicators for Measuring the Sustainability of Cities?

All over the world, individuals, groups, towns and cities are struggling with the knowledge that in total, humanity's activities breach the ability of the planet to support them. There is a wide variety of initiatives and programs which are being developed to try to address this and in my last post I asked if we could define a universal standard for the environmental aspects of sustainable towns and cities.

This post builds upon some responses I have received to that post.

I have just begun a project to encourage towns in Wales and hopefully later the UK to declare themselves as One Planet Towns in the same way that Bioregional is encouraging cities like Brighton and Bristol to become one planet cities. We in the One Planet Council believe that One Planet Town status is what transition towns might be or could be transitioning to.

The advantage of this is that there can be measurement, goals and verification. The advantage of having an objective and universal standard is that it enables comparisons to be made. One can compare one town's performance against another, just as one can compare the energy performance of a building or the health of its occupants against that of another building.

These comparisons need to be made against baselines, which should be established for each town at the beginning, but while it is useful to deal with percentage reductions or increases of particular indicators against those baselines, these are not absolute measurements. Absolute measures enable one area to be compared with another.

Carbon accounting is a form of absolute measurement. It is now relatively easy to both state the annual carbon emissions of a country or a city (absolute) and the percentage improvement on previous years (relative). A measurement of the overall sustainability of a town or city would incorporate this indicator amongst others.

The European Union's sustainable towns and cities program built around the Aalborg process is predicated upon monitoring. It uses:

• The Integrated Urban Monitoring in Europe (IUME) initiative by the European Environment Agency (EEA) – which hasn't been updated for four years; and
• The Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities (RFSC), a still-active online toolkit for European local authorities working towards an integrated management approach. It includes a broad collection of indicators in order for cities to compile their individual set. This uses 28 indicators of which five are environmental:

15 Greenhouse gas emissions – in tons per capita
16 Share of renewable in energy consumption
17 (Percentage of) Areas designated for nature protection and biodiversity under either municipal, communal, national or local schemes
18 The number of times that the limit PM10 permitted by the European directives on air quality is exceeded
19 Soil sealing (m²) per capita.

These are all absolute indicators, enabling proper comparisons to be made between cities of different sizes.

ISO 37120

Objective indicators are also the intention behind ISO 37120 Sustainable Development of Communities: Indicators for City Services and Quality of Life. It includes 46 indicators covered under these headings:

• Economy
• Education
• Energy
• Environment
• Finance
• Fire and emergency response
• Governance
• Health
• Recreation
• Safety
• Shelter
• Solid waste
• Telecommunications and innovation
• Transportation
• Urban planning
• Wastewater
• Water and sanitation.

Of the 46 indicators, these are explicitly about environmental matters:

1. Total residential electrical use per capita (kWh/year)
2. Energy consumption of public buildings per year (kWh/m
²)
3. Percentage of total energy derived from renewable sources, as a share of the city’s total energy consumption
4. Fine particulate matter (
PM2.5) concentration
5. Particulate matter (
PM10) concentration
6. Greenhouse gas emissions measured in tonnes per capita
7. Percentage of city population with regular solid waste collection (residential)
8. Total collected municipal solid waste per capita
9. Percentage of city’s solid waste that is recycled
10. Percentage of city population served by wastewater collection
11. Percentage of the city’s wastewater that has received no treatment
12. Percentage of the city’s wastewater receiving primary treatment
13. Percentage of the city’s wastewater receiving secondary treatment
14. Percentage of the city’s wastewater receiving tertiary treatment
15. Percentage of city population with potable water supply service
16. Percentage of city population with sustainable access to an improved water source
17. Percentage of population with access to improved sanitation
18. Total domestic water consumption per capita (litres/day).

Few of these are absolute measures that relate to planetary limits, the point of the ecological footprint method. Only numbers 6 and 8 are: greenhouse gas emissions measured in tonnes per capita and collected municipal solid waste per capita. 18 is also an absolute measure but not related to ecological footprinting since the amount of water available to a population for consumption will vary by location; what is perhaps interesting from an environmental sustainability angle is the water's life-cycle impact or energy intensity.

It is claimed that ISO 37120:2014 can be used by any city, municipality or local government wishing to measure its performance in a comparable and verifiable manner, irrespective of size and location or level of development. It is being developed as part of an integrated suite of standards for sustainable development in communities by the Global City Indicators Facility, a program of the Global Cities Institute.

It is early days for the standard since it was only published in May 2014 following a development period using input from international organizations, corporate partners, and international experts from over 20 countries. Nine pilot cities, including Bogotá, Toronto, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte originally helped to devise a list of some 115 initial indicators; eventually there were 258 participating cities across 82 countries.

ISO 31720 is meant to provide a comprehensive set of indicators and a methodology that will enable any sized city in a developed or a developing economy to measure its social, economic, and environmental performance in relation to other cities. The standard includes 54 other supporting indicators.

New additional indicators on sustainable development and resilience are currently being developed within the ISO, led by the GCIF. As of December 2014 the standard is being piloted by just one city: Mexico City.

Ecological footprinting

I also mentioned ecological footprinting in my last post, because this seems to be fundamental, and I compared it to life-cycle analysis. In response to this, Mathis Wackernagel, president  of the Global Footprint Network (GFN), got in touch to say that the GFN is "trying to make the Footprint more relevant to cities" and welcoming any suggestions.

He said that far from being professional or commercial secrets, the method and calculations behind the footprinting method which they use are publicly available. For example here: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/methodology/.

"And we make the templates available for free to academics. (we only charge for commercial use)," he says. "

The underlying concept is quite simple: add up all demands on nature that compete for space".

"Life cycle assessment is not a competitor of Footprint.," he continued, "Footprint is an aggregator, an interpretation lens. To calculate the Ecological Footprint of a product, you need a life cycle assessment first. With those LCA data points then you can calculate Footprint."

It is also worth pointing out, of course, that the Footprint is a measure of ‘unsustainability’, not a measure of sustainability.

I have also heard from the British Standard Institue's John Delaney who has alerted me to this and to more issue-specific standards like PAS 2070 for city GHG footprint; process standards like BS 8904 (referred to in the prrevious post), a management system ISO that is in development; or some combination of both, like the European Reference Framework above.

He writes:

"What option cities choose depends on what suits them and/or what they are most comfortable with. Process standards can be more powerful, and help develop strategy, vision, objectives and targets, but they take commitment and resources. Reporting standards give a quick indication of how your city is doing against a raft of issues that are commonly agreed to be important, and they allow ranking of city performance.

"There is also a split between [new] development standards [systems] like One Planet Development, BREEAM Communities, etc. and standards for sustainable development of existing communities and cities. 

"We have talked for some time about developing a general footprinting standard, but it has never gained enough momentum/interest to get going. I’d be very happy to have a chat about how you could get involved in standards development and/or how we could re-boot the footprinting idea. Maybe cities and communities would be a good sector to focus on first."

Anyone who would you like to be involved in this process is welcome to contact me.

David Thorpe is the author of:

• Solar Technology: The Earthscan Expert Guide to Using Solar Energy for Heating, Cooling and Electricity 
• Energy Management in Buildings: The Earthscan Expert Guide
• The 'One Planet' Life: A Blueprint for Low Impact Development
• Sustainable Home Refurbishment: The Earthscan Expert Guide to Retrofitting Homes for Efficiency, and
• Energy Management in Industry: The Earthscan Expert Guide.

The road to the One Planet Life

We only have one planet!

Just one. Obviously. But the way some people carry on you'd think we had five - in some cases even eight - wonderful blue, vibrant orbs just like planet Earth, rotating round our life-giving Sun.

Perhaps they imagine these worlds - duplicates of ours except minus human beings - are hiding on the far side of the sun. Sitting there conveniently, so that when we've used up all the resources on this planet, we can go and tap into those. How simple the future might be if we could.

We’d probably need more than one extra planet. But hey, you never know what might turn up.

As far as I know, astronomers haven't detected any more earth-like planets in the attainable vicinity.

What a shame.

Enter the concept of One Planet Living.

We crossed the one planet threshold of our global ecological footprint back in the late '60s: the amount of resources we can sustainably use.

In the 1990s the environmental group WWF developed the concept of the ecological footprint. It measures in a form that is very easy to communicate, the environmental impact of our activities compared to the number of people on the planet and the resources it contains and its ability to absorb pollution.


In the UK we use over three planet's worth of resources on average. In the United States it is much higher.

In 2002, the Beddington Zero (fossil) Energy Development, or BedZED as it is known (pictured below), was completed in south London. Designed by BioRegional for an affordable housing association with architect, Bill Dunster, the 100 home development aimed to create a whole sustainable lifestyle.

Pooran Desai and Sue Riddlestone are the husband and wife team behind BioRegional. They analysed BedZED, measuring its performance against its ecological footprint, which led them to come up with the term ‘One Planet Living’.

In 2009 “One Wales One Planet” was published, with a vision of putting sustainable development at the centre of government delivery, encouraging others to embrace sustainable development as their central organising principle.

The following year the then Environment Minister for Wales, Jane Davidson (right), saw through the introduction of One Planet Developments into national planning guidance in Wales with the dry-sounding Technical Advisory Note 6: Planning for Sustainable Rural Communities.

The accompanying planning guidance also allows for one planet dwellings and communities in urban areas (though none has yet been tried).

Jane says: "I am a passionate believer in creating an effective and fair planning system that is responsive to ecological challenges and encourages innovation."

Since that time various cities or smaller developments around the world have signalled a willingness to move towards one planet living.

Bioregional operates on four continents.

Brighton in the south of England has fully declared its intention to be a one planet city and Bristol is thinking about it. I'm going to a meeting to discuss this in Bristol next week.

All of this is very exciting and it is the subject of my new book, The One Planet Life, out this month, to which both Pooran and Jane have contributed. In fact some of the above text is direct quotation from the book.



During the course of the writing of the book, together with many existing or aspiring one planet development practitioners, we have founded the One Planet Council. This exists to support all of these trends and those who want to live the one planet life. We are beginning to deliver training programs.

I believe this is the beginning of a trend. It's the thin edge of a wedge that is being driven into planning policy and thinking about the use of land, and who – or what – it is for. Because land is fundamental to the question of sustainable development, of regeneration, of the resilience of communities – the use of the land as well as its ownership.

Pooran Desai said in conversation to me recently that he believes that land speculation should be banned. It artificially drives up the price of land putting it outside of the reach of most of those who need to use it. I believe this is true. It is a fundamental injustice and incompatibility with sustainable development.

With this in mind The One Planet Life acts as a manifesto, stating the following demands and supporting them with a 15,000 word essay of evidence:

We ask:

1. That to aim towards one planet living should become an underlying principle of planning and official policy as de facto the only objectively-verifiable sustainable strategy
2. That the same set of social and environmental criteria should be used to assess all planning applications to create a level playing field
3. That these criteria, amongst others, should be informed by ecological footprint analysis which enables all projects to be compared for their environmental impact
4. That official attitudes to land use should change to help rural areas use one planet living methods to become more productive and more populated, and urban areas more green.

We make this call for the following reasons, which are substantiated in the book:
The one planet life:

1. results in more productive land use with far fewer environmental impacts
2. creates more employment than conventional agriculture
3. promotes greater physical and mental health and well-being, reducing the burden on the welfare state and health service
4. requires no taxpayer subsidies, unlike much conventional farming
5. improves the local economy, resilience and food security
6. therefore is more sustainable and gives excellent value.

Readers of this blog can obtain a 20% discount on the price of the book by going to this website and entering the code FLR40 at checkout. Tweet using the hashtag ‪#‎OnePlanetLife‬!

Jane Davidson says of it: "Throughout this book you will read how those who have embraced this lifestyle fully feel liberated by their choice: they have reconnected with nature; they understand the seasons and where food comes from and the limitations of what can/cannot be grown or reared where they live; they can offer a different, more sustainable future to their offspring. Not everyone will want to take the great leap into the unknown, but all of us can use this book to help us demonstrate the principles of one planet living in one or more parts of our lives."

Pooran Desai adds: "This thought-provoking book summarises some of the approaches which can help us on the journey - so please read, learn, practise and share. There are many already on the journey and we can, together, co-create a better future."

Some other recommendations include:

• "A wealth of practical detail" - Oliver Tickell, editor, The Ecologist magazine
• “Shows the journey to a new life.” – George Marshall
• "What it means to live a 'one-planet' lifestyle" – Prof Max Munday, Cardiff Business School.