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Issue 2: May 2009

Welcome to One Planet News

I write this still flush with the excitement of having met 'Panchi' (Dr R K Pachauri the chair of the IPCC) and singer KT Tunstall at the Skoll awards. This prestigious award really highlights that we have 'arrived' as a serious programme, that is capable of helping to catalyse global change - now we need to step up to the challenge of delivering this!

Hopefully the backing of the Skoll Foundation will help to open doors for us and get the One Planet message out into the world faster. This should help to rapidly expand the network of projects, which is likely to be the most effective way to quickly grow the network's profile.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions following the first issue of One Planet News. As a result we've extended the mailing list to include our non-developer One Planet partners, such as B&Q and the London Borough Sutton. We hope you find One Planet News useful, but do let us know if you have any comments or suggestions.

Sue Riddlestone
Executive Director, BioRegional

Annual Audits

We've entered a period of Annual Audits of Sustainability Action Plans - the Audits of B&Q and SOMO are underway and One Brighton will start shortly. This offers the opportunity to really refine the process and has already highlighted a few clear benefits of taking a step back from time to time and reviewing how are we doing in our goal of enabling people to live at the One Planet level.

Our partners are finding the process helpful in a number of ways:

• The audit process itself uncovers many successes that the partners have missed or forgotten about in the process of delivery
• It is an opportunity for marketing - successfully completing the Annual Audit and therefore ensuring the ongoing endorsement by an independent third party creates a great news story for presentations, websites and press releases.
• The Audit itself offers a specific opportunity for BioRegional to update on what other partners are doing to ensure that there is effective cross-fertilisation of ideas between the partners. Although this should be happening - the Annual Audit ensures that it does happen!
• Finally the audit process plays a key role in demonstrating the rigour of the programme, which partners can use to show how they really are at the forefront of their field in sustainability.

The 'self-assessment' template is being refined through the process with the aim that it can act as a rolling progress document that can easily be revisited to check on progress in-between the audits.

The aim for the One Brighton review is to use it as the basis of the first 'Critical Review', the Audit will be undertaken and shared with the other partners - who will then be able to join in a conference call to learn more about the project and feedback their thoughts to BioRegional Quintain directly. So we'll update on that as soon as it's taken place.

The Skoll World Forum

Every year the Skoll Foundation runs a three day conference for 'Social Entrepreneurs' in Oxford - the Skoll World Forum. Four BioRegional staff members attended this year's World Forum. Sue and Pooran were presented with their 2009 Skoll Award by Jeff Skoll and Dr R K Pachauri, Nobel prize-winning chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (both pictured above) at a ceremony at the Sheldonian Theatre. And it was humbling to see the BioRegional and the One Planet programme being put in the same category as organisations aiming to bring about peace in the Middle East or train rats to sniff out landmines and TB!

At the various workshop sessions we learnt a whole new language (philanthrocapitalism anyone?) but also had the opportunity to meet and learn from people at the cutting edge of social enterprise and also particularly how the internet can be used to really create and build a movement. The event was a fantastic networking opportunity and a range of interesting and useful contacts were made, and we will aim to develop the opportunities created here over the coming year.

One Planet programme structure

As the programme grows there is an increasing need to put in place a robust and transparent structure that the programme can easily grow into. This has involved a number of key changes:

• The splitting of the programme into a core team which acts as the standard setter and the 'internal examiner' and the programme teams who act as the service provider, working with the partner to support them in meeting the Common International Targets
• The proposal to establish a Peer Review Board, made up of a roughly equal number of internal partners and external experts. This Board advises on the strategic direction of the programme, and reviews and makes recommendations on SAPs from prospective members and Annual Audits.
• A Steering Group has been set up comprising the programme decision makers at BioRegional. They agree the programme's strategic direction and drawing on the recommendations of the Review Panel decide to endorse new projects or Annual Audits or not.

While not wanting to make the programme overly bureaucratic and cumbersome there is clearly a need to put in place a formal structure that demonstrates the majority of the programme. This is all work in progress so comments are welcome, particularly over potential external members of the Peer Review Board.

Working to influence international policy

As the key role of BedZED in helping create the 'Zero Carbon Homes' legislation in the UK shows, an effective demonstration project can give politicians the confidence to make ambitious policies. It has always been hoped that our One Planet partners and the lessons we have learned together could be a catalyst for change in local, national and international policies.

In the past we have impressed influential figures such as David Miliband (British Foreign Secretary), David Cameron (probably the next UK Prime Minister) and Wang Guangtao (Chinese construction minister). Recently, Achim Steiner (Executive Director of UNEP) made a video address to our One Planet One Day conference endorsing the programme and praising us for reinventing the economy around sustainability.

Now the Skoll award gives us the capacity to scale this work up. We are aiming to hold a side event in Copenhagen while our governments negotiate the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, demonstrating that we know how to tackle climate change effectively.

Over the next three years we will be looking to develop our links with existing contacts in the UK, Chinese and South African governments, the European Commission, the IPCC and the UN. We also want to initiate dialogue with governments in the US and UAE, and in the countries with emerging One Planet partnerships. Our aim is to secure 10 high profile supporters who will advocate for the One Planet programme, and potentially join with us in pushing for specific changes in policy that will unlock the solutions we are all developing.

One Planet standard vs LEED and the Code

The One Planet programme is not trying to create a certification scheme for developments akin to LEED or the Code for Sustainable Homes- the aim is about helping to create a network of exemplars that are 'measurably' sustainable. Clearly though to avert dangerous climate change we will need to developers and companies to start operating in this way - so there is a need to highlight the gap between what is currently being promoted as 'sustainable' and what is actually needed to bring our consumption levels under control.

As part of this BioRegional have been comparing the carbon emissions of residents living in neighbourhoods built to best practice standards in the UK and the US, with the probably and possible emissions in One Planet Communities. Taking the specific examples of SOMO and One Brighton the analysis highlights the increased savings that are achievable when looking to influence behaviour as well as design, as well as the huge challenge in actually getting CO2 equivalent emissions down to less than 1 tonne per person per year.

The key message is not that there is a problem with LEED or the Code per se, but that this approach to driving sustainable design misses a huge portion of our emissions and a more holistic approach is required if we are going to start creating genuinely sustainable communities.

More detailed analysis of One Planet, LEED and the Code can be found here.

SOMO climate change technical report

The independent assessment of the likely emissions from SOMO has found that compared to a BaU scenario there will be a 66% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from buildings and road transport emissions. This is comprised of 100% reduction in emissions from buildings and an estimated 28% reduction in emissions when compared to Pavley Standards.

Codding are actually aiming to deliver much greater reductions in road transport emissions and also to reduce emission from air travel through education. Nonetheless it is encouraging to see that independent modelling of the energy and transport strategies also show a significant reduction in carbon emissions.

Now the challenge is to start the implementation!