The UK Government will shortly publish its short list of eco-town schemes for consultation, following a cross-Government review. The original plan was for a programme of five eco-towns to be implemented across the English regions. However, interest has been so high (over sixty proposals have been registered with the government) that the Prime Minister announced at last year’s Labour Party Conference that the number of schemes would be doubled to ten.

The Planning Portal lays out the basic requirements for eco-towns in its report ‘Eco-town concept gathers ground‘:

Eco-towns will be small new towns of between 5,000 and 20,000 homes. They are intended to exploit the potential to create a complete new settlement to achieve zero carbon development and more sustainable living using the best new design and architecture.

This must translate into places with a separate and distinct identity but good links to surrounding towns and cities in terms of jobs, transport and services.

The development as a whole must achieve zero carbon and to be an exemplar in at least one area of environment technology.

The settlement must provide a good range of facilities within the town including a secondary school, shopping, business space and leisure.

Critically, the eco-town must have between 30 and 50 per cent affordable housing with a good mix of tenures and size of homes in mixed communities.

And, crucially, the settlement must have a delivery organisation to manage the town and its development and provide support for people, businesses and community services.

The principal justification is, of course, climate change, with sustainability and zero carbon emissions as the main targets. Housing minister Iain Wright told Parliament recently that the review would exclude sites “where there are too many showstoppers to allow development to take place”. However, fears are growing that conventional planning criteria such as biodiversity, conservation and landscape may be over-ridden in the dash for carbon neutrality.

In an article in last Saturday’s Guardian, Tristram Hunt describes how housebuilders’ response to the eco-challenge has been “a series of cunning attempts to revive planning permission for previously rejected projects”, often favouring brownfield sites over greenfield.

• Eagle Star Insurance wants to build on farmland and wildlife-rich woodland at Micheldever on the North Hampshire Downs. The company has been trying to build a commuter town there since the 1970s, without success. Plans for a 12,500 home development have been tarted up with eco-town catch-phrases and resubmitted.
• In South Derbyshire, Bank Development has rejected the Drakelow power station brownfield site, and is applying to build its ‘Grovewood’ eco-town around Cauldwell and Roslinton, felling National Forest trees and constructing a feeder road.
• In Oxfordshire, Kilbride Properties wants eco-town exemption for 5,000 houses on an SSSI in designated Green Belt.

Of course, there have been many excellent schemes put forward, but there is a growing distrust of the review process and a fear that the government will take the easy option for greenfield development. A major part of the problem is the distillation of environmental problems to one issue, climate change, and a complete lack of government concern for wider conservation issues. As Tristram Hunt puts it:

” … no minister seems willing to express a belief in the value of the natural heritage. Instead, it is all about percentages and targets – the language of emissions trading systems and carbon neutrality – which disconnects the struggle against climate change from a broader notion of ecology.”

That is right on the money. The environment has become a single issue, climate change, and we have become blinkered to anything else. We are in danger of waking up in a carbon-neutral wasteland, occupied by just ourselves and the few species we find either too useful or too tenacious to get rid of.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/23/greenpolitics.communities

www.planningportal.gov.uk/england/professionals/en/1115315508453.html

The Environment Agency has just published the Winter 2007 edition of its quarterly bulletin ‘Your Environment’. In the plastic wrapper (“made from bioegradable material and will decompose in landfill”. Oh joy!) I also discovered a supplement called ‘Your Environment Extra’. The EA has gathered together a team of 25 experts (most of whom I’m ashamed to say I’ve never heard of) to answer the question “What are the 50 things that will save the planet?”.

Most of the usual suspects are there, although I suspect we could argue about the relative placings. Top of the list is “Powering down”, ahead of solar power (3), Kyoto replacement (4), home generation (5), recycling (11), renewables (14), carbon capture (16) to name a few. My personal favourites? Good to see population growth (18) identified as a root cause of environmental problems. “Growing your own” (23) should be higher up the list.

But the idea that really brightened my day only just scraped in at number 48, “Going with the floe”. Ian Christie, Associate at the New Economics Foundation, says:

“If we must have ‘climate engineering’ technofixes, then forget about seeding oceans with iron and deflecting sunlight via space shields. Instead, replace lost polar albedo and lost ice cover by creating artificial floating reflective floes, which will help the polar bears too.

I thought of this a couple of years ago. Trouble was, whenever I mentioned the idea in conversation people looked at me as if I was mad and I gave up. A bit late to claim any credit I know, but I’m dead chuffed that ‘my’ brainwave is out there at last.

Your Environment Extra (PDF) Your Environment Issue 17 (PDF)

“The overall message is clear. It is in our gift to stop harming our planet. We understand the problems we have created and how to begin undoing the damage. So let’s do it.”

September 14-16: Clean Up the World Weekend 2007

Clean Up the World Weekend is an annual campaign supported by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The campaign encourages individuals and communities to clean up, repair and conserve the environment. Organizers estimate 35 million people from more than 120 countries will take part, in activities ranging from tree planting to educational talks.

www.cleanuptheworld.org

September 26-28: Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, New York

The Clinton Global Initiative is former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s initiative to tackle poverty, climate change, religious conflict and governance. The themes of the 2007 Annual Meeting will be education, climate change, global health and poverty alleviation.

www.clintonglobalinitiative.org

October 25: UNEP Global Environment Outlook

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) will release its annual flagship report, the Global Environment Outlook (GEO), on the state of the world’s environment.

www.unep.org/geo

November 5: Solar Plane Prototype unveiled, Zurich, Switzerland

The Zurich-based Solar Impulse project will unveil part of its prototype solar-powered plane to the press. The project aims to circumnavigate the world in 2010/11 using a solar powered aircraft.

www.solarimpulse.com

November 16: IPCC Final Report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases its final 2007 report, examining the scale, impact and action plan for global warming.

www.ipcc.ch

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I received an email from 10 Downing Street yesterday. A leaked memo from a source in the Cabinet Office? Not this time. Along with 7485 others, I signed an e-petition calling for the Prime Minister to “Incorporate rather than demolish Manor Garden Allotments within the 2012 Olympic site.” The email was Downing Street graciously informing me that they had issued their response.

For those who haven’t been following this story, Manor Garden is a 4.5 acre site in Hackney, East London, which has the misfortune to be in the middle of the master plan for the 2012 Olympics site. The gardens were established in 1900 by Major Arthur Villiers, director of Barings Bank and philanthropist, to provide small parcels of land for local people to grow vegetables. In keeping with the conditions of Villiers’ bequeathal that the allotments be maintained in perpetuity, the 80 individual plots have been tended for over a century by a tight-knit community. Many members belong to long-standing East End families, with some individuals present since the 1920′s. In the words of the e-petition:

“100 year old Manor Garden Allotments lies in the middle of the Olympic Park site. These beautiful, productive vegetable gardens are due to be demolished to make way for a four-week footpath during the 2012 Games despite the land being given in perpetuity. A campaign is underway to protect the allotments and encourage a more imaginative Olympic development which includes this special place with its healthy, green lifestyles and vibrant community.”

The 2012 Olympics are supposed to be the ‘greenest’ and most sustainable ever. In normal circumstances, sites like Manor Garden would be held up as a shining example of a local community resource with all the right boxes ticked: fresh air and exercise, biodiversity, local organic produce, low energy inputs, no food miles, the list goes on. The Government, however, has its colours firmly nailed to the Olympic mast and has rejected the petition.

Allotment sites are a precious resource. Manor Gardens is the product of over 100 years of hard work and dedication. To say that plot holders will be provided with new land is completely missing the point. All the work that has gone into soil improvement will be lost, as will all the social, historical and emotional connections that make allotment sites very special places, to say nothing of the amazing biodiversity on the site. All in the name of some ghastly, bloated, pointless global jamboree.

You couldn’t make it up. The Sustainable Development Commission, the UK government’s own independent watchdog, has reported that the UK’s 19 government departments and associated agencies are missing sustainability targets left, right and centre. The full report, produced for the SDC by environmental consultancy Entec UK, can be found here, but here are a few highlights:

• Each  civil servant is consuming an average of 10.2 cubic metres of water a year while at work, a third over target.
• The 72,422 Home Office staff generated 17,679 tons of rubbish, up 63% from 2004.
• Departments are not on track to meet their target of cutting carbon emissions from fuel by 12.5 per cent by 2010, with 11 departments increasing emissions.
• 11 of 19 departments and agencies are failing to meet recycling targets.
• Department of Transport vehicles released 9,670 tons of carbon dioxide in 2005 – a rise of 40 per cent from 2002.

It’s not all bad news:

• Recycling increased (although the overall amount of waste produced increased by about 23,000 tonnes).
• 3% more electricity was being sourced from renewable sources.
• Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) located on the government estate were “well managed”.

So that’s all right then.