One Planet Living

If everyone in the world lived as we do in the UK, we’d need three planets to support us

 

Image credit: www.bioregional.com

 

We only have one Planet.

We are seeing the efffects of this:

  • land degradation, deforestation, pollution.
  • climate change with drought, flooding and extreme weather events
  • migration due to environmental challenges, scarce water and food

One Planet Living

One Planet Living is a vision of the world where everyone, everywhere enjoys happy, healthy lives within the limits of the planet.

One Planet Living is an initiative of Bioregional (www.bioregional.com) and its partners to make truly sustainable living a reality.

One Planet Living uses ecological[1] footprinting and carbon[2] footprinting as its headline indicators. It is based on ten guiding principles of sustainability as a framework.

Bioregional’s One Planet Living framework

Bioregional’s One Planet Living framework comprises ten intuitive One Planet Living Principles that can be used by anyone – personally and professionally – to imagine, plan, do and communicate about deep sustainability. It is based on what science is currently telling us about what is needed to live within the earth’s means.

Image credit: www.bioregional.com

More about these: 

  • Health and happiness - Encouraging active, social, meaningful lives to promote good health and wellbeing
  • Equity and local economy - Creating safe, equitable places to live and work which support local prosperity and international fair trade
  • Culture and community - Nurturing local identity and heritage, empowering communities and promoting a culture of sustainable living
  • Land and nature - Protecting and restoring land for the benefit of people and wildlife
  • Sustainable water - Using water efficiently, protecting local water resources and reducing flooding and drought
  • Local and sustainable food - Promoting sustainable humane farming and healthy diets high in local, seasonal organic food and vegetable protein
  • Travel and transport - Reducing the need to travel, encouraging walking, cycling and low carbon transport
  • Materials and products - Using materials from sustainable sources and promoting products which help people reduce consumption
  • Zero waste - Reducing consumption, reusing and recycling to achieve zero waste and zero pollution
  • Zero carbon energy - Making buildings and manufacturing energy efficient and supplying all energy with renewables

The principles are being used all over the world: at a city-scale, by companies large and small, housing developments, and individuals, andt they were used for the London 2012 bid.

There is a digital platform: www.oneplanet.com, where plans can be published and shared.

Who is Bioregional?

Bioregional is a leading sustainability charity and social enterprise established in 1994. They are absolutely environmental and committed to delivering leading, long term sustainability solutions. For more information see: www.bioregional.com

One Planet Bruton?

On 26 March 2019, Bruton Town Council adopted the following resolutions:

  1. Declare a ‘Climate Emergency’
  2. Write to Bruton’s schools thanking our schoolchildren for demonstrating their ecological concerns, and pledging support for addressing this as a Council
  3. Pledge to do everything within the Town Council’s power to make Bruton carbon neutral by 2030
  4. Set up a Working Group to review all Town Council policies and activities to assess how they might be modified to reduce emissions. This Working Group to report back to Full Council within 6 months with a Proposal for adoption by the TC. Said Proposals to be reviewed annually.
  5. In the absence of Bruton specific emissions data, to work to make our contribution to South Somerset achieving our regional target by 2030.
  6. Call on Westminster to provide the powers and resources to make the 2030 target possible.
  7. Sign up to the Covenant of Mayors.
  8. Work with Bruton’s residents, businesses and other organisations to meet the 2030 target.
  9. Call on All Local Principal Authority Council’s to take similar actions.

A group of us wondered what this meant for us in Bruton and on 1 April 2019, over 40 people met to begin to share ideas. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel and we did want to harness the enthusiasm and energy there was to do something. On 8 April 2019, Jane Durney (Allwood) introduced One Planet Living and facilitated a workshop with over 30 participants using the 10 One Planet Principles to begin to create a plan for Bruton. We identified challenges and opportunities for each of the principles in Bruton, mapped what was already happening, and came up with lots of ideas for things that we could be doing, ranging from providing better information about what was already going on, community meals and pot luck suppers, working with schools and businesses to adopt the One Planet Principles, tree-planting and community composting, reporting water leaks, encouraging reusable water bottles, walking to school, skill-sharing, repair cafes, retrofitting buildings to make them more energy-efficient... This is being put into an area plan for Bruton, and a community action plan. We are just beginning... And this website is one way that you can contribute your ideas.

 

[1] Ecological footprinting measures the impact of a person or community on the planet, in terms of the amount of land required to sustain their use of natural resources. See www.footprintnetwork.org.

[2] Carbon footprinting measures the total amount of greenhouse gases produced, directly and indirectly, by human activities. It is usually expressed in equivalent tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2e)

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