Informing Policy

Overview

Informing regional, national and international policy is an important part of our work. By providing practical demonstrations of sustainable solutions we help policy makers to find approaches that can be replicated on a larger scale.

In recent months we have been involved in a range of policy initiatives, including Rio 2012 preparatory meetings and the Eco Towns Challenge Panel.

Our policy work is supported by a programme of publications, which are based on our practical experience of developing sustainability solutions.

Recent publications include:

• Capital Consumption
• BedZED seven years on
• What makes an eco town?
• Biomass for London: wood fuel demand and supply chains
• Reclaimed materials guide

To find out more about BioRegional's policy work contact Freya Seath on 020 8404 4884.

To find our more about our publications, visit our publications page.

Rio 2012

The UN Earth Summit (Rio 2012) which is to take place Rio in May 2012 is set to be a major opportunity to get the world talking and acting on sustainability. Since 2009 BioRegional has been bringing the one planet living message to UN meetings that will shape The Summit.

Our real life solutions were well-received at 2009's COP15 in Copenhagen and at the COP16 in Mexico in December 2010. We followed up on this progress by taking part in a Summit preparatory meeting in New York in January 2011, here BioRegional and partners from Codding Enterprises, B&Q, Sutton Council & Defra led a side event to show delegates how we are implementing one planet living. We also worked with the delegates to find inspirational and practical ideas for making The Summit a more sustainable event based on the 10 One Planet principles. This was followed by another preparatory meeting in Panama and we expect to contribute to further discussions right up to The Summit.

We held a packed-out side event at the UN's New York headquarters on March 3rd 2011 looking at "How can we operationalise the green economy through the 10 year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption & production & Rio 2012 Earth Summit?" (read a summary of the outcomes here). We followed this by working with Stakeholder Forum and the Earth Charter Initiative to produce a paper which consolidates a range of principles for the green economy (one of the themes of Rio+20), building on existing agreements and also emerging recommendations. The paper hopes to contribute to the emerging debate on defining principles for the green economy to ensure that it serves in the interest of sustainable development.

We’ll keep doing all we can to influence the success of Rio+20 and we’ll let you know how we’re going.

You can read more about these events on our blog.

Eco-towns

Eco-towns
Four planned eco towns will help to bring much-needed additional housing to the UK. Eco towns aim to show that high quality living can be achieved while reducing carbon emissions and other environmental pressures.  Since 2008 BioRegional has been involved in the plans for eco-towns. After sitting on the Eco-towns Challenge Panel with Cabe we published guidance 'What makes an eco-town?', are directly advising two of the projects and have developed an evaluation tool for the eco-towns and eco-developments in general.

NW Bicester eco-town http://nwbicester.co.uk
NW Bicester includes 5,000 homes, schools, businesses premises, community facilities and retail areas and will be built over a 20-year period.

BioRegional is working work closely with Cherwell District Council (CDC) and A2 Dominion, the social housing provider for the first phase of the project, to fully integrate the vision and sustainability principles that we have developed into the 400 home exemplar area and support the planning application process.

We have also helped to write the detailed planning application for the largest code five scheme in the UK, delivering net zero carbon through 100% on site solutions. BioRegional has also provided support to develop an ambitious travel plan for this relatively rural site and to develop ideas to deliver net biodiversity gain and green infrastructure aspirations. We have helped to obtain funding from the Technology Strategy Board to support advanced practice on design for climate change adaptation, working in partnership with Oxford Brookes University.

We are now supporting the eco-town team on a sustainable masterplan and in preparing the outline planning application for the whole area and in defining a programme of work for the existing town. The lessons learnt from this project will inform new developments in the UK that consist of an urban extension to an existing market town in a rural location.

Whitehill Bordon eco-town www.whitehillbordon.com
This project aims to deliver 5,500 new homes, 7,000 jobs and business and leisure space. Since 2009, BioRegional has worked with the team to assess a range of ecological and carbon footprint scenarios that have informed the development of the entire town plan.

We are helping to develop a One Planet Living strategy for the town. This work comprises a strategy for communicating the project to residents (based on the 10 One Planet Living Principles), a monitoring framework and supporting local businesses. At all stages we are gathering input from key stakeholders to ensure local opinion is taken into account.

Eco-town monitoring and reporting tool
In partnership with the Low Carbon Innovation Centre (LCIC) from the University of East Anglia we have developed an evaluation framework/tool for all Eco-towns and other eco-developments in general to measure their progress against Planning Policy Statement (PPS) eco-towns standards. The result is a simple and user-friendly excel tool which identifies levels of performance at different development phases (planning, construction and post-occupancy).

The tool has been communicated to the TCPA Eco-Development Group (which promotes knowledge exchange and includes the first and second waves of eco-towns) and advertised on their website for wide and free use around the UK.