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SUMMARY:Sustainable Communities - Sir Brian Heap (St Edmund's College)\, S
 ue Riddleston (BioRegional)\, Kohei Watanabe (Teikyo University)
DTSTART:20080226T170000Z
DTEND:20080226T190000Z
UID:TALK10789@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:8517
DESCRIPTION:ABOUT THE TALK AND THE SPEAKERS\n\n'Sustainable consumption an
 d production'\nSir Brian Heap\, St Edmund's College\n\nWhy do some communi
 ties survive while others fail?  This question has been addressed by sever
 al commentators including Jared Diamond who examined the demise of flouris
 hing cultures.  Their disappearance was linked to one or more factors such
  as resource depletion\, unstable trading partnerships\, galloping reprodu
 ctive growth rates and the failure to respond to the tell-tale signals our
  environment gives us.  However\, some societies have survived when faced 
 by similar problems\; by managing shared resources they avoided the traged
 y of the commons that had terminated other cultures.  However\, some argue
  that without a sympathetic understanding of economic mechanisms it isn't 
 possible to offer advice on the interactions between nature and the human 
 species.  People can help themselves and there is no reason why such a pro
 cess should not happen with sustainable consumption and production.  This 
 seminar will examine cases where this is already happening.\n\nBrian Heap 
 is Vice-President of European Academies Science Advisory Council and Presi
 dent of the International Society of Science and Religion.  He was Directo
 r of the Babraham and Roslin Institutes\, Director of Research at the Biot
 echnology and Biological Sciences Research Council\, Vice-President and Fo
 reign Secretary of the Royal Society\, Master of St Edmund's College\, Cam
 bridge\, and Chair of DEFRA's Advisory Panel on Sustainable Consumption an
 d Production. \n\n\n'One Planet Living\; BedZED Eco-Village'\nSue Riddlest
 one\, BioRegional\, London\n\nEcological Footprinting shows us that if eve
 ryone in the world lived as we do in Europe we would need three planets to
  support us. Of course we only have one Earth. BioRegional have developed 
 a number of real-life demonstrations of solutions for sustainability which
  show that living within our means or "One Planet Living" is not only poss
 ible and cost effective but can bring a higher quality of life. Sue Riddle
 stone will talk about the BedZED eco-village in south London where BioRegi
 onal are based and describe the One Planet Living design approach\, which 
 uses Ecological Footprint to develop targets and action plans\, to a numbe
 r of exemplary projects worldwide. Projects include sustainable cities and
  communities from China to San Francisco to the London Borough of Sutton t
 hrough to B&Q company operations and products and the London 2012 Olympics
 .\n\nSue Riddlestone is co-founder and Executive Director of BioRegional\,
  a multi award winning organisation which develops practical solutions for
  sustainability\, working in the fields of new and existing communities an
 d production and supply systems. BioRegional are the environmental organis
 ation behind the BedZED eco-village where the organisation is based. At Bi
 oRegional Sue has pioneered projects on sustainable paper production inclu
 ding leading a team to develop clean technology for small scale paper pulp
 ing which will be able to make paper from local materials such as straw. S
 ue co-authored a book with co-founder Pooran Desai about BioRegional's pro
 jects and approach entitled "BioRegional Solutions". She is a co-founding 
 director of "One Planet Living" a global initiative based on ten principle
 s of sustainability developed by BioRegional and WWF. \n\n\n'Sustainabilit
 y indicators of waste'\nKohei Watanabe\, Teikyo University\, Japan\n\nThe 
 main strand of current environmental policies is to set a target based on 
 some indicators and to implement measures to achieve them. The widely acce
 pted concept of "waste hierarchy" places priority on waste reduction and r
 e-use before recycling\, nevertheless most policy measures focus on recycl
 ing.  This may be due to the fact that recycling was the easiest for makin
 g an indicator.  It is important to devise good indicators in order to get
  the priorities right. An alternative indicator for recycling may be usefu
 l\, as the recycling rate may not be the best measure for efficient use of
  resources.  An indicator for reuse is difficult\, as e.g. one user using 
 an item for a long period may be as good as having the item re-used many t
 imes.  Measuring the degree of waste minimisation is the most difficult as
  it requires measuring what had been avoided from becoming waste\, i.e. "s
 omething that is not there".\n       \nKohei Watanabe is associate profess
 or at Teikyo University (Tokyo\, Japan) and a research associate at the CS
 C\, St Edmund's College.  He obtained his PhD (Geography\, Cambridge) on t
 he topic of household waste management. His current research focuses on th
 e verification and analysis of municipal waste statistics.\n\n\n
LOCATION:St Edmund's College\, Garden Room
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