Sussex Green Living – Spreading like Wildflowers!

This month’s Sussex Green Ideas webinar focused on the OnePlanet technology platform which is designed to enable users to understand how health, environment, community development and economy are interconnected, and support pathways to action.

Pooran Desai, founder of OnePlanet, kicked off the presentation with some background to his 35 year journey in sustainability that includes co-founding Bioregional and the UKs first zero carbon urban village development BedZED, as well working with the likes of London Olympics, Disneyland Paris and the United Nations.

At Bioregional, Pooran led on development of the One Planet Living framework based on 10 guiding principles that were then applied across over 30 countries, supporting the sustainability strategies for companies, local governments and over $30bn of zero carbon real estate development.  One Planet Living was also the inspiration for the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015!

The core idea underpinning the OnePlanet platform is that everything is interconnected; from health and happiness, culture and community to zero waste, sustainable water and so on. It’s currently extremely difficult to visualise, understand and manage these connections, and see how they can lead to joined-up action.

 

The platform enables strategic action plans to be joined up, not only inside an organisation that may have multiple plans (e.g. departmental plans in a local government), but also across organisations that may be in a UK / global network, or partners working together towards Shared Outcomes in a local area. The platform enables “ecosystems” of action plans to be created that can then highlight areas of common purpose as a catalyst for collaboration.

 

Helen Peacock from Horsham District Council then spoke to us about her experiences using OnePlanet. The Council has responded to the climate emergency by committing to becoming carbon neutral by 2030 for their direct emissions. They have adopted the OnePlanet methodology to underpin the development of an inclusive Climate Action Strategy for the whole District which has actions for the area to become carbon neutral and climate resilient. The target for this draft strategy is 2050, which matches the national target.

The Council has a strategy that spans across 3 main groups, namely leadership teams, key partnerships and community groups, and they needed a tool that could connect the action plans from this wide range of stakeholders and highlight the areas for collaboration.

Peter Anderson from OnePlanet then explained about the new Community Partnership programme that OnePlanet recently launched and how things have been progressing with the early adopters; Eastbourne Eco Action Network, Transition Town Worthing, Building Bridges Hub in Maidenhead & Incredible Edible Lambeth. Each of these groups have created an in-depth working ecosystem of local action plans and most have already presented these to their local council and other key stakeholders, encouraging them to adopt this new way of working.

The platform is such a good interactive way for people to find out exactly what is going on in the local area in terms of sustainability.

It allowed me personally to join up the dots in terms of seeing the big picture about what’s going on in the local area … in a way that was very visual and very interactive.

Andy Durling – Eastbourne Eco Action Network 

 

Donna Stimson shared her experiences as one of these early adopters, having recently opened the Building Bridges Hub and is utilising the One Planet methodology to map organisations as well as opportunities that visitors can engage with.

 

The OnePlanet platform is fantastic. The first time I came across it, I knew that it was just what I was looking for.

From someone who has difficulty with computers, I loved it at once because it was so intuitive. We have 455 different organisations on our resource map, and I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. So it’s just an absolute blessing for me to have found OnePlanet.

Donna Stimson – Building Bridges Hub, Maidenhead

 

Since the presentation, we’re pleased to see that interest has already been expressed by Transition Town Lewes, Horsham Eco Churches & Shipley Community Hub from within our network and we hope many more of you will engage and add to the momentum.

 

To explore this further, read more about the Community Partner Opportunity HERE.

 

I think it’s fair to say there was a healthy dose of inspiration felt by members participating on the call, one even exclaiming;

 

 I can see this spreading like wildflowers!

 

As was pointed out at the beginning of the presentation, we are in a unique position to demonstrate trailblazing case studies of joined-up working in Sussex as we already have Horsham District Council embracing this new way of working. The council is enthusiastic about authentic community engagement and harnessing OnePlanet as a catalyst to generate tangible pathways to climate action.

Watch the full webinar here:

By Peter Anderson, One Planet