Sustainable Tourism

Returned home yesterday after the fourth in a series of Visit Wales' Tourism Roadshows. Colleauge Pete Bursnall and i talked about sustainability challenges and the role that tourism has to play. We had a lot of very good conversations with Visit Wales' Directors and strategy team, and an enthusiastic response from trade attendees who increasingly understand the scale of change and challenge that they have to achieve. Next step: plan for European fund application to make large scale change happen.

Sustainable Construction

It's been an interesting week of sustainability and climate change conferences, and as I write this, there are three more to speak at in the next few days. Times are a changing. Wednesday's event on Sustainable Construction was hosted by the Welsh Assembly and proved stimulating and very interesting; the room was pregnant with the need for action and our speakers inspired. Ray Morgan is Chief Exec at Woking Borough Council, and has led the changes that have taken Woking Council's emissions down by 80% through a combination of energy saving and on site CHP. Peter Head from consulting engineers Arup followed, and reconfigured many people's perceptions of Chinese efforts on sustainability with his presentation on Dongtan eco city in Shanghai, where the speed of change and deevelopment is stretching Arup's learning and adapatabilty in all sorts of positive ways. Paul Webber from Arup's Welsh office spoke of the importance of site orientation and natural ventilation, and Peter Candelr talked from a developer's persepctive of the benefits and challenges of creating a BREEAM Excellent office building that's now returning 7.7% on capital invested. Steve Morton spoke about the ways that City of York had used smart finance to leverage savings on energy and space to pay the interest on an assured loan and allow two large eco projects to proceed. Alan Shingler from Sheppard Robson talked of the SixtyK house project and their firm's contribution to the Lighthouse - the UK's first Code Level 6 house, which generates all of the energy or heat, light and cooking from PV cells on the roof. What happens next in North Wales and Merseyside rests in the hands of the delegates, and more importantly, in their hearts. Action here is about courage more than information, as amply shown by the event's organiser Imogen Sherriff who tencaciously put all of the pieces together, persuaded some of teh UK's best commentators to speak and then pressed go. It's not always the loud, 'out front' people who can make the most difference, but those who have a burning ambition for change who won't let go.

Walk the talk?

Met up with head of an government funded agency the other day to talk about the need to create a vision of what living in low carbon communities would look like - including the certainty that we'll need to fly less if were to achieve a secure future. His response was along the lines of "there's no way that I'm going to stop flying to see my family". Why is that those in positions of paid public leadership on issues that affect the safety of life on earth aren't selected for their ability to walk the talk?

Time for Vision

It's been an interesting 10 days, with discussions, meetings and workshops in Wales and London. Foremost in my mind has been the need to develop a clearer and more compelling vision of what living, being, doing and working looks like in the 80-90% carbon reduced, low oil society that we know we need to create. Hay on Earth will give some direction on this, - if you're working on this, please get in contact so that we collaborate and accelerate the process of change by
envisioning where we're trying to get to.

Sustainability Beyond Boundaries

Next Wednesday sees the kick off of an exciting new programme that TYF have developed for Public Service Management Wales, a Welsh Assembly Assembly funded organisation set up to deliver training and development interventions that 'make the connections' and help the Assembly provide a more joined up service to the people of Wales. Delegates from 9 different organisations or departments will be working together on a six day, six month programme to answer key questions along the lines of:

• What does service delivery need to look like in a low carbom, post peak oil nation?
• How can we best make the most of system-wide savings, such as reduced health cost from improved exercise?
• How do we influence more to change common sense into common practice?
• What do these changes mean for my team and function
• What do these changes mean for me personally?

I'll be posting key outputs and observations on this site