Making Carbon History

With my colleauges at TYF EcoSapiens, I am proud to be part of a team that is launching what scarily appears to be a 'world first'. At the Hay on Earth think tank back in May, WWF's Morgan Parry presented Kevin Anderson's data from his research at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research which clearly shows the need to reduce UK (and other developed countries') CO2 emissions by 9% per annum from 2012 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. And if this wasn't daunting enough, the scary bit comes from that few if any people in business have much idea of the plan looks like to get us there. Through two decades of work in organisation development, the idea of creating a plan isn't too scary in itself, so we started the planning jounrney to and created Making Carbon History as a project to map and collect stories of business, government and personal change. We are looking for the first 20 organisations to join us in process, and starting recruitment this week. If you're interested, call us. An outline of the Making Carbon History workshop outline can be found here

lon DO n

A month ago, a hundred people gathered at Fforest Farm in West Wales for the Howies-sponsored DO Lectures, the second of an annual series of events to bring people, passion and action together. Over the course of four days, the speakers and attendees shared ideas, insights, stories, some damn fine food and a few beers. And some great music. www.dolectures.com

Next week, a couple of dozen DO folk will be meeting in London to compare notes, share progress and make more good stuff happen.

We've registered DOVERSITY as a new domain - it has the making of a new word, with a Latin definition "reparo res venio velociter" - make good things happen quickly.

One of my own projects was to finish the plan and documentation for Making Carbon History - a research project to investigate organisational response to the potential impact and benefit of the 9% annual CO2 reduction mandated by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the NASA Goodard Institute for Climate Change. An overview of this project is filed in the documents folder

Transformation Nation

On Friday last week around 100 people came together in Machynlleth to discuss the pathway that will allow us to move from plan to action on Transformation Nation. Patrick Holden talked passionately about the need for a major project on food security, and George Monbiot waxed eloquent on the need for us to fight government inaction and for the freedom to be protected against those who would do injustice to us. The Cynnal Cymru - Sustain Wales event was an outstanding opportunity to bring together people to share stories, network and plan action for change. Apart from St Davids (home), it's hard to imagine a better place to be for an event like this.

Wild Ennerdale

What an amazing day. As part of the Associatiion of National Parks Associations (ANPA) conference that I'm attending with colleauges from the Countryside Council for Wales, we spent the day visiting Wild Ennerdale - a low, key, inspirational project to experiment in a different way of managing landscape, and moving away from hundreds of hectares of Sitka Spruce to a more diverse, resilient and richer landscape. We walked into Ennerdale from Buttermere, chased by shafts of sunlight moving across the hills, and met our ranger hosts for half a day of enchantment and education. One of the most striking things about the project was the way that traditional targets, measures, project plans and protracted meeting have been replaced by a philosphy akin to deep ecology that is very different and very powerful. I couldn't help wonder what the impact would be if planners and those in economic development used the same approach - emergence rather than formal structure, with decisions based on feedback from previous actions rather than elaborate plans. It's a special place to visit and has two Youth Hostels. Go. Spend time there.

Wild Food

For two days this weekend, St Davids hosted the Really Wild Food Fetival, a lovely gathering of local and visiting food specialists and country skills folk to share their produce and skills with visitors and locals alike. Strolling down the 'street' marquee sampling fantastic, fresh organic and local cheeses, swapping stories and meeting folks old and new was a joy, and I'm already looking forward to next year.