Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury
How marvellous it is to be able to report on some good local news on the energy front rather than the horrors that would ensue from fracking for shale gas should it ever come to pass at Woodnesborough.
There are plans to develop a biomass combined heat and power plant on the former Pfizer site near Sandwich. This will lead to 40 new permanent jobs and supply the Discovery Park with renewable heat and electricity. The fuel to be used is woodchip from local forestry and woodland and is made from the waste after the wood has been processed.
Plans are also in the pipeline for a solar power plant on the site of the old Tilmanstone Colliery. The solar energy array will generate up to 10MWp of electricity, enough to supply 2,300 homes. The panels will be sited on the levelled colliery waste in rows facing south which will minimise views from the local area. Also on the site will be 16 industrial units that could provide 150 jobs.
Attached to the site of the old Richborough Power station where the electricity generated by the offshore wind turbines is fed into the National Grid, is the Richborough Energy Park. Here is sited an anaerobic digestion plant where waste food and other biomass is broken down by microscopic organisms, without oxygen, to produce methane. Methane can either be burnt to produce electricity or be piped directly into gas mains to be used in a domestic situation. Victoria Nicholls. DWI Transition Deal.
OPEN GARDEN Fri 28th Sat 29th Sun 30th June 2, Bridge Hill Cottages, Hacklinge, Nr Deal CT14 0AY
DWI supporters and local artists Sue and Adrian Sullivan invite you to visit their Wildlife Garden 10.30 to 5.30 on the above days in aid of The Kent Wildlife Trust, Admission just £1
There will be the usual Cakes, Cream Teas and Refreshments available ( all profits to KWT )
Come and have a natter about Gardens, Plants, Veg growing, Life, Art and perhaps enjoy some music or poetry for an hour or so. Tel. 01304 614088 / 0784035762
AsParking is very limited just outside our
house , you may wish to consider parking in Burgess Green or The Betteshanger
Business Park Rd and walk back to 2 Bridge Hill
If you have previously submitted objections to Kent County Council about the proposal to excavate shingle from the Dungeness Nature Reserve then you should have received a letter from them recently, as the applicants have submitted further information on their plan*. Despite many more pages of information, the applicants haven’t actually changed their plan in any material way... They still intend to operate heavy machinery and to excavate shingle from a beautiful open section of the Kent coastline—and their plans now clash with a Coastal Access Path that Natural England is developing to join Camber to Folkestone so that we can enjoy many more miles of coastline.
Thanks again for your help protecting the Dungeness Nature Reserve from the proposed shingle excavation works. Please share this email with anybody you think may be interested (or alert them to our campaign via our website at http://www.lovedungeness.org/add-your-voice/tell-others/).
*In case you missed it, the new information is available to view online – just search for the application number “KCC/SH/0381/2011” on Kent County Council’s website at http://tinyurl.com/kentplanning and click on the “Documents” tab. The new information has filing dates spanning May and June 2013.
Draft response to Kent County Council (use as you please)
I write to state my objection to planning application KCC/SH/0381/2011, which seeks permission to excavate shingle from the shore of Dungeness in Kent.
The applicants' state in their "new" information, as recently published on Kent County Council's planning website, that they discounted extracting shingle from the beach in front of the power station as it is designated within the Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The applicants say that one purpose of the SSSI designation is to protect the special coastal processes that occur in this area - and they note that the SSSI status of the beach in front of the power station can be verified via the mapping tools available on Natural England's website. What the applicants fail to mention, however, is that the very maps that they are now using to define the boundaries of the SSSI also show that the entire site of their proposed quarry in Dungeness is also within the SSSI and the Special Area of Conservation (SAC). Therefore the location cannot be regarded as suitable, as the unique coastal processes that occur where the quarry would be located are also clearly protected. It would set a very worrying precedent if private businesses and corporations (such as EDF Energy, as one of the applicants) are permitted to take material from such a heavily protected conservation area and to disturb such a valuable natural public amenity.
Natural England has also begun work on a Coastal Access Path joining Camber to Folkestone (which is expected to open next year, in 2014). This path will include the Dungeness foreshore and nature reserve, including the very section of coastline where the applicants propose to site their quarry. The benefits of Natural England's coastal path to the public are clear (including the economic benefits that Natural England notes such schemes bring to local communities) - and the coastal path will be a remarkable attraction for residents and visitors to Kent to enjoy all year round. However, it will be blighted by a noisy quarry, where dangerous heavy machinery operates, if the applicants are allowed to excavate shingle from the Dungeness foreshore as they propose.
Dungeness is a varied landscape of international scientific and environmental importance. It is one of only four outstanding Special Areas of Conservation in the United Kingdom that support annual vegetation drift lines, and it hosts a remarkable and unique variety of wildlife, including more than 600 different types of plant (a third of all found in Britain) and many rare insects (some of which aren't found anywhere else in Britain).
The documents recently submitted by the applicants do not materially alter their previous proposals - the proposed quarry would still change the unique character of Dungeness for generations to come and won't provide local communities with the effective long-term flood protection they need. I ask you to reject the application and to push the applicants to pursue a more effective and sustainable alternative that does not involve Dungeness.
Some of transitioners at the Landmark Community Garden
We had a successful Transition gathering today here in Deal. We had over 30 people from Faversham, Whitstable, Dover, Canterbury, Folkstone, Sevenoaks and good showing from Deal.
The theme for the afternoon was community food growing and specifically how you get the community enagaged. Much of the afternoon was a mix of tea, cakes and informal sharing on how to make our projects more sucessful.
We used some permaculture principles to look at the issue of engaging our communities. Some very useful side discussion on role/impact of finance; inspiration from New Zealand and some very inciteful perspectives from all of the growing projects in the region; local geography of where the projects were and how public a space; The impacts of the recession and world without economic growth on individuals, households and our community and how more direct access to skills and food can reduce those impacts.
Many thanks to Jo Barker for faciliating us, Sue and Kath from Deal Fairtrade for the fairtrade produce, Mike at Deal Town Hall for arrangements and DWI welcome team of Vicki, Charles and Rose and all those who donated cakes.
Locally grown food, community-owned power stations, local currencies … can
small-scale actions make a difference? Yes, according to the Transition network
– in fact, it's our only hope
John-Paul Flintoff
Saturday 15 June 2013 The Guardian - Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/15/transition-towns-way-forward
----
Late last year, Rob Hopkins went to a conference. Most of the delegates were
chief executive officers at local authorities, but it was not a public event.
Speaking in confidence, three-quarters of these officials admitted that –
despite what they say publicly – they could not foresee a return to growth in
the near future.
"One said: 'If we ever get out of this recession, nothing will be as it was
in the past,'" Hopkins recalls. "Another said: 'Every generation has had things
better than its parents. Not any more.' But the one that stunned me said: 'No
civilisation has lasted for ever. There is a very real chance of collapse.'"
Shocking stuff – shocking enough to leave many people feeling hopeless. And
Hopkins has heard MPs and others in positions of power confess to similar fears
in private. But the co-founder of the Transition Town movement is
determined to offer courage and inspiration, and to do that he has published a
short book, The
Power of Just Doing Stuff, showing what people are already doing to develop
a more resilient economy.
For instance, a
Transition group in Brixton raised £130,000 to install the UK's first
inner-city, community-owned power station, consisting of 82kW of solar panels on
top of a council estate. A group in Derbyshire created a food hub that makes it
economically viable to grow food in back gardens for sale, as an affordable
alternative to supermarkets. And groups in Totnes, Stroud, Lewes, Brixton and Bristol launched their own local
currencies. Taken on their own, these initiatives may not make a vast
difference. "But when there are thousands of communities worldwide all weaving
their bit in a larger tapestry," Hopkins says, "it adds up to something
awe-inspiring and strong."
What he is arguing is that sweeping changes in history are made not only by
"big" people doing big things but by groups of "ordinary" people doing smaller
things together. And that it's a mistake to overlook those small steps.
"There is no cavalry coming to the rescue," he says. "But what happens when
ordinary people decide that they are the cavalry? Between the things we can do
as individuals, and the things government and business can do to respond to the
challenges of our times, lies a great untapped potential. It's about what you
can create with the help of the people who live in your street, your
neighbourhood, your town. If enough people do it, it can lead to real impact, to
real jobs and real transformation of the places we live, and beyond."
The Transition network was founded in 2005, as a response to the twin threats
of climate change and peak oil. Unlike other campaign groups, the Transition
network never set out to frighten people, but seemed resolutely upbeat,
determined to find opportunity in what most regard with dismay.
One of the movement's most fundamental ideas was to ask what the world might
look like in the future "if we get it right" – then work out backwards how to
get there. Generally speaking, the Transition vision is of a move towards
self-sufficiency at the local level, in food, energy and much else, but the
specifics of what "getting it right" might look like were never handed down from
above.
Every so often, well-meaning people give Hopkins advice. "They say, you need
to set up a political party, and have politicians everywhere, and set up the
bank of Transition, and a Transition power company. And I think, yeah, or what
we could do is have every community build its own energy company, or bank. And
that's much more powerful."
Transition is like a huge open-source research and development project, he
says. "Different groups try different things, and if an idea works, it
spreads."
During seven years, the movement has attracted high-profile supporters.
Transition gives "great grounds for optimism," says Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall, "on topics that are often rather doom-laden".
Jonathan Dimbleby concurs: "Once upon a time, it was tempting to mock the idea
of a Transition Town, but if ever there was an idea whose time has come, this is
it." A sensory garden for children in Brasilandia,
Brasil
And Transition is not just a British phenomenon. There are more than 1,000
Transition initiatives in more than 40 countries. Fans include Ed Miliband and
former German president Horst Köhler – an economist by profession, and former
president of the IMF. Next month, Hopkins will appear at a conference with
France's president and prime minister.
Filipa Leao Pimentel is involved in Transition in Portugal, but is based in
Brussels and works to explain Transition to MEPs. Recently, she arranged for
members of an economic and social committee to spend a day with Transition
initiatives in their own countries. "I have lived in Brussels for years, and
I have never seen anything like the discussion that came afterwards. There was a
Greek who visited Portugal and she was touched by how we dealt with the crisis.
One of the most conservative members talked about his 'journey'. Later, he said
to me: 'Can you believe it, I talked about this as "my journey"?!'"
When the Transition movement started, it was driven by green politics, and
its biggest critics have tended to be deep greens. One, the writer Ted Trainer,
threw the movement into mild existential crisis in 2009, when he accused
Transition of being merely reformist, and too "easily accommodated within
consumer-capitalist society without threatening it".
Hopkins's response was, essentially, to
plead guilty. "For years, in the green movement, we have held that we are
right, that we have the answers … [But] many of the answers we need are to be
found in people who we might, in a more judgmental moment, see as being part of
the 'system', including business people, lawyers, church groups, local history
groups, and thousands of ordinary people with busy lives, bills to pay and
children to raise."
Today, Hopkins says he will only know that his new book has succeeded if his
ideas are taken up by those kinds of people. Indeed, he wrote the book with his
own sister in mind. "I hope she won't mind me saying that! She's raising kids,
she's very busy. She is somebody for whom all this stuff would pass her by. Not
interesting at all. But if Transition is going to get anywhere, it needs to
reach people like her."
In the biggest, most successful Transition groups, every effort is made to
avoid being worthy. The Tooting group's first big event was a big street
celebration, a Trashcatcher's Carnival, with
Arts Council funding. "In Topsham, in Devon, they asked: 'What is it that unites
people in this town? Is it peak oil, or is it beer?' And they started a brewery.
What are you inviting people to be part of? A group that talks about climate
change? Or a historic, celebratory rethink about a place and what it does?"
The key thing is to find ways to bring people together. "In Totnes, we
started to change the narrative: how do we create a culture of entrepreneurship,
and support young people? And all kinds of new people came in."
At the first Local Entrepreneurs Forum, local business people gave advice to
would-be entrepreneurs. But later they switched to a Community of Dragons, in
which enterprises pitched to the entire community. And on the basis that
"everybody is an investor", individuals pledged support in the form of time,
cash, land, support, services and more.
The localisation movement has not always been good at talking about
economics, Hopkins says. "If Tesco wants to open a branch in my town, they can
say it will bring jobs and so on. The localisation movement never tends to do
that, they just say localisation is a great idea, it's sustainable, it's good
for the community. So we tried to map the local economy and put a value on it.
Here in Totnes we spend £30m on food every year, of which £22m goes through two
supermarkets. It's like water running through our fingers, going to banks and
offshore investors. But it could be staying local. If we spent just 10% of that
locally, we'd have £2.2m staying in the local economy to be spent again.
"Could a hospital that buys four tonnes of lettuce every year get that
locally? If it uses energy, could it use a local energy company? We're looking
at different ways of investing internally." 'Bristol Pounds' can only be spent locally, so more
money stays in the city
One powerful way to prevent money leaking from a community's economy is by
using local currencies. Businesses in Bristol can pay their rates in "Bristol pounds", and the city
council gives staff the option to take part of their salary in B£s. The new
mayor, George
Ferguson, announced at his inauguration last November that he would take his
entire salary in B£s, which can only be spent in Bristol. More than £180,000 has
been turned into B£s, estimated to be worth £1.8m in local economic
activity.
This new emphasis on economic development has galvanised the Transition Town
movement, and not only in the UK. "The economic crisis helped us to gather so
many people," says Pimentel. "In Portugal, we are under water. There is no
money. You see your country starting to sink, and you close down, waiting for it
to pass – but this is not going to pass. Transition was our framework to give
people something to do. Instead of thinking, 'My god, we are sinking,' we said:
'Let's do this.' Little steps are important."
Important because they contribute to something bigger – the "larger tapestry"
Hopkins talks about – but also important because it's small steps that help
people recognise that they have power to make a difference. "Starting a
vegetable garden in the street is small," Pimentel says. "But what is incredible
is that when people learn to do that, they start to have confidence.
"The key thing is persistence. What people tell me now is, 'I thought that
you were going to fail, and you did not.' They say: 'It's really true that doing
little things, step by step, makes a difference.' And when they say that, I
smile. I feel very proud. So even if things seem small, or you think it will not
make a big difference, just persist."
Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury
It is difficult to think of the natural world in terms of monetary value - in economist speak this is ‘natural capital’. Our ecosystems supply us with a vast range of services and benefits and as such could be considered as similar to financial wealth and so are referred to as natural capital.
Nature provides goods and services such as the capture and storage of carbon dioxide by natural forests and soils; the output of the oceans; the microorganisms putting goodness into our soils; the growth of plants and the release of oxygen through photosynthesis; the protection of populated areas by coastal wetlands and much more. Norway is a country rich in oil and it has used that oil money for the public good by giving $1 billion each to Indonesia and Brazil to encourage them to reduce their rate of deforestation. We can hardly expect our present government to do similar but in 2011 it did publish a National Ecosystem Assessment. This report documented how nature provides a wide range of vital benefits to the UK and how they give huge economic value.
For example, £1.1 million per year has been estimated as the amount achieved in benefit from improved river water quality and the value of the carbon taken up by UK woodlands is about £690 million per year.
There is no reason why businesses cannot develop strategies that value and protect natural capital and the government has a wide range of options to implement them.
Drop by to hear about - and
taste - some of the wild foods and edible seaweeds available to gather around
Deal.
Lucia Stuart of The Wildflower Kitchen will
be demonstrating some of the simple but delicious recipes she prepares from
plants gathered in the hedgerows and on the coast.
The demonstration is
free so just drop in - no need to dine, it's open to all
including children.
