Friday 19 November
Michelle Charlesworth, One Planet Living Community Champion, spent an hour with staff and Board on Zoom this morning. Did you know that each one of us is co-responsible for our planet using three planets’ worth of resources? The climate change emergency is real and urgent – but Michelle was here to tell us there’s so much hope!
But first things first: One Planet Living is a global vision – an easy to understand model which results in tangible action plans that can be translated into any community. Whole cities around the world have adopted it already. It covers ten elements, including consideration of how we use the Earth’s natural resources, through to sustainable food and transport. The vision puts social justice and improving the personal wellbeing of the individual, as they ‘tread lightly’ on the world, front and centre. As Greta Thunberg says, it’s with action that hope comes.
Michelle’s pedigree is impressive, with many years with housing associations in West Berkshire and Oxfordshire, to working on the Bicester Eco-Town, before joining Aspire Oxfordshire in the One Planet Living post which Soha is currently funding. She is also an activist, but makes the point that she’s not perfect – and, as her audience this morning can confirm, certainly not ‘preachy’!
Michelle sees her role with Soha as supporting the creation of strong, vibrant and sustainable communities: “I’m not handing out fish, I’m showing people how they can fish for themselves!”
Her objectives are to work with residents to identify three environmental community action projects per locality. Examples could include sustainable transport and air quality projects (cycling, tackling vehicle idling); natural habitats restoration (rewilding, nature audits, wildflower meadows) or carbon footprint awareness-raising. She’ll do this by supporting others to use the one Planet Living Framework to create action plans; engaging with various green groups/schools/caring institution in the different localities and empowering champions in the communities as volunteers
Returning to the theme of ‘hope’, some questioners addressed how Soha can mobilise a positive sense of the future – one which doesn’t major on how fearful we can all feel when thinking about the vast implications of climate change. Michelle intends to ask Soha communities what their vision is and help them work towards it – she says that we know from the world’s reaction to the pandemic that big change is possible and, furthermore, it’s possible quickly when people understand the science and the messages are clear.
Asked how we can arm ourselves with truthful information and not be swept away by fake news, Michelle said that one of the ways she does it is to look up (on LinkedIn or Twitter, for example) a scientist who impresses her when s/he appears on the television is saying. Whose views are they sharing or retweeting, what other assertions have they made? Is their work easy to understand? Do they move in a reputable network of thinkers on the subject?
Watch this space for the resource sheet which Michelle has promised us so that we can equip ourselves better with easily-digestible information.