What is Sustainable Development???  What can it do for me and for Sheffield? follow-up meeting by invitation only for workshop participants once again very generously hosted by DLA Piper LLP Sheffield office, 1 St Paul’s Place, Sheffield S1 2JX (click post code for maplink)  @ 12.15pm – 2.00pm on Tuesday 15th June 2010.

Workshop discussion raised on various topics and major issues in their own right as follows:

• planning, retail giant’s manipulation of planning regulations and its effect on small traders.
• transport, buses, regulation, congestion charging and the use of parking to incentivise more constructive
• housing, fuel consumption, charging, fuel poverty and incentivising reduced fuel consumption
• practices surrounding food, food waste, cooking, the connection between food and animal husbandry

Invitation for up to 30 people.

• Discuss issues for New Economics Foundation’s events
• Review Sustainable Development workshop outcomes
• Decide what to do next
• Present our Plans and Annual Report

As we only have place for 30 people, we will apply our cancellation policy of £15 for no-shows and people turning up without a reserved place.

New Economics Foundation has asked us to run a series of say six events in Sheffield with their new product Crowd Wise which uses ‘consensus voting’ to create better decisions and priorities acceptable to more people, made quicker.  Crowd Wise takes account of a full range of preferences in a tested, flexible format for a wide range of issues and decisions by creating constructive dialogue and consensus voting. Please drop us a line with the issues you’d like us to put forward for one of these events and we’ll keep you posted on developments.

Visit us at the University of Sheffield’s first Big Green Fair on Monday 10th May 10am-3pm at the Octagon Centre, Weston Bank which we anticipate will bring many opportunities for linking up in the future.

Our workshop:  What is Sustainable Development???- What can it do for me and for Sheffield? was a resounding success. 

Rachel Wileman,Partnership Co-ordinator for Sheffield First Environment Partnership, was among over 80 people who met to learn about living in a more sustainable way and to see our exhibition of Sheffield’s award-winning eco-friendly organisations.

We had a fantastic mix of people from diverse backgrounds including: students, researchers, project managers and Directors from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, Transition Porter Valley, Corus, East End Quality of Life Initiative, Burngreave Community Action Forum and Nether Edge Neighbourhood Group.

8th April 2010:  Over 80 participants attended our workshop What is Sustainable Development???  What can it do for me and for Sheffield?  

Very generously hosted by the Sheffield office of DLA Piper LLP, facilitated by Professor Dave Applebaum from the University of Sheffield with  Andy Nolan, Director of Sustainable Development, Sheffield City Council; Professor Ian Rotherham at Sheffield Hallam University and award-winning Sheffield organisations: Action for Stannington, Heeley City Farm, Pedal Ready, Shebeen, Sheffield Campaign Against Climate Change, Sheffield City Freecycle, Sheffield Renewables, Solar Active and South Yorkshire Energy Centre.

Following on from the resounding success of our October 2009 Climatewalk event facilitated by Perry Walker at the New Economics Foundation we are delighted to say that participants from that event are helping us organise a follow-up focussed on positive action.

Please pencil this date in your diary, tell your friends and check back for updates.

“The tragedy of the Haiti earthquake is a sober reminder of real need: one of the world’s poorest countries – already fighting poverty on its knees – devastated, with more than 100,000 dead and millions displaced.

Martin Lewis from Money Saving Expert is pledging 50p to the Haiti Disasters Emergency Committee for every  genuine new UK recipient of their free weekly e-mail until midnight Sat 23 Jan which is in addition to their usual charity fund donations.

We are delighted to announce that the followup Climatewalk workshop will be at the Town Hall, Sheffield City Council, Committee Room 5 from 2-4pm on Tuesday 15th December.

Expected Planning Meeting outcomes are to:

1. Brainstorm what we as a group want from the follow uip event
2. Develop concrete plans to see where we can go next to include more action
3. Create a team of enthusiastic volunteers to share the workload of designing, producing and delivering a follow up climate workshop/event early next year preferably late February  to develop follow-up.
4. Design workshop structure, focus and content including creating a space for people to develop their ideas and action plans. 
5. Invite one speaker with a sound understanding of Sheffield’s overall needs and vision so we can use the limited time we have to help people develop their visions and ideas into viable action plans.

We’ve transcribed and emailed the talks from Shaun Quegan, Andy Nolan and Panni Poh Yoke Loh for their approval and we’ll publish the full transcript and an executive summary as soon as we receive confirmed approval of the content.

Thank you to everyone for making Climatewalk the resounding success that it was. As always we appreciate the generous hospitality of DLA Piper LLP which enabled us to contine providing free events, free event packs and free refreshments open to everyone. Shaun Quegan, Andy Nolan and Panni Poh Yoke Loh respectively contributed their outlook and expertise on climate change issues from the global, local to personal development perspectives. Managing introductions and Q&A session, Perry Walker facilitated a lively discussion followed by the Climatewalk challenges which he developed with colleagues at the New Economics Foundation. By the end of the workshop we all better understood the implications of our carbon footprint and things we need to give up just to maintain the status quo including: long haul flights, one long haul flight every 4 years and allowing Government to disconnect our utility supplies as required. The many stark choices and the validity of our existing lifestyle choices included realisations that: * Biofuel is destroying large amazonian forests while the indiginous population is left to die. * Plastic used in retail, manufacturing, medicine, dentistry is an invisible iceberg and consumer plastic bags is just the tip * Reliance on cars and planes for personal transport and global shipping food is no longer viable. Climatewalk strategies to reverse the situation may seem draconian but the implications of not doing so with temperature increases of up to 6 degrees centigrade were considered infinitely worse. As we all agreed that every little helps, AFI is delighted to say the online registration and related charging policies eliminated waste with a close correlation between registrations and attendees.