Composter - our second Eco news digest
Bringing you a selection of news and views from the last week or so. October Books Member, Liz Batten, has kindly offered to create a weekly news digest of eco-news for us. Here is the second instalment. We hope you find it useful and do send us your news and views too.
Permaculture research
Permaculture is part philosophy, part guide to growing food with people and planet in mind. A recent academic paper on the subject has concluded that “permaculture brings about a significant improvement in biodiversity, soil quality and carbon storage.” Those who use permaculture principles know this already of course… check out Aldermoor Community Farm.
Want to know more about permaculture? There’s a great selection of books on Bookshop.org
Local politics
This article in the Hampshire Chronicle details how the new Government is bringing in Local Growth Plans together with plans for devolution. As a result, there’s a lot going on in local authorities right now, figuring out how to respond and what the priorities might be. Let’s hope us ordinary citizens get a chance to contribute.
As we enter this new world of devolution in the South, better methods of engagement will become paramount if we are to feel more involved in the democratic process. Transition Southampton has been working on these methods since 2016, through its series of “Imagine” activities proving that, with training and support, it’s fun and rewarding to engage more effectively with the citizens of our city.
Similar thoughts have been echoed by Involve, who ran the Citizens’ Assembly on Transport in Southampton recently: “At Involve, we’ve been working with UKRI and others on how to help place-based partnerships develop plans for local economic growth with the public. We will be bringing in our expertise in community engagement, working with academic partners in four localities to put communities at the heart of the levelling up agenda. Everyday people need to be involved in solving issues that will move the UK towards sustainable economic growth and equitable cultural recovery — an example of a new, collaborative way of doing policy making. As Starmer said in his first press conference when talking about moving power out of Westminster, it’s about ‘people with skin in the game knowing what's best for their communities’.”
And to round off a couple of new books to recommend
“In this passionate and revealing book about loving clothes but despairing of a broken global system Patrick Grant considers the crisis of consumption and quality in fashion, and how we might make ourselves happier by rediscovering the joy of living with fewer, better-quality things.”
Overshoot by Andreas Malm - pre-order for October
“A scathing critique of proposals to geoengineer our way out of climate disaster by the bestselling author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline”
