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PURPLE at the 3rd European Resources Forum

Nov 30, 2016

PURPLE accepted an invitation to speak at the third European Resources Forum in held in Berlin on November 9 and 10 2016. Hosted and presented  under the auspices of the Umweltbundesamt (UBA,  German Federal Environment Agency), the event built upon previous ones held in 2012 and 2014 and sought, as the organisers put it,  to “…. continue the discussion of the current European approach to resource policy and work out new impulses for a resource efficient Europe”.

The event attracted a largely German audience of over 400 with PURPLE invited to participate in a parallel session workshop addressing resource efficient land use in areas where the rural and urban meet. With keynote contributions from the UBA itself, from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, from EU Commissioner Vella and the United Nations Environment Panel, the event consisted of both plenary and parallel sessions as well as a small exhibition.

PURPLE president Helyn Clack was invited to reflect upon some experiences from peri-urban areas as to the ways in which the rural urban interface might be designed for the benefit of resource-efficient land usage. As well as emphasizing the fact that PURPLE member regions are experts of long standing in this subject area, with years of experience of managing, planning, influencing and reviewing multi-functional land-use, the debate was also an opportunity to once again challenge the outmoded rural-urban typology.  It was pointed out that PURPLE members are especially well-placed to share experiences about the fact that, land itself should be regarded as a valuable resource … “It is an asset, it should be recognised and managed as such – often defined by function, it is more than that with an inherent value and pull upon the human psyche that goes beyond the functional”.

PURPLE is an obvious contributor to these types of debates given that “pressures and complexities as regards multi-functional land use are often to be seen in their most extreme form in peri-urban areas and that might serve as a useful learning point for us all”. The audience was invited to acknowledge the fact that “new ways of living and working serve to blur the divides between urban and rural areas, creating ever-larger and ever-more important peri-urban areas, with their own specific characteristics, problems and opportunities” and that resource-efficient land use is of critical importance as a direct result. This is all too often lost sight of and as the debate focuses on such dimensions as product durability it is important to keep in mind that land too, has potential for greater durability if used in particular ways. Many of the emerging themes and principles developing within the context of discussions about the circular economy for instance are every bit as relevant to how we approach sustainable land use as they are to product and process design.

Mrs Clack had been asked to extrapolate some principles based on PURPLE member experiences in terms of what does and doesn’t work as regards partnership working on land use at the rural-urban interface:

  • “Power relationships between different actors need to be genuine partnerships of equals. There should be no senior and junior partners here! Of course I am thinking here of urban and rural – but there are other important dichotomies as well

  • “As in all good partnership working, there needs to be genuine and mutual understanding – understanding and acknowledgement of each others challenges and lines in the sand. There needs to be mutual respect – no-one has a monopoly of interest on efficient land-use and no one viewpoint should have automatic supremacy over any other – the input from one type of territory has no greater inherent importance or value than any other

  • “We share geographic areas in functional land-use terms and that should be reflected in different constituents coming together to share responsibility, – risk, – reward.

  • “Plans should be cross-complementary and for example my own local authority in the United Kingdom will want to be sure that it is working with - and using information from - other infrastructure provider’s plans including utility providers, the national level Environment Agency, Network Rail, Highways England and the National Health Service”.

Audience members were interested to learn more about PURPLE’s views on subjects such as land grabbing (“we understand it very well and are its most frequent victims”); on the contribution of urban farming (“we need to be careful to define our terms but it is nevertheless a prime example of potential smart land use which should be considered on a case by case basis”); on the UN Habitat III initiative (“we are pleased to see the term peri-urban appear in the New Urban Agenda  and find much there with which we can easily agree”); and finally, on the primacy of food supply and in particular on short supply chains, (“For us the peri-urban is very much about complexity and balancing competing demands – to give primacy to any one dimension is dangerous, of course that is not to downplay the fact that sustainable food supply is of critical importance but the challenges we face  in peri-urban areas are complex, nuanced and multi-faceted. We have known that for a long time”).

 

A summary of the various conference sessions, including PURPLE's, is available at: http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/erf-review