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Monday Dec 14, 2009

A land of random vegetables

I don't mean heart-shaped lettuces or carrots with two legs and a head, though I am tempted to attend the Feeding the 5000 event in Trafalgar Square on Wednesday, a free food event featuring odd-shaped veg that would otherwise been thrown away for not being a uniform size/shape. 

No, Transport for London (TfL) is joining the Capital Growth scheme, providing more land for food growing projects like mine across London (and hopefully a new era for amusingly-shaped veg!). The scheme's aim is to provide 2012 food growing spaces by 2012, all run by enthusiastic community gardeners (like me).

Reading into it a bit more I was surprised at just how much land TfL has in London. It's like a wealthy old aunt who's been sitting on a neat and not insignificant pile of cash all these years and you never had any idea. But when you add it up it makes sense.

TfL owns an estimated 10% of wildlife habitat in London. If you don't live in London you may not realise but further out of the city where floor space isn't so scarce the tube lines emerge from their claustrophobic pipes and and some points during the day you get sunlight and such surprising joys as the odd pigeon boarding the train. They waddle on to savour morsels of left-over snacks before hopping out again before the doors shut.

The other joy for a daydreamer like me is that you get to gaze out of the tube windows and marvel at various green bits of London, my favourite being on the District line to Kew Gardens where you actually cross the river. It's beyond exciting, I can tell you. When you think about it though, the green spaces that straddle the tracks are a perfect wildlife corridor, a network of greenery across London.

Thanks to TfL joining Capital Growth there is now a fruit and veg growing plot above Southwark station, which will be tended by locals in a nearby block of flats. Capital Growth is offering funds to support people who have such food growing schemes. I love the idea of growing your veg in unlikely places, it's a little bit anarchic, like saying "people live here and care about this place." Maybe more wealthy aunts will come forward and decide to get their hands dirty, too.

The thought that you could just come across a rogue cucumber or patch of radishes when out walking the dog or going about your daily commute is brilliant!

Posted by Laura ( 12:29 PM )
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Thursday Dec 10, 2009

Making the environment profitable

The way to get the environment to figure in the minds of society is to make it profitable. This is the important lesson I learned today in a meeting with Hackney council.

Hackney is a very young borough. Great, you may think: more vibrant...that's what I thought. Right but wrong.

Due to a massive migrant influx in the last ten years, 29% of Hackney's population is now under 19. That means almost 1/3 of Hackney's residents are in education, which needs funding. If this isn't adequately funded, young people have poor job prospects, which leads to unemployment, which leads to crime. In my borough, youth crime and worklessness are the key council spending priorities, due to Hackney's demographic.

It is hugely important that young people have a chance to make something of themselves, as joblessness in young adults can leave lasting scars and end up costing society, too. This really drove home to me how and why the environment can get sidelined.

But then I thought: this could be a great opportunity for the environment, too.

I felt frustrated that the government bailed out the car industry when they should have taken the brave step of investing in green technologies. Why not help the clean industry of the future, not the dirty ones which use too many resources and frankly haven't made much of an effort to move with the times. The new VW Beetle, for example, does the same miles per gallon as the original model, made in 1945. That's the car industry's progress for you.

What we should be doing is putting our money where our mouth is and saying: 'Goodbye old dirty industry, hello new greener, cleaner, happier way of living.' Kapow. And why shouldn't we? It's our planet, after all, and as far as I can judge, the self-interested big business of the past should have no part in that.

Why not use all those young people needing work to provide a workforce to get a new green scheme off the ground? We need to start our green economy now, if it's going to work.

I attended this meeting out of sheer speculative interest, after the council advertised for community representatives from the voluntary sector.

This was a training day on how to successfully lobby the council to forward the interest of community groups. When I look around Hackney, I see a lot of dirty streets clogged with dirty traffic, but that also means there's a lot of room for improvement. The environment here does need a voice. It's just a case of whether it can be made profitable on a community scale.

Hackney wasn't prepared for the sudden influx of a young population,. This caused a massive spending deficit which the borough is only just recovering from. If we can be prepared and use this demographic to our advantage somehow, we would be laughing.

Posted by Laura ( 4:46 PM )
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