First Alesha, now the Indian sub-continent.

Following on from Alesha Dixons 'Madano Way', we now seem to have picked up our own theme song and video from India!

If anyone can tell us what exactly they're singing we would be most grateful!

The future of mobility

As part of our ongoing work with the Smith School of Enterprise &
Environment at Oxford University, Madano assisted in the production of
this major report into the Future of Mobility. Click here to read the
report in more detail http://ssd.ox.clients.squiz.co.uk/smithschool/research/future_of_mobility

Two UK Projects claim prizes in the International Urban Landscape Award (IULA)

January 27^th 2010. Lea River Park in East London and The LIfE Project, in Hackbridge have been awarded the Silver and Bronze prizes in this year’s International Urban Landscape Award (IULA).

Eurohypo AG, one of the leading international specialist banks for real estate and public finance sponsored the award to find the UK’s and Germany’s most ground breaking urban architecture concept and project.

IULA aimed to find urban design solutions for the challenges of dynamic population changes and shifting economies, as well as creative concepts for social and economic integration within the city and its districts, placing emphasis on energy-efficient and resource optimised construction.

The lea River Park Project, submitted by Design for London won €15,000 prize for second place while the LIfE Project, submitted by Baca Architects won €10,000 for coming third.

The Gold Award winner and winner of the €25,000 prize was the Neues Wohnen Project in Hamburg-Jenfield - an ecological neighbourhood, which was submitted by West 8 urban design & Landscapes Architecture in Rotterdam.

Commenting on the success of IULA and in particular the UK entrants, Dr. Frank Poerschke, Chairman of Eurohypo AG said:

“Eurohypo was delighted by the responses we received for IULA and are pleased that the Silver and Bronze Awards went to the UK. The standard of entries was incredibly high this year and presented the judges with some difficult choices.”

“Both the Lea River Park and LIfE Projects demonstrated the attributes that the jury was looking for in terms of indentifying creative low carbon concepts for social and economic integration within the city and its districts.”

London Development Agency (LDA) Group Director for Design Development and Environment, Peter Bishop said:

"Winning this prestigious award brings international recognition to efforts to revitalise the Lower Lea Valley and deliver an Olympic Legacy before the 2012 games. The Lea River Park will be an exciting new park which draws on the Lower Lea Valley's exceptional ecological qualities, industrial landscape and heritage. It will be the backbone of the area’s regeneration and the LDA's Design for London is delighted to be supporting the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation in the delivery of this project."

Richard Coutts, Director of Baca Architects said:

"BACA architects are delighted to have won the bronze award in the International Urban Landscape Award for the LIfE (long-term initiatives for flood risk environment) project. The LIfE project provides integrated planning, architecture and environmental solutions to areas at risk from flooding and is based upon a principle of creating ‘enduring communities’ that combine genuine sustainable design with natural ecological management".

The IULA 2009 Awards

The IULA 2009 Awards are in recognition of public and private commitment to the improvement of the urban environment and continuing development of the city.

Prof Klaus Toepfer, former German Minister for Urban Development and former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is again the IULA Patron.

The magazine Topos – The International Review of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design is once again supporting the awards.

The five shortlisted projects for the IULA Award were:

• The LifE Project (Long-term initiatives for Flood-risk Environments in Hackbridge, Peterborough and Littlehampton).
• Neues Wohnen in Hamburg-Jenfield
• Lea River Park, East London.
• Havenwelten – Old/New Harbour, Bremerhaven.
• West Oxford Commons - Concept for sustainable development strategy in Oxford.

Update from Copenhagen

Outside the Bella Centre the queues from yesterday show no sign of abating…. Even for those nongovernmental attendees with passes the waiting time is over three hours…..not easy when temperatures are close to zero. Those in the queue continue to grow frustrated with the organizers and a colleague of mine has already exchanged views with the local police. Now we are starting to see some NGO’s protest about the way many people have been turned away from the venue.

The problem for the chaos is simple - more people have applied or are trying to get into the Summit than the Bella Centre can hold and as the week unfolds and world leaders arrive (with Gordon arriving this evening) the amount of people allowed into the Centre will dramatically decrease.

So to the actual event - rather than the side show…. Talks have now resumed following yesterday’s walkout by developing nations following accusations that the Danish hosts had tried to sideline negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol by packaging discussions on a number of issues from across the various strands of negotiations into a single informal session. The developing countries were adamant that developed nations still inside the protocol (excluding the US) should commit to further emission cuts under its remit.

The walkout which lasted a little over 5 hours, which followed informal discussions with the Danes and UN climate convention officials eventually saw the talks split as the G77-China bloc had demanded.

One group is now being chaired by Germany and Indonesia, which is looking at further emission cuts by developed nations under the Kyoto Protocol. The other, chaired by the UK and Ghana, is looking at long-term financing to help poorer countries develop and protect themselves against impacts of climate change.

How will it all end up? Will we get a legally binding treaty or a political agreement? Will everyone be happy? I think the answers will be messy, political and no!

Copenhagen 2009

With the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties having now started, with negotiating teams from 192 countries convening on the Bella Centre in Copenhagen. Their mission; to try to reduce a draft climate change agreement from 176 pages down to just a few pages in time for the three days of high-level political talks, which will start on 15 December.

Climate science tells us that we need to keep the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) in the atmosphere below 450 parts per million to stand a reasonable chance of limiting average temperature rise to 2ºC and avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change. Despite what some of the more fierce sceptics may argue otherwise, the science of climate change is well proven and while the furore around the leaked emails at UEA has given them something to play with, it is ridiculous to even suggest that climate change is some sort of hoax or a plan to stop the developing countries experience growth.

Over the past few weeks many countries have started to come to the table in terms of what they can offer in order to broker a global agreement. Few, in any believe that Copenhagen will produce a fully binding treaty. While the US has moved considerably over the past 12 months it is clear that President Obama cannot fully commit until the US Congress has.

Because negotiations are deadlocked in a number of areas, there is now very little chance of an agreement being made this year. The real option is to get a broad non-binding political agreement that is a fair and effective deal that creates a timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN Climate meeting in Bonn must be the deadline not next December’s meeting in Mexico.

The crux of the deal will ultimately be centered on finance. How will the responsibility of mitigating and adapting against climate change be divided by the developed and developing countries? While the developed countries are responsible for most of the accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere and while countries such as India and China are catching up we need to remember that almost 75% of all carbon dioxide that has been emitted since the start of the last century has come from industrialized nations.

While developing counties can point out that they have not caused the problems we are currently experiencing and will continue to do so, the poorest regions will ultimately be hardest hit. Therefore an agreement needs to include all 192 counties.

The UK, as part of Europe has made a commitment to cut its emissions by 20% by 2020, with a domestic commitment going further to a 34% reduction by 2020. Although both the UK and EU have pledged tougher targets should a deal be struck this month. Russia and Japan has both offered cuts of around 15% - which again could be increased, depending on what is agreed at Copenhagen. The US commitment of a 17% reduction by 2020 against 2005 levels does sound impressive but actually just a few per cent ahead of a cut based on their 1990 levels. However, if the US Climate Bill gets passed it will be a massive step forward and brings into play new issues such as carbon trading and potentially a green industrial revolution in North America. China’s commitment to reduce intensity by around 45% based on 2020 levels is welcome but it would have been more welcome had they made a commitment to a cumulative reduction in emissions.

Industrialized countries will have to pay more to deal with the effects of climate change - that is clear, whether it’s through adaptation development, clean technologies to help developing countries grow their economies without increasing their emissions in an exponential manner. A new treaty will need national and international monitoring, incentives for protecting biodiversity and perhaps even more difficult an agreement on exported emissions so the burden of those produce products and shared more equally with those that share them. There must also be an alignment over countries ability to pay.

The five areas that will essentially need to be agreed in Copenhagen could be summarized as:

1. Agreed allocations targets for each country: This will also help create a real cap and trade scheme and set a realistic price on carbon.
2. Adaptation: Creating a global adaptation fund would go some way in ensuring we protect those that are most vulnerable.
3. Technology transfer: a fund to engage developing countries in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change.
4. Who will manage this fund?
5. Biodiversity: An agreement to protect future generations of biodiversity.

The move towards a low carbon economy does hold out new opportunities – through new technologies, new jobs, new ways of living, and perhaps more importantly a better quality of life. The world has changed a lot during the past 24 months as a result of the economic crisis and it’s clear that a further step change will need to happen if we are to decarbonise our societies and economies. It will cost but as the Stern Report made very clear, the cost of doing nothing will be far more - action is affordable but simply doing nothing will not be!

Gabrielle Walker assists Tesco and leading businesses on their low carbon strategies

A new report - ‘Consumers, business and climate change’ published by Manchester University’s Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) has been edited by Dr Gabrielle Walker, a member of the Madano’s Advisory Group The report published last week saw Tesco CEO, Sir Terry Leahy, warn that targets and technology alone will not achieve the low-carbon transition the world needs and that consumers must be part of the solution. The report also saw Tesco pledge to introduce “Buy One Get One Free – Later” and to help households lower their energy bills among a string of new measures to help consumers and suppliers reduce their carbon emissions.

The report was written in conjunction with some of the world’s most influential consumer businesses including Unilever, Coca-Cola, SC Johnson and Reckitt Benckiser, who together have all agreed to collaborate on helping consumers reduce emissions created by their products.

The Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) was established at the University of Manchester in 2007 with £25 million of support from Tesco. Its purpose is to research solutions to help the move towards low-carbon consumption.

You can read the full report here.

Parliaments new look

The Guardian’s political correspondent, Allegra Stratton, has written a major feature entitled, ‘Parliament's new look: how next election will change the Commons’. We were delighted that Madano’s Class of 2010 research was the principle research source for the Guardian’s information. Indeed the Guardian refers to it as the ‘only piece of research’ in this field and the feature also includes opinion from our public affairs guru, Tim Carr. The feature is available in full at http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/oct/16/2010-elections-new-members-mps