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Monthly archives: September 2010

Climate adapting what we’ve already got

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Fittja-million-programme

One of the million programme houses in Fittja, Stockholm. Photo: Daniel Mott/Flickr.

In the shadow of this week’s general election, there have been some interesting proposals lately that haven’t really made their way into the election debate. One of them regards Swedens big “million programme” houses.

Talking about energy smart houses, it’s easy to start thinking about futurist buildings made of high-tech materials. But this is not necessarily the case.
Between the middle of the 1960s and the mid 1970s one million flats were built in Sweden, as a way to take care of the big lack of apartments after years of urbanisation. The large scale house-building wave that the Swedish state initiated was called the ”million programme” and among other things it had the purpose to give people a good and secure standard of living in a time when housing was often expensive and of poor quality. This investment resulted in big and almost identical neighbourhoods emerging in many parts of the country almost at the same time – which wasn’t a time when energy savings was on the top of the priority list.

Now, more than four decades later, it’s high time for all these houses to be renovated. This will mean great costs, but the Tällberg Foundation means this can also be seen as an opportunity to make these houses good examples when it comes to energy use and other environmental parameters.

In an article in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet the vice vd of the Tällberg Foundations Carl Mossfeldt says that taking care of the million programme houses is a society building project of the same size as the one performed in the 1960s, but today the power is decentralised in a whole different way than then. That makes it much harder for a government today to take an initiative.

Many different parts of society has to cooperate here, says Mossfeldt. First of all the people living in these houses, but also municipalities, house-owners, building companies and Government authorities.

The foundation now works to gather people to start the discussion about both the technical and social angles of this challenge, since segregation is also a problem in many of these housing areas.
– Should we do this just a little, or thoroughly? This could create tens of thousands of new jobs – many of which in the most vulnerable areas. Used right this can work as a motor for integration, says Mosssfeldt.

I have earlier written about million programme houses being converted into passive houses in Alingsås. Maybe this could be a continuation, on a larger scale?

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

September 13, 2010

Outdoor preschool in rain and shine

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Mullebo-preschool

Playing in the forest has bwwn proven good for many reasons. This picture is from the "I ur och skur" preschool in Mullebo. Photo: Ulf Johansson.

Why go inside just because it’s raining? That’s when the mud becomes soft enough to play with. And in a forest there’s no lack of tables when having lunch – just use a tree stump.
This is how the organisation Friluftsfrämjandet, which promotes outdoor life, describes their outdoor preschools “I ur och skur” (In rain or shine). According to them the children who attend these preschools might get a bit more dirty, but also healthier and stronger.

Important ideas behind this concept is to teach children how to behave in nature and how the legal right of access to private land works in Sweden (“Allemansrätten”).

One other interesting thing is that the games children play outside also tend to be less gender stereotyped than the ones played inside. According to the researcher Eva Änggård at Stockholm University since the material children use to play in the forest aren’t as associated with a specific gender as dolls and toy cars are.

Playing outdoors is also found by researchers to reduce stress among children. Friluftsfrämjandet describes nature as “an endless laboratory, a cozy room, a room for play, a place for construction, a gymnasium, a canteen and many other things.”

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

September 9, 2010

The transition movement grows

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transition-workshop

Making an exercise to see what the participants are interested in working with.

One of the best things about my work is coming out and meeting people in other parts of the country. Last week I went to give a lecture at the architecture master programme Design for Sustainable Development at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. Meeting more than 100 students from different countries, who are thinking hard about how to design houses and plan cities that will work in the future, is very inspiring.

Then I continued to my old hometown Alingsås to participate in a “transition seminar”. The Transition movement works with ways to make local communities better equipped for the challenges of peak oil and climate change. And after launching a Swedish transition network just one year ago, the activity seems to be thriving in many places all over the country.
The group of Alingsås seems to have a lot going on, meeting not only each other but also politicians and businesses of the area to discuss energy issues and local resilience.

What impressed me most with this seminar was the way that people, who might never have been active in this kind of networks before, got the opportunity to find each other and a context where their worries and ideas make sense.

transition-workshop-2

Discussing concrete ideas.

From being silent listeners it didn’t take long before everyone was lively involved in discussions about how to make Alingsås a better place to live, also without fossil fuels. How to make more space for people and not just for cars. How to encourage local food and energy production, cycling and how to get others involved. And doing all this while eating locally produced and insanely delicious bread, butter, cheese, vegetables, honey and carrot jam just made it even more obvious that these are no impossible things.

transition-food

A locally produced lunch that put theory into practice.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

September 6, 2010

Green election

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environmental-debate

Environment spokespersons from all the parliament parties were being questioned by SSNC earlier this week.

Sweden’s general election is getting closer and closer, and the election campaigns are visible in almost every street. Earlier this week I attended an environment debate with representatives from the different political parties arranged by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC).

Earlier SSNC has made a review of the parties’ environmental work during these last four years, and delivered quite a lot of criticism. The government parties failed, according to SSNC, among other things because of having opened for a more aggressive exploitation of shores and beaches, having lifted the ban on new nuclear reactors and having abolished the tax on fertilizers (produced by fossil fuels and leading to eutrophication of the Baltic Sea).

But neither the red-green opposition parties were spared criticism. SNCC has stated that not even Miljöpartiet (which actually means the Environment Party) has really good environment politics.

During the debate I went to here in Stockholm, what caused the most fervent discussions were different subsidies for cars that emit less CO2, whether or not to raise the carbon tax (which will in its turn cause higher petrol prices) or which way is best to raise taxes on environmentally harmful things and lower them on more environmentally friendly ones.

The big debates have otherwise touched how to count emission reductions, or rather if all of Sweden’s national emission reduction goals have to be achieved within the country, or if we could instead pay for emission reductions in other parts of the world.

But it wouldn’t be fair to say that environmental issues are in the main spotlight right now. In a survey made by the publication MiljöRapporten representatives from all parties admit that they don’t think environmental issues will determine these elections, unless something acute, lika an environmental scandal or other kind of disaster, occurs in the coming weeks and makes the debate change focus.

What I miss most in the debates of this election, though, is the big perspective on the whole sustainability issue. How is Sweden going to be a good place to live in without fossil fuels? How do we deal with the planetary boundaries and construct a way of living that wouldn’t require three globes to be sustainable in the long term?

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

September 2, 2010