One Planet Action Plans

BioRegional’s One Planet programme staff work with a developer and their team to create an Action Plan for a proposed community which addresses each of the 10 One Planet principles and the corresponding Common International Targets.

This One Planet Action Plan is an important document because it forms the cornerstone of every One Planet Community project thoughout the design, construction and long-term estates management phases of a development and provides the basis for partnership between the different stakeholders.

The purpose of the Action Plan is four-fold:

To provide a holistic framework for thinking about sustainability, ensuring that a full range of sustainability issues are considered before establishing a community;
To highlight site-specific opportunities and challenges. This list of factors will help communities decide on how best to set stretching sustainability targets for the development;
To provide a set of strategies that could practically and economically be applied by the design and development team. If desired, theAction Plan can be adapted to create specific briefs for different partners, such as an architectural brief or a sustainability brief to feed into the estate management or conditions of sale for the property;
To summarise the key targets, performance indicators and route map to a One Planet Community in line with the Common International Targets and in turn form the basis of BioRegional’s decision to grant endorsement and use of the ‘planet with a heart’ logo to a project.

Development of the Action Plan

The Action Plan development process will generally begin with workshops run by BioRegional, in collaboration with the developer partner and key stakeholders, following the charrette model. The workshops introduce the concept of One Planet Living, the principles and the Common International Targets.

The Action Plan document is then written following a process led by the developer partner and their design team with support from BioRegional’s technical team, and preferably involving key external stakeholders such as community groups and municipal authorities.

As shown in the diagram below, the development of an Action Plan is an iterative process and even once a ‘final’ version has been submitted the document can be considered ‘living’. This means that information will continue to flow between key stakeholders, the developer and BioRegional, ultimately facilitating the success of the development.