Wards and SOAs

Kelsall, just outside Chester is in the SOA Chester 007B. The village has a high population however the area has many green areas and the schools are all aiming to reach their 'green' targets.

The office for national statistics shows that there is 1, 448.77 square meters of greenspace out of a total of 2,241.36 this shows that kelsall is a sustainable area. The majority of this green space will be fields or forest.

The area however is outside most main bus routes and therefore many places have to be travelled to by car, also there is a bypass which is one of the main roads to chester where hundreds of cars pass each day. The overall combined air quality indicator gives the value 0.80. This is quite low compared to Northampton however this is higher than other rural areas due to the bypass.

The schooling in the area is good, with high attendance. The statistics show that 82.4% pupils recieved a*-c grades at KS4.

However a negative on the village would be the crime rate as it is extremely high. The main problems are youths and drunks causing problems. Examples of these are burning down hedges and putting fireworks in post boxes. Other problems are associated with drugs. However the national statistics have no information on these.

Overall the area does represent a sustainable community, but other areas do not represent it. The main areas that do support it are the green areas and the schooling. Yet those things that do not support it are the crime rate and the cost of the housing which is excessive.

Education for Sustainable Development

I think that education for sustainable development is valuable because the younger people learn things the more they are likely to carry it on into their adult lives. Also it is valuble to them as it is their future and their childrens.

With schools already aiming their sustainable development targets high due to government funding and league tables it should be possible by 2105.

Geography incorporates the the surrounding environment and human activities in all areas. It consists of areas that focus on the development of preserving the environment and human attitudes towards it. Therefore with this base it would seem that Geography is the best place in the curriculum for it. However i think it needs to be placed within the other sciences especially biology which also looks at the environment and human impacts.

This module is informative about the issues of sustainable development and is good as it looks at a wide range of different areas. Local and national.

Bad Crunch????

The credit crunch has apparently hit all of us. (except the millionaires) But how much has this had an impact on us? Has it helped us get a little bit nearer our sustainable development targets or not?

The Guardian claims that as the credit crunch hits there will be less incentives for businesses to work towards a more sustainable future as all the focus will be about improving profits. An example of this says the Guardian is BP who are digging up Canadian tar sands to get their profits back on track.

Is this really helping sustainable development? OK, we are using less oil for our cars but this is just encouraging the oil companies to increase their amount of extraction to bring the prices back down.

However maybe there is a silver lining. We are consuming less and spending less. But this is not necicerilly a good thing as people aim to buy cheaper food which will not be organic and will contain pesticides which are harmful to the environment. People buy second hand cars and other machinery, but these have high emmisions compared to newer cars which are built for a more sustainable future.

So it would seem that the credit crunch is not doing anything to help us reach our sustainable development targets.

Will we learn to live within our means?

I believe that the answer is no. It is human nature to always want more, and to have competition to always be and have the best. Why would we want to live with less than what we have had in the past, when we believe it is still available?

Travel Survey

Last week we did a travel survey, interviewing students about their opinion about travelling to and from the university of northampton and counting the amount of student cars entering the student car park at the university of northampton, park campus. The group was split up into 6 groups, with each group doing an hour of the day. Starting at 8am and finnishing at 4.30pm.
The sampling method that we used was purposive.

I found that there were alot more people car sharing than i first thought that there would be which surprised me. Also there were alot less people coming into the university during the day than i assumed there would be.

I think if i did it again then i would try a random sample to get a wider and more representative view of student car drivers. I would also do it over more days as the one day that we did it on will not be representative of the rest of the week!

What can we as individuals do?

We as individuals can do alot, in fact we do. We recycle all our rubbish, well at least i do at home. We recycle glass, paper, and metal. Also we can have an impact as individuals by reducing the amount of water we use by switching off taps when they are not needed and using rain water to feed the plants rather than using clean drinking water from the taps.
We can also reduce the amount of electricity we use, for example by not over filling the kettle and turning off appliances when they are not in use, and maybe just turning them off and finding other things to do.
Also the amount of cars on the road has a major impact on sustainability as there are too many and this is mainly due to people travelling alone. Whether this is to work or elsewhere. This could be reduced by individuals if they shared their cars or travelled by public transport. Public transport is not alwasy the most comfortable way to travel at the moment, however it would seem that the government is trying to improve it. An example of this is the Manchester Metro which the carriages are to be replaced by more comfortable and efficient replacements. So it would seem that in the future there may be more individuals travelling in a more sustainably and making a difference.
However even though there are individuals making a difference by doing all of these things it may be worth considering how much of a difference they are making? Does turning off the tap here in Britain mean that in Africa a poor child gets a drink? Does one person getting public transport for a year reduce the emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere to make a significant difference to global warming?
I dont believe so. Therefore it may have to be considered that individuals can make a small difference, however there would have to be an awful lot of people doing these changes to make a significant impact and without this happening there would not be much change.

Un Debate review

I learnt alot about other countries i had never really taken an interest in before. I was especially interested in the countries with very little money but were still trying to tackle the promblem of making a more sustainable future.
The US was quite hard to find sustainable stratagies for, especially for climate change. However i was surprised to find that it was trying to make a change even though it refused to join the kyoto protocol. I was especially surprised that it is aiming to meet some of the same targets that the kyoto protocol would have required of the country.
I think our presentation went quite well, i think that we could have mentioned some more strategies that the US was using towards sustainable development. I think if i was to do it again i would have thought about it more and practised what i was going to say before the day. If i was to do it again i think it would have been easier if i had a little more time to research the information as it was quite a rush at the end.

Waste Management Strategy.

As each region has new goals to meet on recycling evey region reduces its waste at different rates. CBD has increased its recycling rates by 7.5% from 2001 to 2005 to 11%. Whereas
SNC has increased its recycling rates from 11% to 28%.
The differences between these figures maybe due to the councils waste collection services. CBD has its waste removed only every two weeks and only has a 240l waste bin, this may mean that if this bin gets full they may choose to bin and not recycle the rest.
Whereas SNC has the same however the paper and glass is recycled every week. Paper and glass is one of the major waste products due to packaging.

To improve these rates it may be considered that people should be able to recyle more as often the council will refuse to take overflowing rates also this should be more available, for example taking the waste one or two times a week.

Other iniatives that have been brought forward more recently that will improve this rate is inbuilt bins when houses are originally built. This will soon become compulsory for all houses making it easier for them to recycle.

However there will always be a problem with waste so new iniatives will always be welcomed in society.