Addressing house builders from throughout the UK on the ecological aspects of new home building legislation, “Much more is to come” warned Professor Dr Michael Benfield, a leading environmentalist and head of national timber frame company Benfield ATT.
The conference, organised to inform and update directors of firms responsible for a major slice of Britain’s 160,000 p.a. house output, learned from industry specialists from BRE, WRAP, NHBC, CLG, Robust Details, Universities and Consultancies how legislation will affect design, construction, occupation and pricing of new houses from now on.
With delegates reeling from the enormity of the tasks facing them, like achieving ‘Zero Carbon’ developments by 2016 (2011 in Wales), Professor Benfield argued that far from practicing ‘joined up thinking’, politicians and legislators remained “… locked in outdated ideas of mankind’s Biblical Supremacy over the natural world.”Drawing in Prof. James Lovelock’s controversial ecological ‘Gaia Theory’'², future legislation will have to consider “greater sharing with the natural world locally, nationally and internationally”, warned Prof. Benfield.
Using forests as a proxy for global ecology, he pointed out that these only provided a tiny 1.6 acres of forest for each person alive today.“Yet we rely on plants and trees for climate regulation, nutrient distribution, water retention, cleaning up pollution, habitats, raw materials, medicinal bases, all our oxygen, and taking CO2 out of the atmosphere”, he added.“Although we compete with other species, we are also interdependent with, and cannot exist without, them”, he continued.
Linking this directly with housing, he challenged his audience to incorporate more trees into their developments.“Even though this might fly in the face of Government Planning Policies, like high densities, just three trees planted around the average home in the USA are known to halve air-conditioning costs, while wind shield trees can reduce heating bills by 30%”, he told delegates.According to ‘American Forests,”Healthy cities need a tree canopy cover of 40%, while the aim for rural developments should be 50%”, he advised, urging that “Such considerations can really help you to meet the ‘Code for Sustainable Homes’, provide better looking and more desirable housing schemes, and enable your organisations to become more ecologically orientated. And that is the way future legislation is headed” he predicted.
1 the idea that, for humans, humans must be the central concern, and that humanity must judge all things accordingly
