Lammas’s core group formed ‘around a campfire at a summer festival’. Subsequently, they would co-dream a tight community of household-based farms and self-built dwellings, incorporating locals
and visitors by including common paths through their ‘village’ and a dedicated visitor educational centre. Their initial plan for Tir y Gafel in Glandwr, Pembrokeshire (West Wales) was for a circle of 20 dwellings around a central ecovillage green. In 2009, they gained planning permission for a smaller number of households and, by the end of 2016, had nine dwellings (one shown in Figure 6.1) all with active plots fulfilling ambitious targets tied to the Welsh One Planet Development policy.9 Thus they became an, albeit small, ecovillage.
Low impact living
Although a grassroots initiative, the growth of Lammas was partly determined by the Pembrokeshire County Council’s low impact development policy and, subsequently, by the Welsh ‘One Planet Development’ policy, both regulating low impact communities today.
Low impact developments aim to create a relatively seamless inhabitation of land and water with as minimal disturbance to the local natural landscape as possible, along with practices that minimise both material use and activities that lead to carbon emissions. Based on varying levels of collective sufficiency, self-management, and environmental and Figure 6.1 Exterior of a Lammas dwelling
Source: Simon Dale, photographer
social values, low impact living is pursued through approaches such as permaculture and a do-it-ourselves mutual support. In short, the scope of low impact developments moves well beyond housing to embrace livelihoods. Low impact developers have become known as ‘lidders’.
In the case of the Tir y Gafel site, regeneration would mean a ‘huge transition from pasture to a mosaic of different ecosystems’. The land had been heavily degraded through grazing sheep. The complexity of processes to achieve a transition, and its heart-warming results, is indicated in a quote from just one detail in Lammas’s 2015 monitoring report for authorities:
The millpond continues to be managed for biodiversity and wildlife through a policy of maintaining water levels, regulating algal blooms and cultivating an attitude of appreciation and conservation.
Earthworks were undertaken … to slow down the rate the millpond silts up. Barley straw was used to prevent the build-up of filamentous algae. The millpond continues to support a healthy population of trout as well as supporting a range of breeding waterfowl. The millpond hosts a large population of breeding toads and is a valuable feeding ground for bats. Otters have also been sighted using the millpond.10 When coined by Simon Fairlie, in 1996, ‘low impact development’ had already emerged as informal, even illegal, ‘low impact communities’ in the UK. In contrast, the initiators of Lammas aimed to formalise their community and gain planning approval for their model to enable others to follow suit. Their engagement with authorities dragged out for more than one thousand days, and their proposal amounted to one thousand pages, given revisions after repeated consultations and knockbacks.
Finally, they gained planning approval on appeal, in August 2009, for their development on around 31 hectares of degraded south-facing pastureland with some woodland and springs.
Fortunately, Lammas had been offered an extended option to buy this land, sited in an area long favoured for alternative living experiments. Still, neighbours initially reacted with a mix of ire and support. Committed members stood the test of time as their detailed dwelling and plot plans for 2 hectares were shared, along with planning application expenses, including a permaculture consultant. Lammas has made detailed reports on lessons from the planning approval process;
co-founder Wimbush attributed challenges more to ‘politics within the
council’ than to planners. However, Jones outlines a complex tango in which state authorities and academic studies were influential in shifting planning ordinances to cater for low impact developments. Lammas was just one of many low impact communities that sustained cat-and-mouse struggles with authorities, including standout Brithdir Mawr, also in Pembokeshire, and protests against threats of demolition before low impact development came into force.11
The cooperative association that Lammas formed followed what has become an ecovillage status quo: consensual decision-making with a fall-back to voting or some other resolution-based process in the case of any stalemate, an elected and accountable executive committee of directors, along with small teams working on specific issues.
Consistent with co-founder Wimbush’s preference for ‘self-reliance’ over
‘self-sufficiency’ as a descriptor for Lammas’s position in a trade-based society, they would decide on a market-oriented model of member entry and exit to the community via purchase and sale, a service charge to members for areas held in common and an unusually casual approach to members’ engagement in governance.12
One Planet Development
During the first half of the 2010s, the Welsh One Planet Development policy had limited application, mainly in rural areas, because of stringent requirements for associated developments to be substantially supported by ‘land-based livelihoods within five years’ (75 per cent sufficiency in basic household needs or £3000 per adult); wholly supported by renewable energy and water collected onsite; living in zero-carbon housing with respect to embodied and operating energy – mainly using local, recycled and renewable natural construction materials; all of which would contribute to the essential aim of a ‘one planet’ ecological footprint of 2.4 hectares per capita, or 1.8 global hectares (gha). Wimbush has identified the biggest challenge as generating from their land produce worth around £80,000, comparing that to the previous farmer who gained around £3000 per annum and neighbouring farmers who gain subsidies for farming their land. Adding value to excess produce has proved the main means to successfully achieve niche trading outside their ecovillage economy.13
The One Planet Development calculations applicable to Lammas estimate the household domestic ecological footprints of applicants
using a Stockholm Environment Institute tool. While the calculator uses much financial data, the results are generated in global hectares per capita. A ‘global hectare’ is ‘a biologically productive hectare with world average biological productivity for a given year’, the unit of account used to measure ecological footprints and biocapacity. Therefore, the global hectare is a standard that varies through time to account for different levels of production and productivity, and requires modification for applications to specific types of productive land. A measure of biologically productive land and water, it incorporates impacts of both consumption and waste on the regenerative capacity of Earth.14
The ecological footprint covers both carbon and non-carbon footprints.
Globally, carbon emissions became the greatest, and fastest growing, share of total impacts during the 50 years between 1961 and 2011. The carbon footprint is incorporated into the ecological footprint through the amount of biologically productive area necessary for absorbing emitted carbon dioxide (CO2 and other greenhouse gases measured as a CO2 equivalent). An initial carbon evaluation (2009) concluded that regeneration through permaculture farming and woodland management would enable a positive carbon sequestration rate of around 120 tonnes CO2 per annum, whereas Lammas’s site had, in its depleted state, emitted an estimated negative of seven tonnes of CO2 per annum. At the same time, the land would provide substantially for the inhabitants’ basic needs and cut carbon emissions attributable to their lifestyles to less than one-quarter of those associated with previous practices.15
Lammas: achievements
The Lammas 2015 annual report showed that they were living well within a one planet footprint, shrinking to an 0.8 planet footprint from a 1.36 planet footprint in 2010.16 In short, through sustainable practices in their work, play, homes and travel, residents reduced their impact to around one-third of the Welsh average. This achievement required neither ‘smart’ technologies nor total retreat from advanced technologies, such as the Internet. They simply minimised their use of many things, including machinery, water and energy. They car-shared and strove for self-reliance in food.
While it is unclear as yet how low impact living will be applied in cities such as Cardiff and Aberystwyth, the significance of low impact living was strengthened by the end of 2016, when the Welsh government
confirmed broader applications of ecological footprint measures to monitor achievements under the Well-Being of Future Generations Act and with respect to the 2050 target to reduce Welsh people’s ecological footprints to a one planet lifestyle.17
Being a lidder sounds like ‘hard work’ but Wimbush casts the experience in different terms:
it doesn’t feel like work because … you’re coming from a place of freedom with it, so I get up when I want…
… it doesn’t feel like work coz we play hard and … it’s not like we work for a number of hours for money.
You’re playing for the love of the land and the love of growing food and then you’re going to reap the rewards.18
Compared with other British residents who are subject to power blackouts or water supply being cut off, Wimbush has pointed out that off-grid living empowers lidders:
here, in the house, I know exactly where the electricity comes from when I turn on the light, and exactly where the water goes when I pull the plug out of the sink, and so all the kind of solutions, all the support systems, are micro. They’re kind of homemade and I can tweak them and mend them.19
Furthermore, the cost of establishing a dwelling (Figure 6.2) and plot at Tir y Gafel ecovillage has been estimated at around £40,000 to £65,000, with resale values expected to remain low because of the responsibili-ties and challenges attendant to the associated lifestyle. By comparison, a local town house plot of just 0.1 acre was marketed in 2009 for £130,000, whereas a 5-acre lot and share in Lammas woodland cost only £35,000.
In short, entering into and living at this ecovillage is highly affordable.20