All Party Debates

The aim of these debates, convened with support of the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, is to highlight the threat of soil degradation and desertification to national and international carbon, water and nutrient cycles, and proposing a sustainable solution based on the principles of Carbon Cycling.

July 2010 – All Party Parliamentary slot awarded

The APPCCG has granted FREdome an All Party Parliamentary Group session in Westminster to devote to our Carbon Cycling proposal.

The date we have chosen is 18^th November 2010, which is Social Enterprise Day, during International Entrepreneurship Week.

Speakers so far include:

·    Greg Peachey BSc, Founder and Chair, FREdome Visionary Trust

·    Andrew K Fletcher, Originator, The OASIS Solution

·    William E Matthews, OBE, Vice President of the International Tree Foundation (Patron, HRH Prince Charles)

·    Pano Kroko, Chair, Environmental Parliament

·    Professor Eric P Achterberg, Professor Eric P Achterberg, Professor of Ocean Biogeochemistry and Ecosystems, University of Southampton

·    Professor Stephen Nortcliff, Professor of Soil Science, University of Reading

·    Professor Frank M. Chambers, Professor of Physical Geography - Climate History and Change, University of Gloucestershire, Sustainability Institute

·    Professor John Wainwright, Professor of Physical Geography (Links between hydrological, geomorphological and ecological processes), Sheffield University

November 2010 – First All Party event held

On 18 November 2010, a landmark meeting “The Missing Link in the Carbon Debate?” was held by the FREdome Visionary Trust in partnership with the APPCCG (All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group) in the Boothroyd Room of Portcullis House.

Invited to the event were people from every political party, different ethnic & faith groups, different walks of life and different ages, including young people, very concerned about their future.

The young people opened the proceedings, handed over to the adults to continue, and summed up at the end.

The meeting drew attention to an unnoticed alternative method for dealing with carbon emissions – turning them into vital, dwindling carbon resources, such as food and fuel.

The OASIS proposal involves bio digesting organic waste in tankers returning from European shores, and using it to irrigate and fertilise self-sustaining agro forestry starting from desert coastal regions. This can restore the global carbon, water and nutrient cycles.

It was shown that tankering the waste will be more than 20 times cheaper than processing it locally, and the value of biogas produced before departure would on its own more than pay for the tankering, leaving further biogas for the journey and to power machinery at the destination. Additionally there will be substantial and growing revenue from the agricultural produce from the reclaimed area, and the value of the land will multiply many times.

One of the most interesting things to emerge from the meeting was that when the initiative was originally proposed, it was taken up by a UK water company and to be financed by Kuwait, but was only stopped by conflict. This confirms its overall plausibility.

The independent panel of four professors agreed to become our Scientific & Technical Advisory Board and a further five industry experts subsequently offered their services.

It is proposed to build a team of highly-skilled people made redundant by the recent downturn to construct a UK application for EU/UN funding. This will attract foreign investment, create Green jobs and position the UK to become leader and shareholder in a new global industry, helping to resolve our economic, environmental, food, water and energy security issues.

Coastal agro forestry can become productive and start reversing the damage done to our world in 2–3 years — but this could also be the time it takes us adults to begin to get our wheels to turn. The young people pointed out that nations and communities must stop fighting or simply talking about this, and just DO it – we are all members of one species. They have called the coming era “The Age of Global Restoration” — let’s not let them down!

Here’s a link to all the output from the First APPCCG meeting:

https://app.box.com/shared/gzqilkibpj

December 2010 – All Party follow-on action

At the November All Party Parliamentary event it emerged that feasibility of our environmental/renewables proposal had already been established by a UK water company, so that first steps could now theoretically be almost immediate. If you read back through the outline news summaries on this page, you will gain some appreciation of the immense efforts that have been invested so far to bring the project to this point. Coastal agro forestry can become productive in 2-3 years, or that could be time it takes for the wheels of our systems to start to turn. We are therefore focusing keenly on a number of key paths:

1.   Political: Because of the potential to attract foreign investment and create green jobs, we wrote on 25Nov10 to the Minister for Employment, requesting an urgent meeting. As expected, we initially received the standard response, effectively indicating that the Minister is too busy to respond to every letter, but, as is recommended practice, we will demonstrate persistence. We attended a further APPCCG meeting on 01Dec2010 at which a representative of the Department for International Development was speaking on the very connected subject of global water security. We provided a link to the outputs from our Meeting and requested a conversation. Once we have received positive responses from either of the above, we will write to the Departments of Energy and Climate Change to request that Carbon Cycling be reflected in Policy, by featuring it as a potential component to the overall UK strategy within Parliamentary documentation.

2.   International: The day after the Parliamentary event we attended a reception hosted by a cross–embassy organisation, explained the project benefits and requested introductions to the UK–based Kuwaiti and Italian ambassadors. We believe that the project will be of particular interest to the Venice Water Authority because of the desperate coastal sewage pollution issues there. We are also re–establishing direct contact with foreign officials who previously issued an open invitation to their country. We have additionally spoken to the Egyptian Ambassador at a meeting where he was delivering a presentation and have further offered to speak at the 2nd Arab Water Forum in Cairo in November 2011.

3.   Scientific & Technical Our Advisory Board is proving particularly helpful. We will reference and extend their Questions & Answers so far, from an open discussion forum shortly to be announced, collating residual questions requiring funding for investigation/research.

4.   Media: We see communication to the public as vital, as this can help lift people’s spirits and we must bring them with us. We are planning a development to publicise during Climate Week (21^st–27^th Mar 2011). More news to follow…

5.   Management & monitoring: At the Parliamentary event we made a request for a follow-on APPCCG meeting to monitor our progress in a year’s time A follow–up meeting next year is on the APPCCG’s list of proposed future events, pending confirmation (they usually review the list of autumn events near the end of the summer parliamentary term). We will publish their official minutes, as soon as they are available.

6.   Practical: Whilst encouraging progress on the above fronts, we have requested estimates from organisations that have the capability to provide components of the project, such as floating pipework, tankering services and a portable landing causeway. This will engage further stakeholders in the project and reduce the preparation time for a funding application.

7.   Funding: On 10 Dec 2010 we attended an “EU Funding Opportunities for Environment-themed projects” event organised by EEDA. As a result, because of the compatibility with our approach, Greg will be attending an already funded “Cradle-to-Cradle” conference in Austria (Graz) in Jan 2011.

Nov 2010 - Nov 2011 Govenment Dialogue

Following our very successful All Party Parliamentary Group meeting, which engaged representatives across diverse sectors about the above proposal, we wrote to the Minister for Employment at the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions), requesting a brief meeting to discuss this potential employment/economic solution.

The response from his correspondence team was essentially – minister too busy, we value your suggestion, look on our website to see our plans. The letter also pointed us at other Departments. Indeed, because this approach could resolve many issues, the majority of the benefits will inevitably fall outside the scope of any single Department. We therefore need support across relevant Departments, rather than have all Departments pointing at each other. We did contact the Departments suggested by the DWP, but received similar responses.

After exchanging some 35 letters with the DWP and receiving virtually identical responses, we invoked Freedom of Information Act to discover the reason for the Minister’s unwillingness to engage. The answer was that our proposal would create jobs and that, for efficiency reasons, the DWP was no longer involved in job creation.

A Google search confirmed that they had recently run a £1 billion fund for job creation, which aimed to create over 150,000 jobs, 10,000 of which were expected to be green jobs. After citing this and explaining that we were seeking support to encourage exploration of our proposal rather than public funding we received a call from a DWP policy official, who, unfortunately was about to exit the Department in 2 weeks.

We also managed to obtain a meeting with an alternative DWP official, the outcome of which was that the only person who could really help us was the one who had just moved to the Cabinet Office. We were put back in touch with him and we wrote several further letters, but did not receive a response.

March 2012 – Second All-Party event

The Carbon Cycling / Operation OASIS project was presented for a second time at the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group – this time with key figures from the UK business community in attendance. The event, entitled “A new opportunity out of economic crisis?” was sponsored by the CCP Network. 30 corporate executives and 100 SME business owners attended.

Speakers at the event included:

·    Greg Peachey, Founder & Chair – FREdome Visionary Trust

·    Andrew K Fletcher Originator of Operation OASIS – FREdome Visionary Trust

·    Dr David Wilkinson, Reader in Environmental Science – Liverpool John Moores University

·    Jessica Scholl, Secretariat Manager, Programme Manager – UN Global Compact UK Network, International Business Leaders Forum

·    Professor John Sedgwick, Professor of Film Economics and Head of the Centre for International Business and Sustainability – London Metropolitan University

·    Dr Vlasios Voudouris Deputy Director - Centre for International Business and Sustainability (LondonMet) – Chief Executive and Founder - ABM Analytics Ltd

·    Dr Newton Jibunoh, Founder – FADE Africa (Fight Against Desert Encroachment)

·    Tara Gibbins-Klein & Toby Charles Youth speakers – FREdome-YEA!

Here is the link to the full meeting presentation -  including photos, transcripts, slides and videos

http://www.fredome.org/resources/docs/FREdome%20-%20APPCCG%202012%20-%20Meeting%20Notes.pdf

Examples of feedback included:

·    “A fascinating insight into how people power can convert a crisis - climate change - into a solution - better economic prosperity for all” - Professor MJC Crabbe (Dean of Faculty, Professor of Biochemistry, Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies and Science – University of Bedfordshire)

·    “I think it's about time something positive was done to tip the balance: for the environment; for a downbeat society and for the good of the world at large… and for the first time, I have seen something which I believe can deliver on all of these issues. This could be a fantastic opportunity for Britain.” – Jez Hunt – The Client Relationship Guy, Group Leader – 4N Witney

·    “The case in support of Operation OASIS was fully explained on Wednesday at the House of Commons by a range of speakers, from the theoretical model as described by engineers and scientists, through to the visual proof as demonstrated by Dr Newton Jibunoh. We now need to find a way of communicating to and convincing government and big business that this is a feasible solution.” – Mark Lay (Director – OxTreeGen Ltd)

May 2012 – Prime Ministerial meeting

Following support for the project expressed by attendees of a 4N business networking meeting in Witney, a constituent raised the project at a surgery meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron.

It was reported that a number of Witney business owners who had heard Greg speak, were convinced of the project potential and credibility, and felt it was important that it should receive Government attention.

David’s initial reaction was: “This is Big!”

At first he suggested that it should be broken down into its constituent parts and progressed separately with appropriate individuals and bodies.

It was pointed out, however, that as everything is inextricably linked and the proposal addresses such a broad range of issues, our experience when approaching grant-making trusts and Government departments has been that each one indicates that the bulk of the potential benefits lie outside their scope. Instead of all helping us, they all point to each other and none of them help.

David retained the pack and said that he would talk this through with his advisors.

The final section of the pack specifies what we are asking the PM to do – to issue a message to the British people (a) potentially stimulating some economic hope, and (b) encouraging support to explore what is clearly a highly plausible British innovation. Hopefully he and his advisors will recognise that such a statement would represent no risk to Government reputation but could actually provide them with positive PR.

 Here’s a link to the info pack we left with David Cameron:

https://app.box.com/s/aeabba0d25494a81438d

Our 2010 debate won the Global Entrepreneurship Week 2010 Outstanding Impact Award.

Our 2012 debate was attended by 30 corporate executives and 100 SME owners.

We are now working towards our next debate - watch this space.