The Ecological Sequestration Trust (EST) was formed in 2011 to demonstrate at city-region scale how to create a step change in improving energy, water, food security in the face of the combined challenges of changes of climate, demography and increasing resource-scarcity.
Their approach is founded on two key perspectives.
– Viewing ‘the city’ in a regional context is essential. Every city is supported by a regional hinterland that sustains it. Moving towards resilient city development requires a combined focus on the built environment and city-region infrastructure (grey) and how it interacts with the region’s agricultural, forestry and ecology (green) and river, estuary or marine water (blue) resources. EST analyses and tools underpin a design-led approach that is able to work with the complete urban-rural eco-system or metabolism.
– To create the investment for resilient city-region development there needs to be better understanding of the linkages between the environmental, societal and (critically) economic aspects of sustainable development. EST believe that bringing together existing knowledge of the links between these domains and systems tools that link them with metrics are key missing ingredients. They are aiming to address this need and to explore how these can foster effective cross-sector and multidisciplinary collaboration by local stakeholders to support practical initiatives that improve city-region wellbeing and quality of life.
EST are an independent non-profit organisation and UK registered charity working globally with business, government and communities to inspire new thinking to build creative partnerships and develop practical solutions. All of their tools and methods are being developed as ‘open source’ resources and material to be shared openly.
EST’s priority is to develop a network of ‘at scale’ demonstration projects that each encompass city-regions of up to 5 million citizens in China, India and an African country and link them to parallel regional activities in two European centres. Through their network of partners, they aim to bring together leading local and international experts to catalyse and implement evidence-based action in a network of high-ambition, large-scale demonstrator projects in selected city-regions across the world.
For further information, visit ecosequestrust.org