One Planet development and access to land

This is the first part of an interview with Paul Jennings, who lives on a smallholding in Pembrokeshire with his family, and built his own straw-bale home under the One Planet Development policy that exists in Wales.

with Paul Jennings, OPD smallholder and self-builder of Criafolen.

Highlights:

  1. The One Planet Development policy allows people to build a home on their smallholding in the open countryside as long as they can show that they will live with a one-planet footprint or less.
  2. The policy has worked better for people with money. The problem is the market in land, especially speculation on land prices near to towns – the best place for smallholdings to be located, so that they can provide produce to urban areas.
  3. Most smallholdings are smaller than 8 hectares, but government subsidies and grants only kick in for holdings over 8 hectares. This needs to change if we’re going to encourage more smallholdings.

Links:

Lowimpact.org
Open Credit Network
NonCorporate.org
One Planet Council

Transcript on Lowimpact.org

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