21st Century Magazine Environment: Investing In A Capital Future By Ray Cooling, London Press Service Sustainable development is about ensuring a better quality of life for everyon

21^st Century Magazine

Environment: Investing In A Capital Future

By Ray Cooling, London Press Service

Sustainable development is about ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come – and in the United Kingdom’s capital, huge efforts are being made to ensure this vision. One of them was the creation of the London Development Agency (LDA), set up by the Mayor of London.

Despite the fact that London bears the UK’s highest productivity rate, and that its global transport links are second to none, LDA has to face many challenges in the capital: population expansion, high crime rate, rising costs, housing shortages and the highest child poverty rate in the UK.

In order to do this, LDA implements an economic development strategy that is based on basic interconnected themes. They are:

(i) Investment in specific projects to put forth more effective infrastructure in order to bring about healthy, sustainable, high-quality life standards to the communities. For instance, the initiatives put together for this year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games were turned into efforts to regenerate the Lower Lea Valley and the wider Thames Gateway. Such punctual actions brought an about-face to an ampler scope area.

(ii) Investment in people to tackle the employment barrier that still affects too many Londoners, putting forth campaigns to tackle discrimination in all its forms - against disabled people, older people, women, and people from lower economic strata.

(iii) “Investments in marketing should promote new businesses to start-up, grow and compete in the market. To help the economic scenario, the LDA must maintain London as a key business and trading location. With LDA’s help London may secure its position as a top international destination and the principal UK gateway for tourism and business investments in general. London might also profit from new synergies LDA can help develop with emerging countries such as Brazil, Russia and China.

(iv) Investments to maintain London Remade, an innovative recycling programme aimed at increasing markets for recycled products and driving the development of an entrepreneurial recycling supply chain. This programme uses recycling as a vehicle to drive economic and social regeneration and it is principally funded by the LDA to deliver green procurement and ecology-turned business consulting.

By making London Remade enforce recycling as a rule, LDA reaches the crucial aim of making each company – whenever possible – buy recycled products from other companies that have taken in its waste materials. Ultimately, LDA’s efforts are turned to ensure that London becomes a sustainable world city with strong, long-term economic growth, with social inclusion and with active and lasting environmental improvements.

Available at: <http://www.21stcentury.co.uk/environment/ capital-future.asp>. Retrieved on: Jan. 10, 2012. Adapted.

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