Ask Adur & Worthing Councils To Back The CEE Bill

The CEE Bill asks the UK to take responsibility for its fair share of greenhouse gas emissions, to actively restore biodiverse habitats in the UK and to stop damage to the environment through the production, transportation and disposal of the goods we consume.

There are now two petitions asking our local councils to back the Climate & Ecological Emergency (CEE) Bill!

If you have not done so already, please can you show your support and add your name? The more people who get behind this issue, the more likely it is that decision makers will pay attention. Every name added to the petition takes it one step closer to succeeding!

Ask Adur Council to back climate pledges with demands for a new climate & nature law

Ask Worthing Council to back new climate & nature law

 

 

 

Horsham Climate Café Presentation Follow-up

In case you missed this great presentation on the Adur & Worthing Council’s climate assembly organised by the Horsham Climate Café back in March, they have recently published a blog and the recordings of the event itself. 

The presentation provides a valuable record of how Adur & Worthing Councils are working with their community to achieve zero emissions so well worth watching!

Please do read the blog, watch the presentation and the Q&A session video and share if you can.

Help Our Kelp – Trawling Byelaw Signed!

Some excellent news from the Sussex Wildlife Trust’s Help Our Kelp project – The Near Shore Trawling Byelaw has been announced!

This means that trawling is now excluded from a vast area of 304 square kilometres of Sussex coastline all year-round! With this area now protected, it is hoped that the kelp will start to recover to its former density and range, bringing with it the wide range of benefits to people and wildlife that a healthy kelp forest ecosystem provides.

News of the byelaw was announced by the Sussex IFCA on 22nd March.

You can read the blog by Tor Lawrence, Chief Executive of Sussex Wildlife Trust, about the announcement.

And do visit the SWT Help Our Kelp page to watch the inspiring film which started the partnership, and to learn more about the project. SWT also plan to hold a series of related webinars – so do remember to check their online events page for details.

If anyone missed the excellent webinar about Help Our Kelp and would like to see it on SWT’s Catch-Up, here is the link: https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/catch-up

If you didn’t already know the true value of kelp and what the new bylaw will bring to Sussex, you certainly will after watching this!

Fairtrade Fortnight Festival

If you missed any of the festivities, dozens of Choose the world you want festival events are still available to watch via the Fairtrade Foundation website here: https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/choose-the-world-you-want/

Although the Choose the world you want festival may now be over, efforts to Choose the world we want certainly are not, so please keep standing with farmers facing a climate crisis.

Major international climate conferences are coming to the UK this year, and you can help convince world leaders to listen to the people already facing the worst of the climate crisis – the farmers and workers whom we may have met throughout Fairtrade Fortnight. Ideas from Fairtrade on how to do this are coming soon but in the meantime, do check out the Fairtrade and Climate Justice campaign page for more ways you can get involved: https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/get-involved/current-campaigns/fairtrade-and-climate-justice/

 

Online Course – Climate Change: Solutions

FutureLearn are aiming to transform access to education by offering online courses with world class universities and industry experts.

They are currently running an excellent free ‘Climate Change: Solutions‘ course created by the University of Exeter.

On this course, learners will explore solutions to this global challenge, including mitigation, adaptation and geo-engineering, which can help avoid the most dangerous climate changes and increase the resilience of societies and ecosystems to climate changes that cannot be avoided.

The course should be fairly manageable, lasting for 4 weeks and taking approx 3 hours a week.

Join the course for free here: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/climate-change-the-solutions

Putting nature recovery into law

Rewilding Britain are working with a huge alliance of environmental groups, from the RSPB to the Wildlife Trusts, to strengthen the Environment Bill with a ‘State of Nature’ target, which would bind the Government into reversing the decline in our wildlife by 2030.

We have a once in a generation chance to put the weight of the law behind protecting nature and set a global lead.

Will you help put on the pressure by signing their petition to the Prime Minister calling for a new legal guarantee for nature’s recovery by 2030. We need as many people as possible to demand better wildlife protection to ensure that this ‘State of Nature Amendment’ gets through. Signing the petition will demonstrate to the Government and politicians that the public want stronger protections for nature, and encourage them to amend the Bill.

Rewilding Britain want to see rewilding flourishing across Britain. But the UK currently sits as one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. We’ve lost half our farmland birds in the past 50 years, 40% of all species have declined in number and many of our rivers are in a shocking state.

The Prime Minister has been calling on world leaders to halt nature’s decline by 2030. Later this year, governments will come together to agree a global target to stop our natural world from being destroyed. But there’s no legal commitment to do the same here at home. Promises to protect nature are meaningless if they’re not put into law. The Environment Bill, currently making its way through Parliament, doesn’t guarantee action. No targets would be binding until 2038, almost a decade later than the Government is demanding from other countries.

This new Environment Bill gives us the chance to set this right.

Watch the campaign video, sign the petition and read more via Rewilding Britain here.

Support the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill

Please do join us in supporting the Climate & Ecological Emergency (CEE) Bill.

What is the CEE Bill?
It’s a private members bill written by a team of 23 scientists, lawyers and activists, including Prof Dave Goulson (University of Sussex). Tabled by Green MP Caroline Lucas with co-sponsors from most other parties, 92 MPs and 31 organisations and 8000 individuals support it so far.

Why do we need it?
The Climate Change Act of 2008 isn’t ambitious enough to keep global temperature increase below the critical 1.5 C. The new Bill calls for:

  • the UK to make and enact a serious plan. This means dealing with our real fair share of emissions so that we don’t go over critical global rises in temperature
  • our entire carbon footprint be taken into account (in the UK and overseas)
  • the protection and conservation of nature here and overseas along supply chains, recognising the damage we cause through the goods we consume
  • those in power not to depend on technology to save the day, which is used as an excuse to carry on polluting as usual
  • ordinary people to have a real say on the way forward in a citizens’ assembly with bite

For more information and to sign up: https://www.ceebill.uk/