Guest post: Bringing Warwickshire's rural communities together to take action on climate change.
Author: Bob Sherman, FRSA, Chair Low Carbon Warwickshire Network
Single-minded individuals can be heroes, but in the context of reducing human impact on the planet what we need is cooperation and collaboration, working together for mutual support and the sharing of ideas.
In the Warwickshire village of Harbury this was the inspiration behind two of us deciding to bring rural communities together to work on carbon reduction in the county. We are not the first to conceive of such an idea and we definitely don’t want to be the last. There is a lot of excellent collaborative effort in the South West and we have a long way to go to emulate Oxfordshire’s Low Carbon Hub but you make no progress if you don’t start.
Our own community group, Harbury Energy Initiative (HEI), had already achieved a lot of small successes:
We insulated our community library and the local Rugby Club clubhouse,
We got solar panels and LEDs for our school,
We put LEDs in the Scout Hut,
We installed a 19kW battery energy store for our village hall,
We set up an electric car club that provides free transport for people in need (as featured in a 10:10 mini-video in 2015).
However, we were aware of just one other rural community in Warwickshire with a strong record of carbon reduction activity. Perhaps, we thought, our next step is to find more climate actors and inspire new community groups to become active on behalf of their residents.
So in 2019, with the help of the RSA we held meetings in three different villages in the county where we invited experts on a range of issues (from renewable energy to wildlife protection) to present in front of local residents. As a result, two new climate action groups were formed, one of which is spectacularly active.
Our plans, in common with most people’s, ran into the Covid-19 lockdown cul-de-sac and momentum stalled while we backed out to find another way forward. The early success meant that we were now officially the Low Carbon Warwickshire Network (complete with a professional looking logo and a steering group).
As of today, there are now 10 groups in the Network and we have established good relations with our local authorities at County and District. We are currently attempting to boost our ability to deliver with funding, a process being conducted by a consortium of HEI, Napton Environmental Action team (NEAT), the RSA, Act on Energy and Community Energy Warwickshire. Success in this will mean taking our activities online, supporting new groups in their hunt for funds to turn dreams into reality and a set of online resources amongst other things. It’s a start. Such initiatives develop their own momentum surprisingly quickly with the kind of enthusiastic and energetic leadership that inevitably arises.
Hidden in our villages is a great deal of talent and valuable people with relevant expertise and experience. Harnessing this is vital to ensure that every community plays its part in cutting carbon emissions with the benefits of a cleaner, brighter, more harmonious world where living is affordable.
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