Preparing communities for climate change

Emma Weitkamp and Anne Cox attended a Gloucestershire Communities Prepared Workshop put on by Gloucestershire County Council to give a chance for government and community organisations to think about preparations for Climate Change emergencies. It was heartening to know that, despite the lack of coverage in the media, plans are starting to be made at county level. Anne’s shares her account of the evening...

The evening started with a chance to network. I met a vet who is involved in Vision 21, Cheltenham (changing it’s name to REGEN The Regeneration Collective) who talked about initiatives in Ireland and Scotland where satellite imaging has been used to find out the nature of the soil so that decisions can be taken about what to grow most successfully without inputs. I also met a representative of the Local Resilience Forum, a government body which unites key agencies to co-ordinate county-wide emergency management.

Up until then, they hadn’t been talking about Climate Change. As well as planning how to use their resources in an emergency, the Council is encouraging households to prepare individually . Details of their recommendations for households.

And I made a useful contact with CDC Climate Change Officer, Allan Keller allan.keller@cotswold.gov.uk Two speakers highlighted the obvious need for preparations given the recent hot summer, likely increased storms this autumn and winter and the likelihood of more severe conditions in the future.

Low cost solutions were needed for local climate adaptation however, as funding was at present not available, although there was a small fund for adaptation projects costing up to £5000. We needed to face reality given the UN “The Overshoot Report “, mitigate as much as possible and prepare to deal with the consequences of Climate Change. There were five ways to adapt:

• Food resilience

• Nature-based solutions

• Emergency planning- robust comms

• Circular economy

• Retrofit / future fit buildings

The council would help councils to prepare town adaptation plans and parish adaptation toolkits. Some communities were already acting, examples from the Forest of dean were: repair cafes; libraries of things; exchange hubs; drinking fountains nature based drainage; community food hubs; veg gardens; drought resilient growing; water storage and rainwater harvesting and urban tree planting (Coleford High St).

We gathered in groups to generate low cost ideas for preparing for flood and drought. Some of the ideas were: community resilience kits for towns neighbourhood groups to arrange amongst themselves warm/cool spaces and resilience kits; Rain gardens to filter run-off from roofs and slow flow to rivers; community events like street gutter-cleaning; small grants for shading measures, like shutters; advice on retrofits, inclussing considering cooling./