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Good news: Cornish town faces the climate threat head on

We have the Climate Awareness Partnership Sidmouth – and into Cornwall, they have the Bude Climate Partnership:

Developing positive climate change responses | Bude Climate Partnership | Bude

It looks like a really positive project – as reported in this week’s Guardian:

“We can’t afford to wait” – Cornish town faces climate threat head on

How an image of the projected high tide in 2050 swung the people of Bude into action

Earlier this year the north Cornwall town received a profound shock when it was presented with a visualisation created by the Environment Agency of the impact of rising sea levels on Bude. It left little doubt about the seriousness of the threat and made it clear that global heating-induced sea level rises will push the community into full-scale retreat..

In Bude people have formed the Bude Climate Partnership to address the threat head on. The strength and ambition of the group’s plans won it £2m from the national lottery climate action fund earlier this year.

Robert Uhlig, the partnership’s programme director, said: “Politicians show few signs of delivering on climate promises, let alone making crucial decisions on existential adaptations that communities like ours need to make. We can’t afford to wait, so we’re mobilising a community response to make our views and the resulting decisions clear and obvious to them.”

Over summer, the partnership delivered leaflets to the 8,500 households in the area seeking individuals for a jury to assess the climate threat, weigh up the options and choose the way forward, something being used increasingly around the world to help communities decide how to adapt and to ensure decisions come from the grassroots up.

“If we can take action as a community, if we can get enough people to understand what the possibilities are, then we can elicit real change for ourselves and that in turn could be incredibly useful for other similar coastal communities across the UK.”

‘We can’t afford to wait’: a Cornish town faces climate threat head on | Climate crisis | The Guardian

So, out of confrontation with dramatic images, communities can respond.

The same impacts are going to be felt in East Devon:

Climate displacement is happening here – Vision Group for Sidmouth

Here are the images from the EA for Sidmouth in 2050:

Climate Central | Land projected to be below annual flood level in 2050

Can we mobilize a community-wide response in Sidmouth? Can we face the climate threat face on?