Back in May 2019, a range of public, private and voluntary organisations from across Devon came together to form the Devon Climate Emergency Response Group, to declare a climate and ecological emergency and to endorse the principles of the Devon Climate Declaration.
The group took the positive step of declaring that the Devon Climate Emergency was all about creating a resilient, net-zero carbon Devon – where people and nature thrive – and that we should see both the challenge and the opportunity of climate change:
There is considerable potential for the transition to clean technologies to create new jobs and skills requirements, improve our national energy security and increase economic prosperity – nationally and locally in Devon. Retrofitting energy efficiency measures into existing housing will reduce fuel poverty and illnesses associated with cold homes and subsequently provide enhanced opportunities for work and study.
Enhancing the ability of habitats along our coast, in our countryside and in our villages, towns and cities to store carbon offers tremendous opportunities to reverse the decline of biodiversity and restore the benefits healthy ecosystems provide. These include reduced flood risk, improved water and air quality, nutritious food, timber and fuel, and accessible greenspace.
The Devon Climate Emergency project aims to create a resilient net-zero carbon Devon – where people and nature thrive.
One of the group’s projects is to get us envisioning the future – with its Net Zero Visions where it’s asking people to take part in “a grand collective effort to visualise how the places in which we live might be transformed”. Why not drop them a line?
Many others are thinking the same way. In Uganda, for example, where they see that climate change is not just a threat but an opportunity to create a better world for future generations.
And in France, where the question was asked: If change is inevitable, what sort of world do we want to emerge from the climate crisis? As posted in the latest Imagine newsletter from The Conversation, which looks at how climate activists finally seized the issue of adaptation in 2023:
In March 2023, protesters in western France seized the initiative when they opposed the construction of a 628,000 sq metre reservoir in the rural Sainte-Soline commune, de Moor says.
France had suffered a historic drought, and so a huge artificial water reserve might have seemed prudent. Not if it involved draining a common resource, the water table, to serve a few farmers whose methods of agriculture already placed an untenable strain on struggling ecosystems, protesters argued.
The campaign sparked a vital debate about whose needs ought to be prioritised in a future with greater hardship says Lucien Thabourey, a sociologist of environmental activism at Sciences Po. Fortunately, there is also a conversation to be had about the ways in which everyone might live better.
“Some of the actions taken by humans to minimise the risk of catastrophic floods can actually make life more pleasant anyway, even when it isn’t raining,” says Maryam Imani, an associate professor of water systems engineering at Anglia Ruskin University.
“For this reason, we should see rains like this not just as a challenge, but as an opportunity.”
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