Big names discuss how to ‘weather the storm’

Combining global and local approaches are necessary to weather the ‘storm’ of climate change, according to the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) conference.

The RGS’s Environment and Society Forum (17 February), this year titled “A ‘Perfect Storm’ ahead?”  used the term coined by Professor John Beddington, Chief Scientific Advisor to the government, in 2009.

“It is predicted that by 2030 the world will need to produce 50 per cent more food and energy, together with 30 per cent more available fresh water, whilst mitigating and adapting to climate change. This threatens to create a ‘perfect storm’ of global events.”

Tackling the topics of food, water and energy security, the day included talks from Julia Slingo, Chief Scientist at the Met Office, Dr Glynn Davies, Director of Programmes at WWF-UK, and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne.

The speakers’ approaches were split into three areas; the local, people actively changing their lifestyles to adapt and mitigate the risks of climate change; the national, government pledges to cut emissions and incentives to promote low-carbon alternatives; the global, worldwide agreements such as Kyoto, and discussions like the Conference of Parties (COP).

Rob Hopkins, Co-Founder of the Transition Town Totnes and the Transition Network told the conference that he believed local communities had to be supported. He said: “Getting from here to a low-carbon economy isn’t purely about nuts and bolts and windmills, it’s about working with people, their hopes, their fears, engaging them on all kinds of different levels.”

The Transition Network, a community movement formed in 2004, has created projects where communities find ways to cut carbon, including waste, housing, energy, water and so on. In Totnes, where they have also created a local power company, the scheme includes 60 streets, 500 households, and has saved 1.2 tonnes in carbon and £600 in energy bills.

Professor Mike Bradshaw of Leicester University acknowledged local energy projects but said micro-generation could only go so far: “There’s a big debate about switching over from a centralised transmission to a decentralised transmission system, of course one of the problems is that you need to have back-up, and Chris Huhne talked about having clean coal and gas as the back-up.”

Micro-generation has sparked debate recently in the UK. Problems have been raised both about the Feed-In Tariffs scheme for promoting the wrong type of installations, and the Renewable Heat Incentive as not been available for all those who want to benefit from the scheme.

The food industry shows similar trends. Dr David Buffin, from the Centre of Food Policy at City University said: “Getting urban communities involved in growing food and understanding what it is to grow food, they’re not going to replace rural agriculture but I think as a social cohesion, it’s a useful process and maybe local businesses can get involved in that, you might call that Big Society, and that’s great.”

However, global targets, government’s and business will continue to have a role to play. Mike Barry, Head of Sustainable Business at Marks and Spencer spoke of a 10 per cent of the society who currently actively work for change, those in Transition networks and other similar groups; but said for the other 90 per cent of society, national and global examples will need to lead the change.

He said: “We are not going to be able to sustain society without dramatically more action on the local level, that’s where we must act…But equally the global system will not disappear either, and we’ve got enormous potential pointing in the right direction to help correct an unsustainable system.

“We all the know the system is unsustainable but we all also know the system must remain.”

 

Images: Royal Geographical Society