Let's talk about Nottingham Climate Assembly. After five years of dedicated work from volunteers, the initiative has launched its crowdfunder campaign this week. LeftLion Environment Editor Adam Pickering, who is part of the push himself, reports on this moment. He also speaks to Councillor Sam Lux, whose motion to support the Climate Assembly has just received the full backing of Nottingham City Council...
This week a bold initiative to put the local community in the driving seat of our city’s response to climate change gained new momentum, as Nottingham Climate Assembly formally launched their fundraising drive.
Having received the unanimous backing of City Councillors last week at Monday 11 November’s full council meeting, the initiative launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the delivery of this necessarily careful and complex project. The Climate Assembly also has the official backing of the cross-sector collaboration Nottingham Green Partnership - which brings together many of the city’s biggest businesses and institutions. Tens of thousands have already been raised from other sources.
A quick admission - I’m actually in that photo in the header. No, I’m not a completely unbiased reporter here (does one exist?), but writing this voluntarily on a stormy Saturday morning as one of the many volunteers supporting Nottingham Climate Assembly for the last five years. But as a citizen journalist and our Environment Editor, I’ll do my best to fairly and honestly communicate it to you without pretending otherwise. You could call it a conflict of interests, but I’d pitch it to you as a coming together of causes…
After all, LeftLion’s Environment section is all about covering the inspiring stuff kicking off around nature and climate in our community, and this, for me, is one of them. We’re about communicating what’s going on out there, to give you a local perspective on our climatically challenged world. Indeed, it’s not the first time we’ve covered Nottingham Climate Assembly in these pages.
Hopefully all this work gives some reason for optimism, which can feel all-too thin on the ground. Climate Denier In-Chief Donald Trump has just won another election in the world’s biggest economy, and another oil-tarnished COP climate conference is drawing disappointingly to a close in petrostate Azerbaijan. Britain’s farmers are not only concerned about inheritance tax, as our state and corporate media often has it; the National Farmers Unions has been warning of the dire and worsening impacts of climate change on food growing (and therefore our food security and cost) for years.
But here, in Nottingham, we plough on in hope.
Nottingham City Council has set one of the most ambitious (and many argue impossible) carbon neutral targets in the world for our city, balancing our direct emissions by 2028. To that effect, we're about to cross the threshold of its targeted 50,000 trees planted since 2019 and, as we’ll hear, the local authority itself is decarbonising rapidly.
At the Nottingham Climate Assembly launch I caught a moment with Councillor Sam Lux, who holds the brief for Carbon Reduction, Leisure and Culture. I asked for her take on the initiative, and Nottingham’s progress towards that goal…
So Sam, why in your view do we need a Nottingham Climate Assembly?
I don’t think we’re going to be able to achieve our citywide climate goals unless citizens are behind them. Our vision needs to be their vision, and that can’t just come from a subset of people, it must be a representative sample. This Citizens’ Assembly will pay people for their time to be a part of the process, to enable everyone to take part regardless of their economic situation. There’ll be what’s called a ‘sortition process’, or what you can think of as a democratic lottery, so people will be invited to join, and then from the people who are keen a representative panel will be put together, like a jury.
Are we on track for achieving Nottingham's Carbon Neutral 2028 goal?
2028 is a very ambitious goal, we always knew that. I would stress that it’s a citywide goal and there’s only so much we as the council can do - we have reduced our emissions by 77% since 2007. So we’re doing pretty well as an organisation, getting our own ducks in a row, in terms of the rest of the city it’s about encouraging the rest of the city to do what we can, but we need support from the UK Government, and we need other organisations to do what they can.
Do you think the council will be able to deliver on the outcomes of the Climate Assembly?
When I tabled the motion to support the Nottingham Climate Assembly it received unanimous support from Councillors, which shows there’s a lot of goodwill behind this initiative. But the Council is in a difficult position financially
We need the legal incentive to decarbonise and the [Government] funding to come with it, so we actually have to do it, that just puts us in a stronger position.
However I would also emphasise that the political landscape has changed, we’ve got a new Labour Mayor, a new Labour Government, who are actually listening and having dialogue with us and that hasn’t happened in a long time. The Government has just brought forward its own net zero target to 81% emissions reductions by 2035. I hope they know that 82% of emissions fall within the scope of influence of local authorities, so if they don’t support us, it’s not going to happen.
I hope there are going to be some radical changes down that line that will facilitate us to be able to deliver on the outcomes of the climate assembly. I’d like to see the Government making emissions reductions a statutory duty for councils, because at the moment it’s only a discretionary decision, so we’re often faced with these choices - do we decarbonise, or save money. We need the legal incentive to decarbonise and the funding to come with it, so we actually have to do it, that just puts us in a stronger position. I think things will move faster if that small but very important change happens.
Thanks to Councillor Lux for those comments…
My personal view, which I suppose at this point you could call the LeftLion Environment Section’s view, is that is that Cllr Lux is saying and working at the right things.
The continued lack of respect, ambition, and funds, for ailing local areas like ours is the reason I and others set up the Resolve Nottingham campaign earlier this year. There are deep seated issues with our capitalist economy (a system wholly of our own design) and we frankly can’t wait any longer for Westminster to get its act together anymore. We’re leading the way, but without real backing or resources from those that represent our splintered and dysfunctional nation it’s a hard slog. We back these calls for a braver, closer partnership.
In the meantime I hope initiatives like our LeftLion reaching carbon neutrality in 2023 and launching this regular environment coverage offer hope, along with my own separate Green Hustle (where I’m a Co-Director). I think we’ve made local action an altogether more accessible and diverse affair with these community insights and storytelling, and by hosting inclusive free festivals and volunteer initiatives that make it easier to get involves.
There are dozens of community gardens, swap shops and zero waste outlets around Notts, and thousands of volunteers - from litter pickers to green space helpers - which shows the strength of feeling and resolve in the community. We’re a city not just of rebels, but climate and community champions, too.
Whether the end has already begun (of the Holocene at least, the serenely stable geological age that has given rise to advanced societies for the last 11,700 years or so), or the beginning of a brave green and pleasant future, we can only do our best.
I believe this initiative is one of the many ways in which we’re trying to lead the way.
Support and donate to the Nottingham Climate Assembly crowdfunding campaign here
Visit Nottingham Climate Assembly’s website to read more and ge
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