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Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. This is a place for us to update you on what we are doing at South Hams District Council and what things are going on around the District. It will tell you what's going on nationally and things you, our residents and businesses, can be doing to reduce your carbon footprint and manage your land to improve the environment and its biodiversity.
If you have anything you would like to include in this newsletter then contact our Climate Change Specialist by email here and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
It’s been a couple of weeks now since the end of Lifestyle Spring Clean Week, a public campaign run in conjunction with Carbon Savvy, North Devon Council and Torridge District Council promoting ways that people can lower their carbon footprint.
Participants could measure their carbon footprint using the Carbon Savvy online calculator to learn about how to reduce it. Doing so would enter them into a prize draw competition, which has now had its winners selected.
Each day had a different theme, with the most popular themes proving to be cycling, food and house insulation – especially when tied into our beautiful local area!
From the Council’s point of view, Lifestyle Spring Clean Week has been successful, with the social media campaign reaching tens of thousands of people and seeing fantastic engagement across the days it was running. You can visit our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages to see the creative content that went out promoting the variety of environmental themes throughout the week.
If you’re feeling inspired and want to discover more actions that raise well-being and save CO2, why not think about taking one of Carbon Savvy’s light and easy courses? They are starting mid-April. Easy Carbon Cutting and Quality of Life the Carbon Savvy Way, both running over three 1.5hr sessions over three weeks, with no homework, and are positive, light and enjoyable.
The footprint and quality of life calculators are available at any time, whether you want to know your footprint for the first time, do it a second time and see your progress, or experiment with possible choices for the year ahead. https://calculator.carbonsavvy.uk/
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Funding and Grant Updates
SHAKE Climate Change - Deadline 3 May 2021
The SHAKE Climate Change programme is designed to attract entrepreneurs or start-ups that have developed early-stage science or tech-based ideas that can have a significant impact on climate change.
The programme is inviting applications from early-stage ventures with exciting, original and viable business ideas in agriculture and food production. The aim is to help new businesses to develop sustainable solutions to climate change caused by agriculture.
The programme has a total financial budget of £3.5 million. Over its lifespan, 15 successful ventures will each receive up to a total of £140,000, provided as a convertible interest-free loan. They will also receive two years’ high-quality training and mentoring from leading experts in business and science, to help further develop their ventures.
Click here to find out more.
Green Recovery Challenge Fund: Round 2 - Deadline 14 April 2021 (£50,000 to £250,000)
The second round of the Green Recovery Challenge Fund will award up to £40 million in grants to environmental charities and their partners across England to create and retain jobs while restoring nature and tackling climate change.
The funding is being delivered by the National Heritage Lottery Fund and is open to environmental charities and partnerships that include at least one environmental charity.
Projects are expected to create or retain jobs and must contribute to at least one of the following themes:
- nature conservation and restoration
- nature-based solutions to tackle climate change such as changes to land use and habitat improvements
- connecting people with nature
The funding can be used for both capital and revenue costs.
Click here to find out more.
South Dartmoor Community Energy Vacancies
SDCE are currently looking for a Director (voluntary) to join their board and also a freelance technical project manager.
Both application deadlines are Friday 16 April.
Click here to find out more.
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Webinar Highlights
Life on the Edge: creating and managing wildlife-friendly verges
This free talk is about the restoration/creation and management of wildlife-friendly verges.
Did you know that there are ‘special verges’ in Devon, awarded this designation by Devon County Council for their floristic value? However, since 2015 Devon County Council have stopped managing roadside verges due to budget cuts, including previously designated 'special verges’, in all places where speed limits are 40mph and below, except for areas where visibility is compromised. Every Town and Parish Council in Devon has the opportunity to take on the responsibility for managing its local road verges from Devon County Council.
The webinars feature national and county road verge specialists, Dr Kate Petty, Plantlife’s Road Verge Campaign Manager, and Leo Gubert, Senior Ecologist at Highways England South West, for an evening of two inspirational talks. They will tell us how they are restoring verges to flower-rich meadows and in Leo’s case creating wildlife corridors along the A38 and other fast road networks. Kate will discuss how Plantlife are inspiring both parish councils and community groups to get involved in restoring verges as a nationally important habitat.
Speakers will be joined by Devon County Council Ecologist Mike Waller who will outline the support that Devon County Council can offer community groups and parish councils, enabling them to transform their local verges.
The webinar event will be held on:
- Wednesday 14 April
- 7 p.m. - 8.30 p.m.
Register to attend here: https://life-on-the-edge.eventbrite.co.uk
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Lost Rainforests of England
This is a project to explore, photograph, map and (with luck) help to restore the lost rainforests of England.
Britain harbours fragments of a globally rare habitat: temperate rainforest. Put more simply, temperate rainforests (also known as Atlantic oakwood) are very damp woodlands – so damp, that plants grow on other plants. These plants are known as ‘epiphytes’. If you want to recognise temperate rainforest in Britain, the key indicator is an abundance of mosses, lichens and polypody ferns festooning the branches and trunks of trees.
Major temperate forests zones in England are in fact right here in the Westcountry, with many already found in and around Dartmoor, Wistmans Wood being a particular well known example. England’s lost rainforests likely extended far beyond the main zones that are already documented, into damp ravines and steep-sided gorges.
With many of us in South Hams exploring more from our doorstep, what better way to spend this time than helping document some of these lost rainforests?
Interested in finding out more? Click here.
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Garden for wildlife - Spring into action
Sir David Attenborough recently told the BBC that
"The truth is that the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries on the planet and the situation is getting worse."
What better way to combat this than to turn your garden into a wildlife haven? the Devon Wildlife Trust has some brilliant material to help you do this, they say that there are an estimated 16 million gardens in the UK and the way these are cared for can make a big difference to wildlife. Large or small, lawn or courtyard, our gardens provide a patchwork of green spaces for wildlife. Even small things such as leaving a small pile of logs in a shady corner, using old sinks and buckets as a pond or saying no to peat compost can all make a difference!
Click here to find a wildlife gardening guide and a meadow leaflet by the Wildlife Trust.
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Just a reminder that in these newsletters, we would like to dedicate this section of the newsletter for local stories and achievements from the Community regarding anything Climate Change and Biodiversity.
If you have anything you would like us to promote then please email us at climatechange@swdevon.gov.uk
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Over at the official blog of the Met Office, they report that the concentration of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere is now reaching 417 parts per million which represents an increase of 50 per cent since the industrial revolution, pre industrial concentrations were 278 parts per million. Without actions to reduce emissions, concentrations are likely to reach 560 parts per mission by 2060.
Prof Richard Betts MBE is Head of Climate Impacts Research at the Met Office, and one of his areas of research is forecasting the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Prof Betts said: “Humans began burning fossil fuels at large scales at the end of the Eighteenth Century, and it took about 200 years for the atmosphere to see a 25 per cent increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, but only another 35 years to reach this year’s sorry milestone of a 50 per cent increase.”
To read more about this, Professor Betts full article can be found by clicking here.
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An analysis by Carbon Brief has shown that the UK's greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 were 51% below 1990 levels. It has taken 30 years to reach this point, with another 30 years to go until the 2050 'net-zero' target.
This fall was due in part to an 11% fall in emissions in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, although emissions are expected to rebound within the next two years as the economy recovers and lockdowns are eased. The report also illustrates that the fall in emission between 1990 and 2019 had been due to major changes in three areas:
- Electricity supplies that no longer rely on coal (in round numbers, about 40%)
- Cleaner industry (40%), including manufacturing and waste industry emissions controls on landfill methane, halocarbons and nitrous oxide (25%), as well as more efficient industrial processes and a structural shift away from carbon-intensive manufacturing (15%)
- A smaller and cleaner fossil fuel supply industry, with lower methane emissions from coal mines and leaky gas distribution pipes (10%)
To read the report in full, click here.
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