Our Trust has called for more ambitious policies to prepare society for climate change and to protect our country’s much-loved heritage, landscapes and communities.
Across the countryside, cities, towns, villages and coastline, communities are experiencing the devastating impacts of climate change and nature loss. During the last storm season, 10 storms battered our nation, with Storms Babet and Ciarán damaging multiple Trust sites. Indeed, a Trust report, A Climate for Change, demonstrates our proud record of leading the charge in terms of climate adaptation, but the other crucial side of the coin is climate change mitigation.
As global temperatures continue to break records, we call on the Trust to lend our support to efforts that will reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions – which are as important as adapting to our changing climate – by backing the Climate and Nature Bill.
Without efforts to reduce emissions at source, we cannot, as a Trust, state that we are fulfilling our duties to both protect our historic landscapes from future harm, and properly care for the Trust’s beautiful, nature-rich sites.
As the Director-General said, ‘without action to restore nature to help us adapt to climate change now, future Governments will have to grapple with the escalating consequences of plummeting food production to property damage from increased flooding’. Our Director-General is right: we need to be resilient and adaptable, but we must also tackle the root causes of the intertwined climate and nature crises.
We have a responsibility, as a Trust, to do all we can to advocate for long-term, science-led laws that will reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions and reverse the destruction of nature – as well as, and alongside – the Trust’s commendable efforts to help the UK adapt to our changing climate and the knock-on damage that global warming is causing to Trust sites and the wider natural world.
The current, unambitious and insufficient path that the UK is currently on does not rise to the challenges we face. We therefore call on the Trust to lend its full support to the cross-party, UK-wide campaign for the Climate and Nature Bill; a Private Members’ Bill that has been supported by over 180 MPs and Peers from all main parties, and which requires the Government to deliver a joined-up plan that would:
reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, and
halt and reverse the destruction of nature by 2030.
We call on the Trust to join, support and amplify the nationwide campaign for the bold, science-led plan offered by the Climate and Nature Bill. The Director-General was correct to say that ‘we need to accelerate efforts to tackle the nature and climate crisis. ...we can no longer fiddle around the edges.... It’s not too late to act. But we need to do it now.’
A vote for this resolution is a vote to act now.
Resolution proposed by:
Dr Jamie Russell, Dougald Purce, Colin Coghill, Chris Dearlove and Louise Russell.