Take action!
Last night I was lucky enough to attend the Ashden Awards. The evening celebrated the achievements of the shortlisted entrants and generated much inspiration (congratulations to one of our Big Green Challengers - Global Action Plan, who won the UK community project category). The finalist businesses, local authorities, schools and community projects from the UK, Africa, South America, India and China all demonstrated incredible passion and commitment to persisting in their efforts to move the world towards a low-carbon future. Passion and dogged persistence were two of the crucial traits Nobel Prize winner Wangari Muta Maathai spoke of as being required to make the kind of ambitious projects seen in both the Ashden Awards and the Big Green Challenge work. She also spoke about the small things everyone can do, and urged everyone to take action everyday. This sense of urgency was also stressed by Sir David King, who painted a powerful and uncomfortable picture of what rising temperatures and sea levels might feel like. He also called for a more consistent and prolific approach to sustainability - urging politicians and businesses in particular to commit to building a sustainable future across all their activities. I left the Awards with renewed concern about the scale and urgency of the issues we are facing to a greater degree (if you’ll excuse the pun) every day. I also left with a feeling of hope, inspired by the finalists. I feel this sense of hope too as I read through the detailed plans from our Big Green Challengers. There are people, out there with the foresight, ideas, passion and persistence to make change happen. Now that these people and their ideas are being found and slowly recognised, governments, businesses and communities need to work together to understand how these ideas can be scaled - quickly and effectively.
Congratulations to all the Big Green Challengers who submitted detailed plans on Monday. All the groups have worked incredibly hard over the last month or so, getting to grips with honing their ideas, clarifying their aims, and mapping the people, skills, timescales and finances needed to make their projects successful. This is a very exicting moment for the Big Green Challenge team. We’ve really enjoyed meeting the Big Green Challengers at our support events over the past month, and can’t wait to get to grips with their ideas in more detail - both for the judging process and also so we can work with these groups to can better understand the potential impact these new forms of community led action.
Low Carbon Communities
The Low Carbon Communities Network, which several of our Big Green Challengers are members of, are hosting a free Low Carbon Communities conference on 4th October 2008 in Llangollen. Prior to the event you can follow developments on the lowcarbondiary on twitter and contribute to the website or the blog.
Sharing resources
We’ve updated the links page on this website as a resources page. Use it to find information to help you with your climate change action projects , whether or not you are a Big Green Challenger in our competition.
Please also share your tips for good resources. What are the best sites for up-to-date information on commuity action, energy saving, community engery generation, sustainable communities, finding funding or investment, learning about how to monitor the impact of your work… any resources relevant to making the most of community-led action on climate change.
Comment on this blog to tell us about the websites, tools and reports that you find most useful.
Today we can announce that we have invited 100 competitors through to the next stage of the Big Green Challenge. We’ve chosen the groups with the most innovative ideas and who we think really stand a chance of reducing CO2 emissions in their communities.
Picking the groups wasn’t easy, and we hope those who aren’t going through to the next stage keep working on their ideas and taking action. Climate change presents us with some big problems. It also presents us with an opportunity to think differently about the ways we organise our lives. If the enthusiasm, commitment and creativity shown by all the Big Green Challenge groups across the UK is anything to go by, we really have a chance of using this opportunity to create postitive change.
Looking through our list of competitors, I hope you’ll find an idea you can be inspired by, or a group to support. All the entrants have the potential to make an important impact on tackling climate change, and anyone supporting the Big Green Challenge will contribute to the success of the projects.
