Shaping our future climate change report launches

Shaping our future, the report of the joint ministerial and third sector task force on climate change, the environment and sustainable development was launched today.

The report sets out a vision of how government and third sector organisations will work together over the next five years to tackle key environmental issues such as climate change and sustainable development

“This is a milestone, but also a work in progress”, said Huw Irranca-Davies MP, parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. “This launch is about the action we can all take, but we recognise that there is more to be done”, he added.

Questions followed the launch and Ben Hughes, bassac chief executive asked how community organisations could take action around climate change when they face the double squeeze of spending cuts and the scaling up of commissioning.

“We need cultural change”, responded Angela Smith MP, Minister for the Third Sector, “a sense of mission and an embedding of the aims into areas such as commissioning.”

Stuart Etherington, chief executive of NCVO, said that persistence, leading by example and a contextualisation of why this topic is relevant to staff of community organisations and communities, was essential.

It would be a case of finding a way of fitting this agenda into what was already being funded, said Sir Paul Ennals of the National Children's Bureau. But as Stephen Hale, chair of the task force and head of the Green Alliance concluded, it was an engine of necessary change.

Resources

bassac will be providing its members with a summary of the report in the coming weeks. The full report can be found on the Defra website 

Just Act!  The website that supports third sector organisations to help each other create, implement and review their action plans on climate change is currently in its test phase. Go to www.justact.org.uk

The Charity Commission provides resources for trustees to support action on climate change.