Speech by Joan Ruddock MP to the ‘Sustainable cities, delivering success’ Core Cities Summit, Nottingham - 8 November 2007
It’s great to be here in Nottingham today. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak.
Tackling climate change, ensuring a healthier and more secure environment, making sure our planet has a future is obviously a goal and vision I’m sure we all share.
This is one of the greatest challenges we face. I do think we can rise to meet it, but certainly there’s a battle ahead of us – both at home and abroad.
Last year, Sir Nicholas Stern issued a profound warning. For many people around the world climate change will affect the very essence of life itself. Access to water. Access to food. The chance to live healthy lives, free from disease.
The World Health Organisation has estimated that over 50,000 deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2000 were due to climate change. Deaths due to diarrhoea, flood injury, malaria and malnutrition.
Closer to home, we’re already seeing impacts on our native species, some of which are showing signs of moving northwards and moving upwards in response to increasing average temperatures.
It shows what we’re up against, and just how much we have to do.
Climate change of course is a global problem, and a global response is needed. Which is why the Government is continuing to work hard through the EU, G8 and of course UN.
But our ability to drive global action on climate change is highly dependent on our domestic agenda.
Over the last decade, we have made a lot of progress.
UK greenhouse gas emissions are 19 per cent lower than they were in 1990, 1.4 million households have been helped to improve their energy efficiency since the year 2000, and household recycling and composting has quadrupled in a decade.
But there is much, much more we need to do and do together.
Last week we published details of a strengthened, more effective and more transparent Bill to help tackle climate change.
The Bill will help set the UK on course to be a low carbon economy. It will make us the first country to legislate a long-term legal framework for reducing carbon emissions.
But to deliver the ambitions set out in the Bill, Government, local authorities and communities must work together as never before. We need to challenge ourselves to build on what’s already been achieved.
That is why I am delighted that Government and the core cities have worked together to develop this joint declaration that we will sign today to tackle climate change.
This demonstrates a shared commitment to delivering a low carbon economy in our cities and sets out how we will develop the kind of leadership and innovation that is needed to meet the challenges posed.
My experience is that Government doesn’t achieve very much on its own.
Our role is to ensure that you have the powers you need to bring about the level of change that we all require.
The challenge for you is to use those powers to drive behavioural change and reduce CO2 emissions in your neighbourhoods.
We need to set a clear framework to give all authorities and local partnerships the impetus to raise their game and build on the success we have seen in areas such as Nottingham.
The Carbon Club, launched earlier this year, has been targeting the largest employers. By combining forces with key players, like Experian, Nottingham is showing how authorities can provide the lead locally.
The Government is also playing its part. We recently announced that for the first time the new local government performance framework will measure local authority progress on tackling climate change and enhancing biodiversity. This sends a clear message to all authorities that we expect them to focus on their role as service providers, community leaders and managers of buildings, land and transport.
Work to conserve and enhance biodiversity should be a crucial part of any adaptation programme and local authorities will have an important role there too.
The key to this is the notion of ‘resilient’ landscapes. If species are set to migrate to more suitable locations, properly managed open spaces - from wider land holdings at the urban fringe to pocket parks and linear corridors within towns and cities - can do much to let wildlife move if it needs to.
The existing network of wildlife sites can do much to help provide a mosaic of resilience.
The 100 million tonnes of waste we generate each year is also a central part of our climate change problem. It has a considerable carbon footprint in terms of the energy and raw materials to produce and transport it, the landfill space it takes up and the methane, a powerful green house gas, it emits. It is imperative that we do more … now … to reduce waste, re-use it, recycle it and recover energy from it. These are the fundamental principles of the Government’s waste strategy for England which was published this summer.
As part of the Waste Strategy, the challenge for us all across the country is to decouple waste growth from economic growth, I am delighted that Boots has tried to do that, and put more emphasis on waste prevention and re-use. As part of this process, we’ve set a 50% target for recycling and composting household waste for 2020. We will launch a zero waste places initiative soon to develop innovative and exemplary waste practice.
Figures released on Tuesday show that we’re already moving in the right direction, with rates of recycling of municipal waste rising to 31% from 27.1% just a year ago and the amount of waste not being re-used, recycling or composted by householders falling by 4.2% to 17.9 million tonnes.
Now we need you, your cities, your partnerships and your wider communities, to set and achieve ambitious environmental targets in the next round of Local Area Agreements.
No matter how successful we are in reducing the green house gas emissions that cause climate change, a certain amount of change is inevitable due to the enormous rise in global emissions since the industrial revolution.
A consultation last year showed that we need to provide direction and leadership on adaptation. The climate change Bill will do this by setting out provisions for a strong and sustainable framework. It will require us to assess the risks climate change poses to the UK and then set out how we’re going to tackle those risks.
We’ve already seen the potential damage that climate change may cause.
This June was the wettest on record. More than 150mm of rain fell over most of the Midlands and northern England, with up to 300mm in parts of the North East.
The Secretary of State, who I apologise, cannot be here today, spent much of his summer seeing at first hand the devastation caused to businesses and schools and people’s homes. Some terrible stories were told. And at the same time of course, he also saw the brilliant response of local communities of local government and of the emergency services.
But we don’t want to be in the position of having to respond to these constant emergencies, but we fear we will be, which is why we have to adapt.
So I’m very pleased that annual Government spending on flood and coastal erosion risk management will rise to a minimum of £650m in 2008/09, and £700m in 2009/10, reaching £800m by 2010/11. The money will help to make our communities more resilient and protect our countryside.
Climate change is an issue that has the potential to make local politics more relevant to people's lives. Research suggests individuals look to central Government for leadership on this issue, but that people are often more receptive to messages from trusted local and community sources.
More than 80% of individuals are concerned about climate change, and I believe that by tackling the problem together, communities can gain a greater sense of ownership and cohesion. This should be a campaigning issue in every local authority.
There are clear examples of how citizens can be reached and engaged. Supported by an award of £400,000 from Defra’s Climate Challenge Fund, Carbon Neutral North East has developed a “Climate Dome”. This unique project is touring the country and aims to make the subject of climate change simple, local, relevant and immediate. It uses exhibits, interactive devices and events to connect with the public, showing them how to save money and cut carbon emissions at the same time.
In addition to the Climate Challenge Fund, which has granted £8.5m to projects like the Climate Dome, we have developed a range of information resources to help any organisation encourage action on climate change.
In June, as a start to what I hope will make Defra a campaigning department; we launched a public trial version of our Act on CO2 Calculator. This has had nearly half a million visitors so far. But perhaps even more importantly, the calculator has been developed in such a way that allows other organisations to use it. Herefordshire County Council has already taken it on board and developed their own version, and I’m delighted to say that Google launched their own version last week.
Cities have a huge impact on our carbon emissions. But proactive cities have demonstrated that where they use their influence imaginatively they can have a very significant effect on reducing city-wide CO2 levels.
For example, Birmingham has invested in the Summerfield ‘Eco-Neighbourhood’ partnership which plans to target 2000 properties. To date it has installed 250 solar thermal units and 87 domestic wind turbines.
And Sheffield now has a state of the art facility for recovering energy from the city’s waste. This serves over 130 buildings in the city centre and saves over 15, 000t CO2 a year – generating 60MW of thermal energy and 19MW of electrical energy. It has helped the council become one of the best performers in reducing waste to landfill.
These are great examples and we are going to support the core cities to lead the way. I am delighted to announce today that we are providing £250,000 to pilot a new approach towards carbon management at a city level across the core cities. My department has worked closely with the Department for Communities and Local Government to design a programme which will help core cities develop new opportunities to reduce carbon emissions and share their experience.
Manchester, Leeds and Bristol have been selected to work with the Energy Saving Trust and Carbon Trust to develop city wide action plans. The Low Carbon Cities Programme will support this approach by providing inspiration and guidance to help each city through the process.
The programme will also audit the current performance in each city and capture the learning of the 3 participants by producing a city-wide CO2 baseline tool and toolkit which will benefit all cities and towns.
This project complements a new programme from the UK Business Council for Sustainable Energy which I am also pleased to announce today.
‘Sustainable UK cities: the energy challenge’ is an initiative from the UK Business Council, working with Shell and RWE npower, to assist UK cities in taking practical measures to tackle climate change.
This project will focus on the UK's major cities to develop a network of good practice in deploying technology and exploring emerging sustainable energy opportunities.
The Council will deliver a targeted regional programme in key UK cities to stimulate high level support for action on sustainable energy and to build networks with the energy sector. The Council will also deliver a series of events to investigate how policy can be improved to enable the growth of new low-carbon technologies.
I am really, really confident. We have a huge challenge, but we have huge opportunities and huge talent in this room today. Together central and local government and our partners in the voluntary and private sectors can deliver the action needed.
This is a great opportunity for our cities and I’m sure you can rise to the challenge and lead the way.
Page published:
9 November 2007