Wirral Council and Climate Action Scorecards

Climate Emergency UK assessed all UK councils on the actions they've taken towards net zero. The Council Climate Action Scorecard assessment consists of 91 questions or fewer, depending on council type, across 7 different sections, created in consultation with over 90 organisations and individuals. Each council was marked against these criteria and given a right to reply before the scores underwent a final audit. This work was completed between January and August 2023.

The good news is that Wirral Council is slightly above the average for single-tier councils - though at a Total Score of 42% well below the top scorers, who are London boroughs at 55-60%.

See the full Climate Action Scorecard results for Wirral Council here:
https://councilclimatescorecards.uk/councils/wirral-council/

A summary of Wirral Council's Climate Action Scorecard results

Wirral Council scored particularly well on Biodiversity and Planning and Land Use. They have a score of 69% for Biodiversity (compared to an average of 27%) and 55% for Planning and Land Use (compared to an average of 35%). The lobbying that Wirral Wildlife and other voluntary groups have done over the last 50 years is having an effect.

A Waste Reduction and Food score of 34% and a Transport score of 20% are low results. However everyone can play a part by thinking about everyday actions.

To reduce waste remember the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We must try and use fewer resources, mend whatever we can, share our good but unwanted items and recycle anything that has got to the end of its life.

For tips on how to mend, recycle, reuse and upcycle see https://www.cheshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/actions/recycle-and-reuse

Wirral Repair Café can help with repairing items such as clothing and electrical appliances. On the first Sunday of each month they can be found at Wirral Deen Centre, 371-375 Borough Road, Birkenhead, CH42 0HA. Email: wirralrepaircafe@gmail.com

Wirral Repair Café is one of an international network of repair cafes where volunteers try to fix items, brought in by members of the public, that would otherwise be thrown away because they’ve stopped working or (in the case of clothing, can no longer be worn). The goal is to reduce landfill waste, encourage people to carry out their own repairs and save them money in the process.

They do not take business away from professional repairers and will refer the visitor to a professional if it’s appropriate. However, people are often aware that the cost of repair could be more than that of replacement, or that the value of the item is too little to justify the repair cost. Their motto is ‘Bin it? No way’

• Get advice and learn repair skills
• Examples of types of repair: electrical appliances, computer software, bicycles, clothing and textiles, upholstery, toys, costume jewellery, wooden items, musical instruments
• Soldering and sharpening services available
• Free repairs, but donations are welcome

To influence the Food score we can be careful what we eat, reduce food waste and shop and eat to reduce the climate impact of food. Planning meals in advance and using all of the food we buy will reduce waste. We can eat less meat, choose local and seasonal produce or even grow our own vegetables and fruit. If there is anything left over then home composting could be another thing to try – don’t send your waste to landfill.

For composting advice see
https://www.cheshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/actions/how-compost-your-waste

What about the transport score? If we travel less, walk when we can, cycle or use public transport we can cut our carbon footprint. Of course, the public transport and active travel infrastructure needs to be there and that is something you could lobby about.

Wirral Council has a Climate Action Hub

Wirral has a target to be carbon neutral by 2041. This means that the amount of carbon that we produce compared to what we take out of the atmosphere is balanced. Learn more at the Climate Action Hub:
https://haveyoursay.wirral.gov.uk/hub-page/climate-action-wirral

Public and personal action together will help us reach these targets for a more sustainable future on Wirral.

Take part in the Cool Wirral Climate Action Challenge

Nature's Solutions To The Climate Emergency

Cheshire Wildlife Trust's February newsletter is about the need to protect nature and wild ecosystems in order to tackle the climate crisis.

The climate crisis regularly makes the headlines, and rightly so. But there’s another crisis - the massive ongoing loss of nature.

In the UK, 41% of our species have declined since 1970 and one in seven species are now threatened with extinction. The climate emergency has terrible ramifications for wildlife, but the loss of wildlife and wild places also makes the climate crisis worse.

Healthy wild places can store huge amounts of carbon, taking it out of the atmosphere and locking it away in soils and plant matter, sometimes for thousands of years. But many of these wild places are damaged, fragmented and threatened with further destruction. As these habitats are lost, carbon is released.

To tackle the climate emergency, we need to protect and restore our wild places.

A recent estimate suggests that around one third of the greenhouse gas reduction required between now and 2030 can be provided by carbon drawdown through Natural Climate Solutions. Natural Climate Solutions, roughly speaking, mean ecological restoration. Let’s take a look as some of them:

Green carbon

• Tree planting

When you think about natural solutions to climate change, tree planting is probably the first thing that springs to mind. Trees absorb carbon as they grow, storing it in their trunks, boughs, roots and in the soil, so allowing woodlands to grow naturally will lock up carbon and help counter our manmade carbon emissions. But trees can only be part of the solution; alone they are not enough. Nature has an arsenal of other, powerful natural climate solutions that currently receive much less attention.

• Peatlands

Peatland is a type of wetland, made up of soil formed from slowly decomposing plants. Peatlands cover just 3% of the earth’s surface but store more carbon than any other habitat on land, with the UK’s peatlands alone containing 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon. Healthy peatlands also play a role in reducing flooding and improving water quality, as well as providing a home for some wonderful wildlife, like the dazzlingly plumaged golden plover.

But damaged peatlands are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Peatland has to be wet to be healthy, and much of our peatland has been drained. At least 80% of the UK’s peatlands are damaged and may be releasing up to 23 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – that’s more than is absorbed by all our woodlands. Fixing them must be a first step.

• Grasslands

The same is true for many other habitats: when healthy, they’re excellent carbon stores, but when damaged they release carbon. Grasslands soak up and store carbon in their roots and the soil but, between 1990 and 2006, an estimated 14 million tonnes of carbon dioxide were released by grasslands being put to the plough.

Blue carbon

Blue carbon is carbon that’s stored in our seas.

• Oceans

Our oceans lock up even more carbon than the habitats on land, absorbing an estimated 20-35% of manmade carbon dioxide every year. We call this blue carbon, and it can be stored in plants, sediments and even the bodies of animals.

• Saltmarshes

Saltmarshes are superstars of the carbon storage world, absorbing carbon at a faster rate than either peatlands or woodlands. These coastal habitats also act as a buffer against erosion and as important breeding and feeding grounds for a host of birds and other animals.

• Seagrass meadows

Seagrass meadows are almost as impressive, responsible for 10% of the ocean’s total burial of carbon, despite covering less than 0.2% of the ocean floor.

• Marine life

Carbon is also stored through the actions of marine life, from tiny phytoplankton that absorb carbon as they grow, to huge whales that carry carbon down to the seafloor when they die.

But our blue carbon solutions are threatened. In the UK, we’ve lost nearly 50% of our seagrass beds in the past 35 years, and we’re losing around 100 hectares of saltmarsh each year to development and rising sea levels. As these habitats are damaged, carbon is released, making the problem worse. Our seas are not as healthy as they should be, but even in their current state they take up huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Imagine how much more they could hold if we restored them, bringing back more seagrass meadows, coastal marshes and the wildlife they support.

Restoring the natural solutions

Clearly natural solutions have a big part to play in tackling the climate crisis, so restoring these damaged habitats and ecosystems must be a priority. The Wildlife Trusts are playing a leading role in making this happen, with projects around the UK improving, expanding and protecting the wild places that are key for capturing carbon.

Through our work for wildlife, Cheshire Wildlife Trust is restoring and protecting places that store carbon on land and sea. We’re planting thousands of trees and hedgerows, rewetting peatlands and sowing acres of wildflowers meadows each year and every year.

Did you know that our Holcroft Moss Nature Reserve is the only peatland site in Cheshire never to have been cut for peat?

As well as managing our own sites, we also respond to consultations and planning applications that would threaten these important carbon stores on land and at sea.

Working together

As one of 46 Wildlife Trusts across the UK, Cheshire Wildlife Trust are championing a Nature Recovery Network nationally – a coordinated, effective plan to restore and connect habitats across the whole of the country. Essentially, we need to work together for more wild places that are healthier and better connected. This broad, connected approach is vital to reversing the loss of our nature. With 66% of carbon in nature-rich areas lying outside of our protected sites, we need to look at the bigger picture to help combat the climate crisis.

Nature has solutions – and we’re in desperate need of them all. By working together, we can buid and speed up nature’s natural solutions. It is essential we restore these damaged systems. Thank you for helping us to create a wilder future.

Earth Hour

In case you haven't seen this email from Cheshire Wildlife Trust, here is their update about Earth Hour and the work being done to reduce the impact of climate change.

Whilst we at Cheshire Wildlife Trust spend a lot of our time working locally in Cheshire, much of our work does play a role in protecting the natural world on a larger scale. Whether it’s managing habitats of international importance or conserving our precious pockets of wildlife in Cheshire, we're working together to protect the environment.

With #EarthHourUK on Saturday 24th March at 8:30pm, we wanted to highlight some of the ways our work helps reduce the impact of climate change.

Mosslands

FACT: Peatland environments are the UK’s largest store of carbon. The carbon stored in UK peatlands is equivalent to 3 years of total UK carbon emissions!

In Delamere, we're helping to restore peatland which stores carbon from the atmosphere.

We’ve worked on 55 different sites across Delamere to restore peatland habitat through re-wetting. We’ve also surveyed new sites that need protection in the future.

Tree planting

We’re planting 1,000 trees in the Swettenham Valley to ensure woodland cover, capturing carbon in the area for centuries to come.

Reduce flooding

We’re working hard to hold more water upstream in the Peak District to prevent flooding downstream in Cheshire.

Pressures from climate change mean that floods have begun to occur more often and when they do occur, result in expensive damage.

As part of our five year Slowing the Flow project, we’re introducing flood prevention measures such as leaky dams to prevent flooding downstream during future storm events.

Minimise machinery

We’re working with local communities to teach traditional land management techniques as an alternative to machinery. In small, isolated meadows across Stockport the grass is scythed each summer, using no mowers or fuel.

Low food miles

As well as having our own allotment at our headquarters, we’re helping local Friends of Groups to manage Community Orchards, producing food locally and organically.

Working together

We're working with private landowners in the wider landscape, to create a landscape that is more permeable for wildlife to move through. This is necessary not just to protect populations, but also to enable species to extend their ranges in response to our changing climate. The combined effort of Wildlife Trusts nationally to create Living Landscapes is helping wildlife move around the British countryside.

What are you doing?

Is there something you’re doing to act against climate change? Perhaps you’re switching your lights off for just an hour at 8:30pm on Saturday, joining the likes of Buckingham Palace and Edinburgh Castle. No matter how big or small the action, do let us know what you're doing on Facebook, Twitter or email.

‘The Consequences of Climate Change at the Coast’

Transition Town West Kirby have organised a talk. 

3rd March at 7pm

‘The Consequences of Climate Change at the Coast’

A talk by Dr Jenny Brown, National Oceanography Centre.

Learning from past and present storms and using projections of climate change and rising sea levels to assess future risks  and inform future sea defence needs.

West Kirby Arts Centre, 29 Brookfield Gardens. Car parking at West Kirby Concourse (5 minutes walk).

Admission free but donations to TTWK welcome.

UN Climate Meeting

A vital United Nations climate meeting starts in Paris on 30 November, lasting 2 weeks. Climate change is already happening, at present affecting mostly the poorer parts of the world, but even we can see that our weather has changed compared to 50 years ago: milder winters, even more changeable weather, rising sea levels measured at Liverpool Docks.

 

Many scientists and analysts agree that unless that warming is kept below 2C, there will be grave consequences for people and all other life. To do that we have to change the way we live, to generate less climate-warming gases. For instance, we need to leave at least three-quarters of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and generate our energy other ways. We probably have only a window of 10-20 years to take appropriate action, before it will be too late to stop major climate change over 2C. All countries need to take action, but the richer countries (including the UK) have made most of the pollution and should take the lead in cleaning up.

 

Our current government should show the way in promising deep cuts to carbon emissions. However, in the last few months since the election they have weakened or abandoned several policies that would help reduce UK carbon emissions. 10 organisations, ranging from The Wildlife Trusts national office through RSPB, National Trust, CPRE to Friends of the Earth, recently wrote to the Prime Minister to express their concern. Most of the changes were not in the Conservative manifesto, and include:

 

* withdrawing support for solar PV and wind energy generation,

 

* cancellation of the requirement for new homes to be built to zero-carbon standards, a mere 6 months before it was due to start, and after a decade of careful planning by responsible builders.

 

* changes to car tax so that high-polluting vehicles will pay the same as the most efficient ones after the first year.

 

* drilling for shale gas to be allowed in areas used for drinking water and the most wildlife-rich areas of the country, like the Dee Estuary.

 

* partially lifting the ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, despite mounting evidence of their harm to pollinating insects especially bees.

 

* stopping the "Green Deal" programme to help people insulate their homes. This had problems and was not being effective, but nothing has been put in its place.

 

Please write to the Prime Minister (10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AA) and contact your MP to urge the government to go to the UN climate meeting prepared to commit to large and urgent cuts in UK greenhouse gas emissions. Also to take action to help our environment in general, rather than harm it.

 

Hilary Ash

 

Climate Change

You may have heard publicity about the recent report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and unfortunate comments by some politicians which showed they had not understood the science. To those of us who have followed this for debate for 30 years, there was little new, just even greater certainty. Below is a brief summary, for more details go to the IPCC's website, or look at a somewhat more digestible version e.g. from Stop Climate Chaos, The Carbon Brief,  Friends Of The Earth or the BBC video "The IPCC in 90 seconds".

Global climate change is certainly happening: anyone over 40 who has spent much time outside will know that our weather has changed, and climate is just weather summed up over 30+ years and large areas. Land surface temperatures have risen 0.85oC since 1880, and the first decade of the 21st century is the warmest since modern records began in 1850. This is not a steady trend - nothing to do with the natural world ever is - and warming has been slower between 1998 and 2012 than in surrounding decades, but this has much to do with choosing end-dates - 1998 was a very hot year globally because of an El Nino event and is also affected by short-term fluctuations in solar radiation and volcanic ash levels in the atmosphere. There is 95% confidence among climate scientists that human activity is contributing more than half of the observed rise. No natural scientist ever admits to above 95% confidence in anything - that is just the way science works!

Other signs of climate change are proceeding apace. The oceans are absorbing human-produced carbon dioxide, which is making them more acidic, with bad consequences for shelled animals (limpets, barnacles etc) as calcium carbonate dissolves more readily in acidic water. The oceans are also expanding as the water warms, and the volume of ice is decreasing markedly in Antarctica, Greenland, the Arctic and most glaciers. So sea level is rising: over the decades 1993-2012 by 3 mm a year globally (and about the same in Liverpool Bay). This does not sound much until you think of it in decades, and realise that sea level rise is likely to speed up markedly, with predictions anywhere between 26 cm and 82 cm by 2100. Think of the effect of that on low-lying coasts and you see why Wirral Borough Council is planning to spend significant money on sea defences in the next 20 years.

A warmer climate means more energy in the atmospheric system, so more extreme weather events - increased frequency and intensity of droughts, storms, floods, and the occasional cold winter. This is already showing a pattern in tropical and sub-tropical countries. We in Britain are at present having it easy - but if changes in sea temperatures lead to the North Atlantic Drift sea current slowing or stopping (as it at some point probably will), then we will get significantly colder! Global warming does not mean we all warm up.

So what do we do? Individually, continue to reduce energy use, insulate your house, reduce travel, eat local food, reduce waste, reduce water use (it takes a lot of energy to process), and put some of the money saved into supporting appropriate renewable and low-carbon energy schemes e.g. solar panels on your roof. But a lot has to be done by governments, so we need to lobby our politicians at every opportunity. We cannot now avoid a 1oC rise in temperatures above pre-industrial levels. We can avoid a rise that would be catastrophic for people and wildlife, but only if we seriously cut our carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxide emissions, leaving at least two-thirds of the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. The IPCC gives for the first time a "carbon budget"  - the figures are difficult to comprehend but, simply put, people can only afford to emit in total 800 billion tonne of Carbon, and we have already emitted 500 million. It is a challenge, but possible - see the Centre For Alternative Technology for their "Zero-carbon Britain" analysis.

So do what you can yourself, encourage any organisation you are involved in, like churches, to do their bit - and nag our politicians to get their heads out of the sand and act.

Hilary Ash