CLIMATE UK E-NEWS February 2016
 
Welcome to our first e-newsletter of 2016 . Climate UK is the national network of organisations and individuals that support local action on climate change (mainly adaptation and resilience) and a not-for-profit Community Interest Company incorporated in 2011. We help people get prepared for the kind of extreme weather that has battered Britain since last December.

We've started consolidating our local and project contacts into one national mailing list which is why you may be receiving this e-news for the first time. This is replacing the former newsletters from Climate Change North West, Climate East Midlands, Climate South East, Climate South West and Your Climate. Those partnerships are no longer operating as separate entities - thank you to all of you who have supported them over many years. Details of all the recent changes can be found on our Network page.
We're now a smaller and leaner entity and are changing the way we work in order to maintain a high quality service. We'll still be supporting local action, networking and collaboration across the UK but in a new way. We're launching a series of new paid-for climate services and inviting our stakeholders to sponsor, support and donate to our work. We hope you'll stick with us, grow the network and help build the climate resilience of the UK, one person, one organisation and one community at a time. 
River Lune in Lancaster, 5/12/2015 ©  Ailsa Gibson

You can unsubscribe at any time (see link at the bottom), but we hope you'll stay connected.

Best wishes

Ailsa, Al, Carol, Dan, Jodie, Jon, Kristen, Mike & Nathalie

E: info@climateuk.net     T: 0203 637 5695     W: climateuk.net     Tw: @ClimateUK
POSTCARDS: CLIMATE JUST ON THE ROAD
Postcards from the recently completed Climate Just training and develoment programme that took in Bristol, Plymouth 
(lighthouse on the Hoe at night), Manchester (participants deep in concentration), Nottingham, Birmingham (Old Joe clocktower at the uni), Leeds (Jonathan and Jon outside Leeds Beckett University) and London (Mike outside Kings College with some notable alumni). 

Almost 200 people have learnt about climate disadvantage and been trained in the use of the Climate Just website and map tool to identify hotspots, work out who's vulnerable and what action can be taken.  Climate UK continues to manage the site on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (who recently published an evidence review of community resilience to climate change) and has just added a new case study from Liverpool to the resources.

Climate Just has had over 16,000 unique visitors in the year since launch in February 2015 and we're about to start reviewing and updating content and considering further developments. We'd welcome your views on how useful it is, how easy (or not) it is to use and what you've been able to do with it so far via this short user survey.

Thanks to all those who participated, to the Environment Agency's Climate Ready service for supporting, Jonathan Gibson for co-presenting and those who helped organise and promote, particularly our hosts at the universities of Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester Met, Leeds Beckett, Kings College London and Plymouth Council House. 

MEET OUR NEW CLIMATE SERVICES FOR 2016
CAN WE HELP?

Climate UK is developing a new range of paid-for climate services for our key customers. This is also designed to  generate new sources of income in order to continue our work in the public interest. 

Please visit the following links and get in touch if you're interested.

Climate UK helps demonstrate impact by converting academic research into language, guidance and tools that can be used by local practitioners. We've just trained people in public health, housing, planning, social care and environment in a tool that uses material developed by the University of Manchester.

Climate UK works with a number of professional institutions and membership bodies to help engage and inform their members, and also use their expertise to inform others. We facilitated a national debate with the Institution of Highways and Transportation and the Institution of Civil Engineers.


Climate UK can help build your business resilience to increasingly frequent severe weather impacts, either individually, or with your neighbouring businesses, or with your supply chain. Thousands of companies have used our tools and hundreds have participated in Business Resilience workshops . 

CLASP is Climate UK's public sector climate support service (>1,000 professionals). New for 2016 we are offering corporate membership opportunities to companies who wish to supply climate-related goods and services to local government, housing associations, NHS, universities and the emergency services.

Climate UK provides guidance to LEPs and independent reviews of LEP strategies to help assess how well local economies are being future climate proofed. We're hosting an event on 8 March in Birmingham for LEPs to learn from good practice in the low carbon economy and economic resilience.

NEWS FROM AROUND THE UK
FIT for the FUTURE?
Sustainability West Midlands (in association with Climate UK) has published an independent review of climate change good practice by Local Enterprise Partnerships in England. The review considered how LEPs' public commitments would help protect local economies from the future climate, reduce emissions and support the low carbon economy.
Health & Care SHARE
Climate UK and Durham University hosted an event on 16 January in London in association with Catherine Max to share different experiences of resilient health and social care. Case studies included examples from  Staffordshire, Yorkshire and Essex  and participants helped review Durham University's BIOPICCC Toolkit. Read more
Communities CONFER
No fewer than 16 speakers* contributed to an excellent Climate Resilient Communities conference in Birmingham on 28 Jan, organised by Sustainability West Midlands. A wide range of insights and perspectives were shared and a new Community Resilience Network launched for the West Midlands. 
WET in the North West
Businesses from across Greater Manchester came together at one of Climate UK's regular
Building Business Resilience workshops in January at Trafford Ecology Park and each received a bespoke resilience action plan. A further workshop for businesses affected by the recent floods is taking place on 26 February in Lancaster.  Read more
Selsey STEPS UP
The West Sussex seaside town of Selsey is to host a sea defence conference in April as a result of its participation in the international Metropole Project. Coastal communities in the UK, US and Brazil came together to consider coastal communities' resilience to flooding as a result of climate change.  Read more
SeaFOOD FOR THOUGHT
A new report co-produced by our colleagues at the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership   (based in Lowestoft) details climate impacts on the UK's seafood industry (changes to catch, regional shifts in species, and impacts on onshore and offshore operations) and proposed adaptation responses. 
We're IMPROVING access
One of the downsides to being a network is that knowledge and experience ends up in many different places in published form. We are now in the process of consoidating some of our materials into a single Resource library to make them easier to find, starting with a set of Business Resilience case studies coming soon - another small improvement we think you'll like.
REPORTING Power
Climate UK organised an Adaptation Infrastructure Forum in Wakefield on 27 Jan to hear from Northern Powergrid about their work. Theirs and other Adaptation Reporting Power 2nd round reports are published on Defra's website. The Adaptation Sub Committee also provided an update on their work and the next Climate Change Risk Assessment in 2017. View slides from both
Scotland's LOSSES MOUNT
Accounting giant PwC describes the damage from the winter's storms (particularly Desmond, Eva and Frank to the  North of Scotland, Perthshire and Dumfries & Galloway ) as the worst since 2007 and estimates the economic losses to Scotland between £350 - £700m. 
From PwC in Scotland via the Adaptation Scotland January newsletter

VIEWS FROM THE COP...
Given the significance of last December's United Nations Paris Agreement (which seeks to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C) - which we broadly welcome, we sought out some reflections from two colleagues who went to Paris themselves and who we thought might share our local perspective, but who had quite different experiences.
M ark Hidson works for  ICLEI Europe  in  Freiburg,  Germany. ICLEI holds official observer status within the UNFCC and was heavily involved in COP21. Part of ICLEI's role was advocating on behalf of local government.

Mark attended a Transformative Actions Programme event aiming to increase investment in climate action in cities and regions.

Stephen Jones works for Climate Northern Ireland (part of the Climate UK network) in Belfast and travelled to Paris in a personal capacity with a group of 35 development and environment activists from Dublin. 

Click on the images (right) to read their accounts.

SPONSORSHIP, SUPPORT AND DONATIONS
Climate UK hosts and supports a growing family of well used  online climate tools (with two more in the pipeline). In order to enable us to maintain these as free to access resources in the public domain, we welcome offers of  sponsorship  in exchange for a promotional package. 
See this flyer for other ways in which you can support our work, or if you would like to make a donation via a secure Paypal connection, please visit this Support Climate UK page on our website. 

Thank you

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Climate UK is a national network of organisations and individuals in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and incorporated as a not-for-profit Community Interest Company. It works in the public interest to support local action on climate change, helping local organisations to become more resilient to the changing climate.

Climate Partnership UK (trading as Climate UK) Community Interest Company,  no. 07706735