CCAP Celebration 13th September, Millennium Hall
One year on since the pilot Community Climate Action Programme was launced many of the particpants from the communities thoughout Cork City came together for a celebration event last week, hosted by City Council in the Millennium Hall. Welcomed by the Deputy Lord Mayor, Cllr Damien Boylan.
Groups presented inputs on the type of intitiatives they have been doing and the actions identified during the programme that they wish to implement across a range of areas from energy and transport to food and biodiversity. The benefit of building links and strengthening social cohesion within communities was also highlgihted and events such as this further the connections across the city.
Grainne Carr on behalf of the facilitator team, that also included Matt Jones, James O’Donovan, Martin O’Donoghue and Marta Neto, reflected on the knowledge and experiences shared during the programme. She emphasised the positive impact of people who care about climate and biodiveristy, and share the aspirations of the city such as being climate neutral by 2030, coming together and strengthening the momentum for action.
Deputy Chair of the City Climate Committee, Cllr. Collette Finn said that many of the solutions were about doing things we had done not so long ago whether increased walking or cycling or eating more seasonally. The Chief Executive, Ann Doherty, focused on the collective efforts we had all made when challenged with Covid 19 giving us the confidence to know that we can rise to these challenges too but that time is short with 2030 a mere 7 years away.
The gathering enjoyed delicious vegan refreshement from My Goodness, whilst Sinead Dunphy, Eventi and Alison Miles, OSM Photography took care of the PR and photos.
Introduction
This 6-session programme commenced in October 2021, with groups meeting throughout Autumn 2021 and 2022.
In conjunction with Cork City PPN, Cork City Council has engaged The Environmental Forum to work with a number of communities across the city to draw up local Community Climate Action Plans. Cork City Council declared a Climate and Biodiversity emergency in 2019, recognising the critical need to address emissions and biodiversity loss.
Acknowledging the key role all sectors need to play to address these challenges, this programme aims to help the city and its citizens deal with the current and future climate change and biodiversity crises. The aim of the programme is to assist communities through a series of workshops to develop a 2-3 year Climate & Biodiversity Action Plan.
Information for participants
The Community Climate Action Programme is initially supporting 10 community groups across Cork City to work out how each one can play a meaningful part locally to tackle the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.
The Environmental Forum is facilitating 6 sessions in person of 2-3 hours each week.
Session 1: Getting to know each other and the programme, and identifying local resources available to the group.
Sessions 2-5: These 4 sessions cover 2 topics per session, with the facilitator presenting current information and resources, and also the group having lots of conversations and then coming up with ideas of what actions the community could take on each topic. The topics are Waste, Consumption, Food, Water, Energy, Travel, Biodiversity and Nature-based solutions.
Session 6: Sifting through the ideas that have come out of previous sessions to decide which are most realistic to take further, and what will be needed to make them happen.
Following the last session, we will provide a report back to the group and will be available to offer some additional support on the actions the group has decided on.
Launch event
Video of the CCAP launch event in September 2021 is available to view below.