Tag: trees

The Eastbourne ECO Action Network in 2021: What was our year like?

As 2021 draws to a close, now is a good time to review the progress of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network.

As 2021 draws to a close, now is a good time to review the progress of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network, which has been very active throughout the year despite all the disruptions caused by the pandemic. Here’s a selection of the highlights as I, Andrew Durling, see them from my perspective as CEO of the Eastbourne Eco Action CIC.

Housing, Energy & Environment

The 2021 Eastbourne Eco Homes webinar was designed and hosted by the Housing and Energy Working Group. Their extensive research helped local residents make their homes much more energy-efficient. 

The Housing & Energy, Research and Transport Groups drafted three Technical Advice Notices (TANs), which were adopted by Eastbourne Borough Council. These rules form a crucial part of the planning guidance for ensuring that developments within Eastbourne are as environmentally sound as possible within current planning law. The TANs cover EV infrastructure, Sustainability in Development, and Biodiversity Net Gain. The Housing & Energy Group have scrutinised the EBC development proposals for the Old Magistrate Court site in Old Orchard Road, and are lobbying for these TANs to be fully incorporated into design schemes. Additionally, the group is actively working with Eastbourne Borough Council and the ECO Action Transport Group to create Low Traffic Neighbourhoods within the town.

The Research Group’s upstream liaison with Eastbourne Borough Council over the Environment Agency’s Pevensey Bay to Eastbourne Coastal Defences Scheme has been a success. Members of the group also collaborate with Ralph Lucas, an Eastbourne resident who is a member of the House of Lords, over biodiversity net gain standards in the Environment Bill and the ecological impacts of Queen’s Green Canopy Project. 

We liaised with councillors and council officers about the development of the Pevensey Bay to Eastbourne Coastal Management Scheme. The Environment Agency has designed the scheme to strengthen the local sea defences so they can cope with the predicted rise in sea levels that climate change will induce by 2100. Without improved sea defences, Eastbourne will become increasingly vulnerable to severe flooding from storm surges.

Sustainability in 2021

The Eastbourne Food Partnership (EFP), some members of which emerged from the EEAN’s Food Working Group and Climate Adaptation Group, became a Community Interest Company in 2021. The change enabled the group to successfully gain its first grant funding to facilitate the development of a sustainable, climate-resilient local food network that can ensure a supply of fresh, healthy, locally produced food distributed equitably to all local residents. 

Furthermore, the EFP is now a member of the national Sustainable Food Places network, and works in close collaboration with 3VA and East Sussex County Council. It has recently been liaising with councillors and council officers about how the Eastbourne Food Partnership, and the EEAN in general, could have some sort of presence within the Food Street project developing in Victoria Place.

Moreover, EEAN wrote vital proposals for ensuring that the Eastbourne Levelling Up Fund (LUF) remains within the purview of the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 strategy. The Transport Group and CIC submitted a proposal for the delivery of bus priority lanes, to unlock investment in zero carbon buses to reduce pollution supporting modal shift from cars to buses. Given that the LUF aims to increase the number of visitors to Eastbourne by 500,000 per year, a Transport Plan has to be at the heart of the LUF to prevent transport emissions within the town from increasing, and the Transport Working Group has been instrumental in designing that plan throughout 2021.

We have supported the continuing success of Treebourne (which evolved from the Carbon Capture Working Group) and EcoEd2030 (which evolved from the Education Working Group) through administrative support such as draft policy templates, advice on CIC forms, banking services for Treebourne; and an offer of financial grant to help with set up costs. Two CIC directors along with colleagues planted and cared for hundreds of baby trees in the Churchdale Allotment, some 400 of which have been transferred for planting at Tugwell Park.

Social Media & Public Profile in 2021

We have extended our active social media presence with the help of the one paid employee in the EEAN CIC gained under the government’s Kickstart programme. We created a fresh newsletter format using that presence to complete, and publicise, for the first time ever, a detailed survey – prepared by the Kickstart employee with aid from the Transport Working Group – of local people’s opinions about the local bus service, and how it could be improved. This has given a voice to bus users within our community, and we continue to lobby on their behalf. 

Some of the results have been used by East Sussex County Council in compiling its own analysis of local bus services and how to improve them.  This has helped increase our newsletter subscriptions by 47%. This bus survey reached over 12,000 local citizens. Our recent social media posts of Andy Durling’s speech at the COP26 rally in September reached over 6,800 people via organic growth across our social media channels. 

On wider communication, the CIC and other network groups contribute to the Eastbourne Borough Council ECN2030 Newsletter sent to over 10,000 residents; and the CIC and Groups have had articles published in the Eastbourne Herald, stimulating further engagement from the community.

As members of the Eastbourne Cultural Strategy Group and following on from our collaboration with them to facilitate the “Full Frontal” artworks on the empty Debenhams store, we have introduced this group to the possibility of using cultural engagement on the theme of climate change awareness and responses modelled on the excellent work of Creative Carbon Scotland.

We were delighted to work with a local artist and Eastbourne BID in the creation of the ‘You are part of history mural’ located at the junction of York and Grove Road in Eastbourne.

We participated in the march and rally organised by the Eastbourne Climate Coalition on 6 November to coincide with the start of the UN COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow. I delivered a speech to the rally on behalf of the EEAN, which was later published as a blog on the website. This address had an organic reach in social media of over 6,800, thanks to our Kickstart employee. The EEAN CIC is now collaborating with the Eastbourne Climate Coalition to set up a Climate Hub in Eastbourne.

Eastbourne residents participate in a protest march to recognise COP26

Thank you!

On behalf of all my colleagues in the EEAN CIC, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks and deep gratitude to all the CIC directors, groups and partner organisations within the EEAN for their hard work in the face of the incredible difficulties we’ve all had to deal with in this pandemic year. You are heroes all! I hope you have a very restful and peaceful Christmas and New Year and come back refreshed in 2022 to continue the great work of helping to deal with the greatest challenge of our time: the Climate Emergency.

On a more personal note, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude and thanks to Miles Berkley, my predecessor as CEO of the EEAN CIC, for his immense contributions to the EEAN and to ecological action generally during his two years in office. His dedication to developing effective collaboration between all partners within the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 campaign was exceptional and will have a lasting and deep impact.

Happy holidays!

Andrew Durling

Executive Director

Start by Planting a Tree

Our planet needs trees. We all know that. Without them we wouldn’t be alive today. People and animals breathe in oxygen, and breathe out carbon dioxide. Trees and plants do the opposite. We’ve evolved together with them over millennia. There’s a natural balance to our ecosystem that’s held in place since the start of life on earth.

Our planet needs trees. We all know that. Without them we wouldn’t be alive today. People and animals breathe in oxygen, and breathe out carbon dioxide. Trees and plants do the opposite. We’ve evolved together with them over millennia. There’s a natural balance to our ecosystem that’s held in place since the start of life on earth. But now we’re tipping that balance and threatening our very existence. Our carbon emissions, from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat and transportation, have risen to the level where they are far outstripping the carbon that is consumed by trees and plants, and the resulting climate emergency has been widely acknowledged.

In Eastbourne, the Borough Council formally declared a state of climate emergency in July this year, and pledged to “continue working in close partnership with local groups and stakeholders to deliver a carbon neutral town by 2030”.

With the Council’s support and full engagement, local environmental groups have pooled together to create an Eco Action Network, comprising a number of working groups, each focussed on specific ways to achieve this goal. The Carbon Capture group is focussed on removal of CO2 from the atmosphere by any means possible – planting trees, shrubs and hedges, building living walls, nurturing kelp and marine plant forests off the coast, rewilding wasteland, and so on.

But if our challenge was tough to start off with, it just got a whole lot harder. You may not yet have heard of ‘ash dieback’, but as an Eastbourne resident, that situation is likely to change very soon. Ash dieback is a devastating tree disease that is threatening to wipe out up to 95% of the UK population of ash trees. It is a fungal infection carried in the air, that unfortunately cannot be prevented or cured. And it spreads like wildfire. The past 12 months have witnessed the devastation of the ash forests which run along the downland slopes that cradle the western side of the town. From Butts Brow in Willingdon, approximately four miles down to the edge of the Meads.

All we can do is to cut down the trees to prevent them from falling as they die and rot. And it’s not finished yet. On Monday, 2 December 2019, the council and the Forestry Commission began a tree felling programme that is expected to last till 2024. Over the next 5 years, a staggering one hundred thousand plus ash trees will be lost to Eastbourne for ever.

This will have a huge impact. The landscape of the edge of the Downs will change completely. The affected woodland and streets around it will be cordoned off and inaccessible as the work takes place. Eastbourne’s current level of 5% tree cover – and the CO2 they consume – will be reduced dramatically, leaving us with an even steeper mountain to climb.

Ash dieback threatens the character of our town and the health of our planet. In one way or another, it affects all of us who live in Eastbourne. If you ever walk on the downs or ramble through the woods, you will see and feel the changes for yourself. This is not someone else’s problem. It is all of ours. However, working together, we can achieve so much more. If everyone in Eastbourne were to plant just one tree in their garden, a third of the entire lost Ash population would be replaced in one fell swoop! Community collaboration is the key to success. It will take a coordinated and concerted effort by all of us over the next ten years, not only overturn the loss of that many trees but to go way beyond that.

Call for Action

The ECO Action Network groups have begun the work with the council to find ways that we can reach our 2030 goal. On a personal level, you may ask what you can do. There are many changes you can make, but for now, if you have a garden, start by planting a tree.

You can get very small saplings free from the Woodland Trust. Or visit local nurseries for bare-root trees, hedges or shrubs – whatever suits your space. Stick to the UK grown native species ideally. But anything that thrives in our climate will do.

Adam Rose

ECO Action Network, Carbon Capture Group

Turning Eastbourne into an Ecobourne

The eagle has landed. The Eagle in this case being the Eastbourne ECO Action Network (EEAN), which held its first convening session for its 8 initial Working Groups at Eastbourne Town Hall on 19th November 2019.

The Eagle has landed. The Eagle in this case being the Eastbourne ECO Action Network (EEAN), which held its first convening session for its 8 initial Working Groups at Eastbourne Town Hall on 19th November 2019. This was the culmination of months of planning & networking by the core team of the newly-formed Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC, a Community Interest Company that aims to facilitate deep cross-community collaboration within the EEAN on the climate actions necessary to help deliver a carbon neutral Eastbourne by 2030, as mandated by the Climate Emergency Declaration passed by the full council of Eastbourne Borough Council on 10th July 2019. These Working Groups are self-organising, bringing together local community groups, businesses, environmental activists, and councillors to set priorities for local actions and to work up practical projects. Early in the New Year they will convene again to co-ordinate on progress and collaborate on proposed projects.

The EEAN CIC has already secured some grant funding and has put in an initial submission to the recently opened National Lottery Climate Action Fund. It is assisting Eastbourne Borough Council in planning for the official launch of the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 campaign at the Welcome Building on January 18th 2020. It is also exploring innovative ways of obtaining resources for the Working Groups: the CIC is now bidding for help on the recently launched East Sussex Social Value Marketplace, and has joined the freshly launched Open Credit Network, which allows its member businesses to trade with each other using a mutual credit system. Combining entrepreneurial initiative with grassroots community organising and partnership-working with the local council is very much the model emerging from this growth of the EEAN, and it is a model that might serve as an example for other local areas in the UK to emulate.

The motivation for the EEAN to act with urgency is high, as Eastbourne is mostly a low-lying coastal community that is very much in the front line of climate change, quite literally facing the rising seas and stronger storm surges of a rapidly warming world. It is also a town facing issues such as urban air pollution, traffic congestion, acute shortage of land for housing and commercial development, as well as the issues of biodiversity and ecosystem collapse that plagues most of the rest of the UK too. The challenges are huge, but the resources, skills, and community spirit of Eastbourne’s people are huge too – harnessing them in order to start meeting those challenges is the task for 2020 and beyond.

Andrew Durling

ECO Action Network, Finance Director