Changed Places, Changed Lives: The social impacts of environmental action
The report from BTCV summarises the results of a collaborative research initiative involving BTCV, the Black Environment Network (BEN) and the Evaluation Trust.
It is based on six case studies of work, mostly with groups of people facing some fairly serious disadvantages, including Asian women with mental health problems, travellers in Belfast and refugees in Glasgow. The report and supporting materials can be found at: http://www2.btcv.org.uk/display/changedplaces
If you would like a copy send an email to S.Frempong@btcv.org.uk (with your name and address)
This has been a very interesting piece of work. I’ve been involved in drawing together some very diverse case studies. The final report highlights the fact that for many people, especially those in poorer urban communities, interaction with their surroundings includes little or no opportunity to engage with the natural environment. That lack of engagement may be just one part of a wider alienation but it may also contribute to a lack of interest in and respect for the environment. This may affect not just people’s perceptions of their locality, but also of how they see global issues such as climate change and how they engage in a healthy lifestyle.
One conclusion is that over the past decade organisations such as BTCV, City Farms and Groundwork Trusts have developed a new kind of worker, ‘community environment worker’ part environmental project developer and part community development practitioner. Focusing on this kind of work led to a set of guidelines to which an ‘exemplary worker’ might aspire
· The worker is able to work at different levels with individuals, community organisations, other agencies and communities at large to achieve environmental, health and social justice gains.
· She/he recognises that this demands a willingness to engage over a long period of time, building relationships and trust with groups and with people, and that there is an art in recognising and realising opportunities for creative work combining environment with health or other issues.
· She/he will have taken the time to develop an understanding of the way of life of those involved in any specific project and will be able to empathise over the problems they face.
· Her/his skills lie in focusing on the environment and the work in hand rather than on the distinguishing attributes or disabilities of individuals, whilst meeting those individual needs with awareness and sensitivity, and giving space for people to develop in their own way.
· She/he organises individual work programmes within a larger project to match people’s strengths, skills, abilities and aspirations while also ensuring that day-to-day activities are run in ways appropriate to the needs of all those involved;
· She/he helps people feel competent, confident and valued through agreeing and accomplishing tasks, through giving praise and recognition, and through encouraging those involved to take the initiative to find the best ways to continue to access learning opportunities and build their social and practical skills.
· She/he actively encourages participants to take ownership of the environmental work, framing it within their own life and identity.
A second key point is that the results (albeit limited) show a strong commonality in terms of the value of people-centred environmental action as a way to build individuals’ identity, confidence and self-esteem. The challenge arising from this work is to use a ‘socio-environmental’ approach to connect excluded social groups and disadvantaged communities with the natural environment and to do this in ways that helps build that identity and maximises both the social and environmental impacts.
Encouraging and enabling people and communities to see caring for the environment as a central part of who they are is an important aspect of building support for the major environmental and social changes that we need to deliver over the next decade. If this is done well then there will be truly sustainable development and the energy within those communities will be a powerful force for environmental action.
Monday, 18 February 2008
Monday, 4 February 2008
Nuclear power – still no thanks!
This is an article written for the London 21 newsletter (www.london21.org) - comments welcome
It’s 28 years since several thousand people took part in the UK’s largest ever direct action when they climber over or cut through the fence at the site of what was to be the Torness nuclear power station in southern Scotland. That station was built, and the one after that at Sizewell. But that was it for nuclear power. The collapse of Thatcher’s proposed programme of ten new nukes was not just down to the 100,000+ people who went on the UK’s largest ever environmental demonstration on the 1st anniversary of Chernobyl in 1987. It was stopped in its tracks a year later when the exorbitant economic costs were finally made transparent when the electricity industry was set for privatisation.
Now it’s back. With a new angle. The industry used to claim that without nuclear power we’d ‘freeze in the dark’. Now they say it’s needed to stop us cooking in the global oven.
Should anyone be thinking that this makes some kind of sense it might be worth reviewing why we didn’t like it first time. The three key reasons were:
UNSAFE. The risks of a catastrophe may be small, but it’s a very foolish engineer who will tell you that any worst case is ‘impossible’. The risks remain, as do the rather more problematic and immediate risks arising from the UK’s legacy of nuclear waste. High, medium and low-level wastes all pose serious problems for our environment and our health and there is still no effective method of ensuring the long-term security of high-level waste (2.5 Million years is the length of time needed to allow for full radioactive decay of key pollutants) in operation anywhere in the world.
UNECONOMIC. Surprise, surprise: nuclear power has not got cheaper since the 1980s (compare and contrast with wind and photovoltaics). The nuclear station being built in Finland and promoted two years ago as the ‘first of the new generation’ is now way behind schedule and over budget. The government has said that industry will pay the costs of building the new stations, but it’s very clear that the industry will expect subsidies or guaranteed prices. Meanwhile the costs of clearing up the nuclear industry’s legacy to date has hot £73Buillion of our money.
UNNECESSARY. Nuclear power is only a source of electricity – it’s not an oil substitute. We have shot past early targets set for wind power in the UK (the same targets derided as ‘impossible and unrealistic’ by the nuclear industry) but we have still only scratched the surface of the potential for renewables world-wide. Photovoltaics and solar thermal are still hugely under-used, but more significantly our homes and offices still waste far more energy than that generated by nuclear power. More worryingly, there is always only so much capital to invest: if it all gets tied up in nuclear power, the likelihood is that new sources of energy will be starved of investment.
We could go on to talk about the problems of uranium mining and enrichment, and more significantly of creating more material for nuclear weapons (governmental or otherwise), but there’s one final problem.
We have to cut CO2 emissions by 80% or more. To do that we need to make major changes to our consumption patterns (rather more than just giving up plastic bags…) The centralised ‘solution’ of nuclear power sends a very damaging message to consumers: that the industry can generate all the electricity you need and that you can carry on consuming (and wasting) as before. Nuclear power is all too likely to encourage us to carry on in a truly unsustainable direction – and take us further over the edge.
This is an article written for the London 21 newsletter (www.london21.org) - comments welcome
It’s 28 years since several thousand people took part in the UK’s largest ever direct action when they climber over or cut through the fence at the site of what was to be the Torness nuclear power station in southern Scotland. That station was built, and the one after that at Sizewell. But that was it for nuclear power. The collapse of Thatcher’s proposed programme of ten new nukes was not just down to the 100,000+ people who went on the UK’s largest ever environmental demonstration on the 1st anniversary of Chernobyl in 1987. It was stopped in its tracks a year later when the exorbitant economic costs were finally made transparent when the electricity industry was set for privatisation.
Now it’s back. With a new angle. The industry used to claim that without nuclear power we’d ‘freeze in the dark’. Now they say it’s needed to stop us cooking in the global oven.
Should anyone be thinking that this makes some kind of sense it might be worth reviewing why we didn’t like it first time. The three key reasons were:
UNSAFE. The risks of a catastrophe may be small, but it’s a very foolish engineer who will tell you that any worst case is ‘impossible’. The risks remain, as do the rather more problematic and immediate risks arising from the UK’s legacy of nuclear waste. High, medium and low-level wastes all pose serious problems for our environment and our health and there is still no effective method of ensuring the long-term security of high-level waste (2.5 Million years is the length of time needed to allow for full radioactive decay of key pollutants) in operation anywhere in the world.
UNECONOMIC. Surprise, surprise: nuclear power has not got cheaper since the 1980s (compare and contrast with wind and photovoltaics). The nuclear station being built in Finland and promoted two years ago as the ‘first of the new generation’ is now way behind schedule and over budget. The government has said that industry will pay the costs of building the new stations, but it’s very clear that the industry will expect subsidies or guaranteed prices. Meanwhile the costs of clearing up the nuclear industry’s legacy to date has hot £73Buillion of our money.
UNNECESSARY. Nuclear power is only a source of electricity – it’s not an oil substitute. We have shot past early targets set for wind power in the UK (the same targets derided as ‘impossible and unrealistic’ by the nuclear industry) but we have still only scratched the surface of the potential for renewables world-wide. Photovoltaics and solar thermal are still hugely under-used, but more significantly our homes and offices still waste far more energy than that generated by nuclear power. More worryingly, there is always only so much capital to invest: if it all gets tied up in nuclear power, the likelihood is that new sources of energy will be starved of investment.
We could go on to talk about the problems of uranium mining and enrichment, and more significantly of creating more material for nuclear weapons (governmental or otherwise), but there’s one final problem.
We have to cut CO2 emissions by 80% or more. To do that we need to make major changes to our consumption patterns (rather more than just giving up plastic bags…) The centralised ‘solution’ of nuclear power sends a very damaging message to consumers: that the industry can generate all the electricity you need and that you can carry on consuming (and wasting) as before. Nuclear power is all too likely to encourage us to carry on in a truly unsustainable direction – and take us further over the edge.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
