[g8-sheffield] Climate change

[IAN WALLACE]

Thanks very much for that Jillian. 
On Saturday I am going to a meeting about the newly formed Campaign Against Climate Change in a pub room next to Euston Station. 
My particular interest is in making public transport so good (convenient, pleasant, reliable, extensive, cheap/free, etc) that most people would be desperate to sell their cars before the market became completely gutted with cars for which people no longer had any real use. We nearly had this situation in Sheffield with the cheap fares before Thatcher stuck her oar in and Labour crumbled. 
As I now have a serious mobility problem (knee) I'm starting to take these matters even more seriously.
If somebody jogs me, I will do a report back from the meeting.
 
You may well be aware that we now have a new Circular bus (No 10) partly replacing the No 8. This came about because I had just returned from a 3 day international psychology conference (Transactional Analysis) in Edinburgh to find that the Circular was being scrapped. Being more than usually fired up (by the conference)  I rang SYPTE to complain, got the person's name to whom people should complain, made some posters with her name and phone no on and stuck them on local bus stops, asking people to complain. I also did an email to the Nether Edge Against War e-list. 
The next day SYPTE rang me to ask me to please desist from giving out the phone no as they were snowed under with calls.  And 2 of us did a petition which we put in many local shops and took out on the street for an hour which turned into two and a half hours because we had such a good time with it. After 2 or 3 days we had 500 signatures (just from Nether Edge) which we took down to SYPTE - and they had already decided to reinstate some of the service due to the weight of phone calls. There is more to do, but its a good start.  
Ultimately I believe that all public transport should be free (at the point of use). This might sound a bit extreme, but so does cities and low lying countries being flooded and major ocean currents being switched off. 
Needless to say, we also need to rethink much of our way of living in other respects too. 
I am particularly interested in a new tide power machine which (alone) could supply all the energy Britain needs if the sort of resources which were put into the attack on Iraq were put into it. 
There are answers!   
Ian

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Today's Topics:

1. Climate Change to be discussed in Full Council 2pm Wed 7th
Sept (Jillian Creasy)
2. Related article in Guardian Today... (dan at aktivix.org)
3. Declaration of African civil society on the road to 6th
Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation in Hong
Kong (Chris Malins)


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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 15:22:34 +0100
From: "Jillian Creasy" 
Subject: [g8-sheffield] Climate Change to be discussed in Full Council
2pm Wed 7th Sept
To: "graham wroe" , "steve foe"
, , "g8"

Message-ID: <007701c5ae37$d979ce40$0ac6f9d5 at sys03>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Dear all
(please forward to sympathetic lists/people, Graham can you put the announcement below on the Green party website?)

SHEFFIELD CITY COUNCIL TO DISCUSS CLIMATE CHANGE ON WED 7TH SEPTEMBER

Full Council (meeting in Town Hall) will receive presentations by:

George Munson, Regional Climate Change Co-ordinator at the Yorkshire and Humber Govt Office on the implications of Climate Change 
&
Andy Nolan, Head of Environmental Strategy on the Council's strategy for action.

There will then be an opportunity of Cllrs to ask questions.
There is a slot for "public questions and communications" immediately before this (at 2pm), so although the public can't ask questions during the "debate" anything asked from the gallery would be hard to ignore in the session which followed. 

So ... I'm putting out an appeal for 
1. People to attend Full Council on that day. Just turn up at about 1.50pm and tell the ushers you want to ask a question from the gallery - you will be shown upstairs and called to speak by the Mayor after any petitioners have spoken (which can take a while!)
2. AND/OR feed any questions to me and I will try to put them - I only get one slot for questions and possibly a second one for comments (actually comes to much the same thing in politics, I've noticed!). It would be very helpful for have your ideas. Should I focus on transport, industry, energy saving in housing, localising the economy, the incinerator, the airport(s)? So much room for improvement I'm in danger of being overwhelmed!

I need your ideas and your support. I want to be as well informed as possible and to represent you, the green-thinking, no-blood-for-oil community. I also want to show SCC, especially Labour, that the people of Sheffield regard climate change as a really important issue and that we are GLAD they have timetabled this session.

Notes
1. Y&H Region produced a Climate Change Action Plan in Feb/March of this year ... you could find it on the web: the thing the Green Party picked out of it was the recommendation to appoint a cabinet level "champion" for climate change. This hasn't quite happened - though they did create a cabinet member for "environment and transport" (Terry Fox).
2. Andy Nolan has moved from a similar role at Sheffield Uni - only taken up post a few months ago.

Thanks!

Cllr Jillian Creasy, Central ward, Sheffield Green Party

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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:32:42 +0100
From: dan at aktivix.org
Subject: [g8-sheffield] Related article in Guardian Today...
To: Jillian Creasy 
Cc: graham wroe , gp-sheff at yahoogroups.com,
g8 , steve foe 
Message-ID: <1125502362.4315cd9abd044 at www.aktivix.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hi,

Have you seen this?

http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,1559070,00.html

All planned out

If public services took green issues seriously they could make a huge difference
to the environment. But progress is patchy and painfully slow, finds John
Vidal
Wednesday August 31, 2005

Guardian
Five years ago, 62 pioneering local authorities signed what was called the
Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change, committing themselves to reducing
energy and addressing what the prime minister called "the greatest threat
facing humanity". But within three years the scheme had stalled, and had to be
relaunched by a disappointed Michael Meacher, then the environment minister.

"How can we expect the public to take action if we are not committed to doing so
ourselves?" he pleaded with local authorities. "The government cannot do it
all. Ultimately it is up to everyone to build appropriate protection into their
own plans and decisions."

Since 2003, official and public awareness of climate change has rocketed and
tens of thousands of local authorities around the world have pledged to try to
meet or exceed national targets on climate change. In Britain, however, only
about 30 more local authorities have taken the Nottingham pledge. Others have
come up with their own plans to conserve energy, but only about 200 of almost
500 councils even have a specialist energy officer - a prerequisite, says the
Energy Saving Trust, to any action being taken at a local government level.

It would be unfair, however, to suggest that local government in Britain is
blind to the future and reluctant to grapple with the environmental problems of
the age. Some authorities, such as Woking or Merton, are racing away on climate
change, developing ambitious, even visionary, technological and social
initiatives that are being picked up around Britain and the world.
Nevertheless, many others seem quite unconvinced there is a problem and are
ignorant about what they can do - or reluctant even to lift a finger.

It is not just climate change. When central government came up with its
ambitious integrated transport policy in 1999, it depended heavily on local
authorities to implement it and to reduce traffic levels and emissions. The
policy is widely seen now as an environmental disaster.

Given few resources, the policy met considerable confusion and ill-will among
authorities. According to the Commission for Integrated Transport, which
surveyed their progress in 2002, three kinds of authority were emerging: the
"champions", "the tacticians" and - the majority - "the sceptics". The
complaints were that central government was giving them mixed messages, there
was a plethora of confusing targets and indicators, and not enough money or
resources to do the job.

But then compare waste, the third great plank that defines the public services'
modern environmental agenda. A decade ago, most local authorities saw recycling
as an expensive option indulged in mostly by Germans. They considered a hole in
the ground the best place to chuck everything from old fridges to waste food.
Britain was at the bottom of the European recycling league, and most local
authorities wanted to stay there.

Since then, central government has been forced by Europe to set local
authorities difficult targets under the Landfill Directive to reduce and
control waste. Coerced by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs, and threatened with heavy penalties for not reducing and recycling -
but also encouraged with generous incentives to earn money if they waste less
and recycle more - even the most ecologically illiterate local authorities are
now doing something.

As with transport and climate, there are immense differences in performance on
waste between the best and the worst authorities, but the change in public
attitude towards waste has been spectacular and there is barely a household or
business in the country that has not learned to put its rubbish in different
bins.

The enormous differences in how local authorities have tackled the environment -
one of the key components of the government's overarching agenda on sustainable
development - suggest that targets, timetables, incentives and sticks can get
results, but there is growing concern among many local authorities that they
are becoming the battleground of central government departments wanting to
micro-manage their policies.

So many instructions are being handed down about how to implement central
government policy on the linked areas of environment, planning, public health,
food, waste, transport, energy efficiency and economic growth, that councils
say they are being overwhelmed and semi-paralysed into doing nothing.

When it comes to the environment, local authorities now have to steer between a
dozen or more increasingly detailed national, regional and local planning
policies, strategies, guidelines and principles. They must take into account
sustainable development policies and try to make sense of the Office of the
Deputy Prime Minister's flagship Sustainable Communities Plan, which, some
critics feel, has little to do with the environment or sustainability. They are
also required to listen to business and communities but respect the limits of
the planet, too. The departments of the deputy prime minister, transport, trade
and industry, environment, health and the Treasury all have a say in how local
authorities work.

"We now listen to so many songs sung from so many choir sheets", says David
Sparks, leader of the Labour group on Dudley council and chair of the
environment board of the Local Government Association. "Elliot Morley - the
environment minister - bangs away on climate change, but he is part of a
government still not seeing the bigger picture. Quite simply, there are too
many strategies. There has been an unprecedented propensity to plan the future
without building it," says Sparks.

It is now so serious, he says, that it is hindering local government, which
having been keen to implement environmental policies now wants the easy life.
"People in local authorities are becoming cynical and this can poison the whole
system. Frankly, we have too many plans. Some local authorities are lost. They
end up doing nothing about the environment."

The irony is that public awareness and goodwill towards the environment is at
its highest level in 15 years and the global stakes have never been higher. The
latest evidence from surveys and opinion polls suggests strong underlying
levels of public support for clear, consistent environmental action.

In fact, much has been done. "Compared to a few years ago, huge strides have
been made and the awareness of local authorities is higher. But many
authorities still do not equate the local with the global. They do not realise
that their actions are having a global effect," says Sparks.

"There is a lot more awareness now," agrees Chris Church, a founder of the
Community Development Foundation and an experienced sustainable development
adviser to local authorities. "Even the worst authority is far ahead of where
it was in 1995. Central government's target-setting has been invaluable, but
when that turns into micro-management you get people who only want to meet the
targets and go so far.

"What has happened is that the environment has not been mainstreamed. Local
authorities' role in implementing national strategy is now clear but local
governments are struggling to meet targets," he adds.

According to Church, many of today's problems with local authorities go back to
the 2000 Local Government Act, when there was a vociferous debate about whether
authorities should be given a power to promote the economic, social and
environmental wellbeing of their citizens (which makes it all optional and
easily avoided), or be given a duty (which makes it mandatory and unavoidable).
"As ever, the compromisers won the day. 'Power' went in, 'duty' lost out, with
the majority of local authorities backsliding on their sustainable development
responsibilities as a direct consequence", he says.

"I don't see much evidence so far that many local authorities are looking far
beyond the 'clear and green' litter and graffiti agenda. There's good practice
everywhere, but there's a lot of duff work as well".

Environment groups such as Friends of the Earth, Transport 2000 and the Campaign
to Protect Rural England, which are now deeply engaged in the nitty-gritty of
planning and sustainable development issues, are broadly sympathetic to the
problems of local authorities. "We are becoming more and more centralised in
Britain. Local authorities are in a different league now to what they were
before but sometimes the guidance they get is so vague as to be meaningless",
says parliamentary campaigner Martyn Williams.

On the other hand, he says, they must raise their game on the environment
urgently because most of of the key indicators are going in the wrong
direction. Traffic is getting worse, air pollution is not improving, carbon
emissions are increasing, the amount of waste being landfilled has only just
started to decline, consumption is growing rapidly and national housebuilding
strategies are chewing up the countryside.

"There are colossal differences between local authorities," says Meacher. "The
good ones really are pushing ever skywards and the rest are being dragged
kicking and screaming to higher standards but are definitely moving. A huge
amount more could be done, though, especially with things like energy
efficiency. It hasn't really been attempted yet." 

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:49:49 +0100
From: Chris Malins 
Subject: [g8-sheffield] Declaration of African civil society on the
road to 6th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation in
Hong Kong
To: G8 Sheffield 
Message-ID: <4315DFAD.5030104 at shef.ac.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

thought this might be of interest

Declaration of African civil society on the road to 6th Ministerial 
Conference of the World Trade Organisation in Hong Kong



**pour lire la declaration en français, cliquez-ici


>From the 16-19 of August, 2005, organisations of civil society from 
across Africa, comprising trade unions, farmers organisations, women’s 
organisations, faith-based organisations and non-governmental 
organisations, met in Accra under the umbrella of the Africa Trade 
Network to deliberate upon the challenges posed to African countries in 
the on-going negotiations at the WTO, particularly in the preparations 
for the December Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong. We adopted the 
following conclusions and demands.

We affirm as primary our right to pursue autonomously determined 
policies for the development of our economies, and to fulfil the social 
and human rights and livelihood needs of our people. Over the past two 
decades, this right has been severely undermined by external agencies 
like the World Bank and IMF. The policies of economic liberalisation and 
deregulation imposed by these agencies has led to serious economic 
collapse and social and environmental stress. An attempt is being made 
to continue this process in even more severe forms in the WTO.

It is four years since the launch of the WTO much-touted Doha 
“development” agenda. In that period there has been no progress in 
tackling the developmental concerns of African and other developing 
countries which were proclaimed as pivotal to the success of the Doha 
agenda. The powerful members of the WTO have frustrated all attempts at 
redressing the fundamental imbalances of the WTO regime which have 
contributed to wreak havoc upon African and other developing country 
economies and their people. Instead they have persisted with their 
attempts to impose the needs of their own economies and corporate 
interests on the rest of the world.

Two years after the resistance of developing country governments to this 
situation, culminated in the dramatic collapse of the 5^th Ministerial 
Conference in Cancun, the arrongance and double-standards of the 
powerful still remains the characteristic pattern of the WTO 
negotiations. As is evident from their proposals, the rich and powerful 
industrialised countries of the WTO continue to pressurise African and 
other developing countries to undertake further and deeper 
liberalisation commitments in their industrial, agricultural and 
services sectors, and lock them permanently into the system. At the same 
time, the developed countries remain intent on maintaining their 
advantages and protection.

As the Hong-Kong Ministerial approaches, these countries are set to come 
under even more intense pressures, and will be subject even more 
intensely to the manipulative, untransparent and undemocratic methods 
always employed by the developed countries to get their way.

We reject these attempts to undermine the policy autonomy of our 
countries, and cause further calamity to our economic development, and 
the fulfilment of our social rights. In furtherance of this, we state 
the following.

*Non Agricultural Market Access (NAMA)*

Africa’s industries have been devastated by two decades of World 
Bank/IMF imposed policies of trade liberalisation. Negotiations in NAMA 
will make this worse if the developed countries succeed in imposing 
drastic reductions in tariffs, as well as the restrictions of the levels 
to which African and other developing countries can in future raise 
tariffs. This will remove tariff policy as an important tool of 
industrial development, at a time when many other policy tools have 
already been removed under the agreements in the WTO.
We therefore demand that African countries should not accept and they 
must not be pressured into accepting the proposals on tariff being 
promoted by the advanced industrial countries. Instead they must be 
allowed to determine the definition and employment of tariff instruments 
and related policies.

*Agriculture*

Agriculture is central to the food security, rural development and 
livelihood needs in African countries. In the on-going negotiations 
African and other developing countries face the danger of being forced 
to open their markets to agricultural exports from the developed 
countries while the latter continue to protect theirs. Worse, the 
African and other developing countries will be exposed to the unfair 
subsidies of the developed countries, with artificially cheapened 
products being dumped in their markets, their own farmers displaced, and 
their livelihoods disrupted.

We demand that African countries must not undertake any further 
reduction in their tariffs for agricultural products; and they must also 
not bind their tariffs at current levels. In addition, they must have 
the right to use measures to further strengthen their ability to protect 
their domestic producers as they judge necessary, including the special 
safeguard mechanism and the right to desginate special products.. At the 
same time, the developed countries must eliminate all their subsidies 
which enable them to dump artificially cheap products in our markets and 
in global markets, and devastate our economies.

Services

Services are crucial for our economic development. In addition, 
services, especially essential services like health, education, water, 
are fundamental rights, the access to which must be guaranteed to all.
IMF and World Banks imposed policies of liberalisation and deregulation 
have already transformed some of these essential services into 
operations for profit, and taken them out of the reach of the vast 
majority of the citizens in African countries. At the same time, 
deregulation and liberalisation have placed services in the hands of 

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