Lincoln 2030 Climate Action Plan
To become a net zero carbon City by 2030 we need to make changes to our daily lives to reduce emissions, particularly from transport, energy use and the everyday items we all consume.
No single organisation can directly influence all the emissions within the Lincoln area; the success of a Lincoln 2030 Climate Action Plan will be down to all of us. Lincoln 2030 captures the work currently underway, opportunities, targets and actions across 7 carbon pathways to ensure we meet our Lincoln net zero carbon target by 2030.
To accompany the Climate Action Plan we have produced ‘Lincoln’s journey to net zero’ to provide details on all the actions, including objectives, targets, carbon savings and delivery partners for each net zero carbon pathway. This is a live document, updated by members of the Lincoln Climate Commission on a regular basis. We welcome your comments and questions about any of the actions in this plan please contact us via email climate@lincoln.gov.uk
2022: A year in review
- We received £26000 from the QR Strategic Priorities Fund to deliver the Lincoln 2030 Climate Action Plan and animated film.
- We published the Lincoln Sustainability Toolkit
- The Central Lincolnshire Local Plan Team reviewed and introduced new climate policies in the Local Plan, once this as been approved by the Secretary of State we believe Lincoln will have the most robust and forward thinking climate policies in the UK.
- The commission have completed the Lincoln Climate Impacts Profile and have nearly completed the Lincoln Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy setting out how we are addressing the challenges of our changing climate.
- In December the Lincoln Climate Commission were awarded £10 000 from the Lincoln Policy Hub to plan a series of public events, for more details see the Climate Hope’ article in this newsletter.
Positive Climate News
Biodiversity Wins
The City of Lincoln Council and University of Lincoln secured £12000 from the Local Government Associations Net Zero Innovation Fund to deliver a project to promote and enhance green spaces across the city. The project started on the 1st of January and is due to complete by the end of June 2023. Further updates on this project will be provided via the Lincoln Climate Commission website and our future newsletters.
The City council are our partners are working together to launch a campaign in the spring for Lincoln to join the National Park Cities Foundation. We want to celebrate the green spaces, biodiversity and ongoing projects to enhance our green spaces throughout our city. More information about the launch of this scheme will be available in the next LCC newsletter.
Brayford Pool Floating Biohavens
Following the success of previous phases of the Greening Brayford Pool project, I am delighted to report that work will take place week commencing 20th February to deliver the next stage. Floating ecosystems will be installed around the central island along with a new ramp to allow the swans and other water birds easier access the island where they often roost, feed and sometimes nest.
Thanks to generous funding from the Environment Agency and City of Lincoln Council, this year the East Mercia Rivers Trust, along with some volunteers and the contractors Biomatrix, will be installing further floating ecosystems with the help of local primary school children who will be coming along to get involved with the planting.
Collaborative Engagement
On 1 February, we held the first Climate Hope Lincoln co-design meeting with passionate changemakers in Lincoln, to plan our 2023 community engagement campaign and events.
Climate Hope Lincoln has been made possible thanks to a partnership between University of Lincoln, City of Lincoln Council and LocalMotion Lincoln. At the session the group agreed a set of shared aims for the campaign.
Together, Climate Hope Lincoln will provide space to help communities:
- realise their impact on the environment (locally and globally)
- understand the difference small changes can make, either now or in the future
- share ideas with leaders and policy makers
- connect local campaigners for better long term collaboration
- support the coordination of our resources to help us unite and act.
After collating the discussions, it has been agreed that Climate Hope Lincoln will support the Business Summit in May, organised by Social Change UK and The Lincolnite, with an interactive stakeholder event in June from Doughnut Economics before kicking off the assembly series in July.
The campaign will engage with the people of Lincoln, online and offline, to understand how people feel about climate change now, delving deeper into responses from previous local surveys, working with LocalMotion Lincoln as part of their BIG Conversations.
Next steps are around starting to build momentum around #ClimateHopeLincoln and collecting as much information as possible from Lincoln communities which will be used to review and develop strategies for action going forward.
Upcoming Climate Hope Activities
Lincoln Climate Quiz
Test your knowledge about climate change by taking part in our climate quiz and you may win a £20 voucher!
Earth Day - Saturday April 22nd
There are lots of activities happening on the 22nd April by a range of organisations including (but not limited to!):-
- Earth lincs/ extinction rebellion peaceful protest on Lincoln high street.
- Lincolnshire Life museum family friendly earth day event.
- Project Fashion Fixed at Lincoln LPAC thought the day and evening. Follow Project.FashionFixed on instagram for details.
Social Change Better Business Summit - Monday May 22nd at the Engine Shed
In collaboration with Social Change UK and The Lincolnite as part of their business week, The day will focus on panel discussions, including how to register your business for the B-Corp standard, key note speakers, and advice and discussions on how to make your business more environmental and sustainable.
Join the Digital Climate Action team
Do you know any content creators that are passionate about the environment and are TikToK/reels savvy? We are looking for young people to help us create content about positive climate action! Drop us a DM on climatelincoln if you're interested.
Fashion for the future
Kerry Gibson is a textile artist living and working in Lincoln. Her business Rethread Denim aims to look holistically at the fashion industry and aims to find solutions to how we can keep our clothing, and in particular denim in the supply chain for as long as possible and why this is important.
Fashion is a subject area that we can all relate to; it taps into every subject area from ‘Design’ to ‘Law’ and this makes it a perfect subject to teach around. Kerry uses her textile art to break this down into simple narratives that aim to get conversations started and prompt further learning.
Understanding that Denim and other textiles have been produced using valuable resources, made by processes and people all around the globe and ultimately problematic to recycle, can allow you to start thinking differently, about how we consume, how this contributes to the global climate crisis and how we can start to make small but important changes to make a positive contribution.
Understanding what our clothes are made from is a great starting point. If you take cotton for example, despite it being a natural fibre that easily biodegrades, it is important to understand that cotton as a crop requires large amounts of water to grow, large amounts of chemicals to prevent crop damage and fertilisers to feed the soil, along with large amounts of land to grow it on, land that might otherwise be used for important food crops.
When we look at polyester, a material that now makes up over 60% of all our clothing, it is important to understand that it is a synthetic ‘man made’ fibre that is a derivative of crude oil. Not only does this use fossil fuels but large amounts of energy to make it into a fibre, these processes often also use vast amounts of fossil fuels to power the machinery. And then ultimately as it is a plastic it means that it will not biodegrade, and unless incinerated, will remain on the planet for hundreds of years, the truth is we do not know for how long.
When we look at the global workforce, we can see unfair and unsafe work practises, mainly on the other side of the world in the global south. The fashion industry has always been linked to colonialism and slavery, but even today it still involves modern day slavery and child labour, all of this so we can produce cheap clothing that we buy and dispose of, without any real consideration.
The story of fashion and understanding that the fashion industry is a complex web of people, places, resources, and a major contributor to global CO2 emissions, and therefore to the climate crisis is so important.
Kerry has most recently produced a large art installation, supported by ‘Lincoln Creates’, a Lincoln Big initiative. The ‘Giant Jeans’ that stand just over 9 feet tall are made entirely from discarded denim and aim to tell the story of fashion through the lifecycle of a pair of jeans. The denim has been carefully patched together and a laser machine has been used to raster imagery onto the denim. Each leg tells a different part of the ‘denims’ lifecycle. The final panel looking at the importance of the United Nations 17 Sustainable development goals, and the benefits of a circular economy.
The jeans were exhibited for three days, from Thursday 16th through to Saturday 18th February, as a free exhibition and will be open to the public from 10-4pm each day, at the Project Space Plus gallery, which is on the Lincoln University campus, near to the LPAC Arts Centre. The Giant jeans exhibition was also supported by a collection of creative work made by the students of Lincoln as part of Project fashion Fixed 2022, a project that Kerry ran last year.
More information can be found on Kerry’s Instagram page @rethread.denim
This guest article has been submitted by Kerry Gibson. Want to contribute to our newsletters/website? Please email us at lincolnclimatecommission@gmail.com
Nature Positive Universities
The University of Lincoln, UK, is proud to be one of the founding universities of the Alliance and has committed to the future of its natural spaces.
The Nature Positive Universities Alliance, led by Oxford University and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is a global network of universities that have made the pledge to work towards a nature-positive goal to halt, prevent and reverse nature loss by addressing their own impacts and restoring ecosystems harmed by their activities.
This refers to everything a university does, from its teaching and research work to the operations and supply chains that keep it running.
To be Nature Positive there must be a measured biodiversity baseline, timeframe, a target, clear actions, analysis of how actions add up, monitoring and transparent reporting.
Rebecca Mills, Sustainability Manager at the University of Lincoln said:
“The University of Lincoln is proud to be one of the founding members of the Nature Positive University network and to have made a pledge to measure, monitor and improve biodiversity on our Estate.
“We aim to use our campuses as showcases for supporting wildlife and work with our students to improve habitats.”
“The University takes our role very seriously and is involved in many other projects to ensure that it does everything it can to minimise our environmental impact and educate on the importance of sustainability.”
Hope Wood
Work has now started to create a new woodland habitat for Lincoln thanks to funding from the Government’s Levelling Up Parks Fund, support from the Woodland Trust and City of Lincoln Council. The new woodland will be located on council-owned land, which sits between Simon’s Hill allotments and the River Witham.
The field has now had areas of grass cut and removed in preparation for planting.
Now this land has been prepared, around 4,000 trees and shrubs, and wildlife surveys undertaken to decide how best the areas can benefit from further enhancement.
For the first phase of the project, the Woodland Trust will be supplying the city council with 1,500 trees and 500 shrubs, which will be planted in coming months.
“We are keen to have engagement from as many people as possible from right across the city, so they can all stake a claim in being responsible and watch this important piece of land flourish over the years ahead.” Cllr Bob Bushell