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This guide is all about changing where you live. But when issues like climate change seems to need action at the highest as well as at personal levels, and governments seem to ignore international agreements, it can be hard to believe that actions any one of us take will really make a difference. If you don't care about where you live, who will? The biggest challenge is perhaps to link the local action with the bigger global picture. There is no doubt that local action does influence the bigger picture. There are plenty of examples where organised action by small groups has paved the way for much bigger change. It happened with the 'Montreal Protocol', the international agreement that has helped drastically reduce the amount of CFC gases being produced. On a wider scale, local and national action helped women obtain the vote, and even before that, the campaign to end slavery was started by a small group of people. So there is still hope for environmental change! Governments pass laws, but making sure that those laws work is ultimately down to local people. Local councils will only really get active on basic issues such as fly-tipping if there is pressure on them from the community that is affected. Too many people think there's nothing they can do, but all the evidence shows that well-organised local action does work. It's true that individuals can make an even bigger impact if they work together. Research published in 2002 for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showed clearly that local projects do make a difference, not just in terms of the work they do but also through creating awareness and in encouraging more people to take action and get involved. But, there's more to it than that. Many bigger local projects create jobs for local people and offer training that can help tackle the lack of skills and experience among unemployed people. Again, the impact of even a very good local project may be limited, but when you add them all together the impacts of such projects are certainly significant. This was shown in 2002 when a national survey, 'The Quiet Revolution' published by the Shell Better Britain Campaign, showed just how much more work is being done now than 10 years ago. In 1992 there were less than 100 community projects refurbishing furniture and electrical goods for sale to people on low incomes. Now there are over 300 such programmes. The same survey showed that there are 11,000 conservation groups of all shapes and sizes across the UK. In 1993 BTCV was working with less than 1,000 groups, by 2002 that figure was around 3,000. The number of community gardens and city farms has also grown steadily. The evidence shows that a great many people in Britain do care about the state of the environment and care enough to get out and do something about it. All content copyright © 1986-2009 BTCV Ltd. Registered charity No. 261009 |
