Regional Climate Action Hub for North Highlands and Islands
Thurso Community Development Trust has since inception carried a message of community led climate action throughout the projects it develops to meet the Trust’s core aim of making Thurso a better place to live, work and visit for all. The Trust has established a strong track record of community engagement throughout the last 3 years of its work including the successful Thurso Grows project which focused on climate action through growing and food waste minimisation and the Sharing Shed which seeks to reduce food waste in the Thurso Community.
Joan Lawrie, Development Manager for the Trust said, “In all of our projects we embed climate action, the most obvious of these to date has been Thurso Grows where we have encouraged low carbon food through growing and minimising waste but we embed climate action in everything that we do, from simple actions running our facilities from only energy suppliers wholly based on renewables to eco-friendly cleaning materials for the public toilets we run to eliminating as much plastic as we can and avoiding disposables as much as possible. At every step of our journey as an organisation we engage with the community with all of our projects shaped by the views of the Thurso Community and their priority needs. It is this work in embedding climate action and our high levels of community engagement that has led to us being recognised by the Scottish Government to establish a Regional Climate Action Hub for the Northern Highlands & Islands.”
Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport Michael Matheson said:
“We are proud to be supporting local communities to take action to tackle climate change. By funding Scotland’s pathfinder Community Climate Action Hubs, we will enable communities to transition to low carbon living while also becoming more resilient. These hubs will also encourage collaboration between communities, helping to bring people together in their efforts to tackle climate change.”
The Regional Climate Action Hub for the Northern Highlands & Islands to be delivered by Thurso CDT will be to empower communities throughout the region to develop projects which provide local solutions to the addressing the climate emergency and the transition towards net zero carbon emissions. Joan added, “We will be looking towards working with existing networks and where necessary developing new networks of communities, groups and organisations to assist from developing projects to funding support and sharing best practice on how to run projects whether community growing, reducing waste or localised energy solutions. We’ve been very successful with our own projects including Thurso Grows and our expansion to now developing a Zero Waste Refill Shop in Thurso and we hope to take that learning into the work of the Hub and advise other groups and organisations.”
The Regional Climate Action Hub will create four new full-time positions for the Trust and the Trust hopes that with this work the Northern Highlands & Islands will become leaders in demonstrating how community led climate action projects can produce benefits for communities throughout the region. Helen Allan, Chairperson of Thurso CDT said, “Being awarded this work by the Scottish Government at only 3 years into operation for us as an organisation feels like a very celebratory moment for us and is a huge recognition of the work of Joan, the Trust Staff and our Board of Trustees. Climate action projects have obvious benefits to the planet but also have huge community benefits, in our projects we have seen the community come together reducing social isolation and inequalities by learning to grow and cook together and we hope to help communities throughout the region to develop these projects themselves.”
If you are a community, group or organisation who is looking for support to run a climate action project while we get our team set up please get in contact with joan@thursocdt.co.uk for further information.