Cllr Stimson proposed a motion to reduce grass cutting and plant our green verges. Here’s what Cllr Da Costa also called for more ambition and the creation of a biodiversity strategy.
I applaud Cllr Stimson’s maiden motion especially as a local bee keeper
- It’s good to continue the debate about enhancing biodiversity being threatened with extinction due to human activity and climate change, after all it is an Emergency but, we really should be looking at creating a Biodiversity Strategy which cuts across all areas of council operation especially planning, highways, transport, parks and green spaces, energy, construction & home building, procurement and disposal strategies but would also apply to education, adult services, social services and more.
- The Biodiversity resolution should be about strategy and ambition
- Our Biodiversity Strategy could take the EU option of aiming for
- Enhance implementation of nature legislation ie. Implementing the full force of the new NPPF and the Town & Country Act
- Restore ecosystems establish Green Infrastructure
- Sustainable agriculture and forestry
- Sustainable Fisheries or, with the River Thames and the Jubilee River, aquatic life
- Combat Alien Invasive Species
- Contribute to averting global biodiversity loss
- Or we could consider the UK approach of
- A more integrated large-scale approach to conservation on land and at sea
- Putting people at the heart of policy
- Reducing environmental pressures
- Improving our knowledge
- Monitoring and Reporting and
- Reinventing
- Or we could also layer in the forward thinking approach of the National Assembly of Wales
- Green Infrastructure, Nature Based Approach, Circular economy, place based approach***
- 5 ways of working, 9 principles of sustainable management for each area of their activities
- But a Biodiversity Strategy we must create.
- An evidence based RBWM Biodiversity Strategy that cuts across all areas of the Council’s activities and responsibilities could;
- Set a target date for creation of 2021
- Prepare and issue regular Audits and status reports of our ecosystems and biodiversity
- Collaborate with experts and residents
- Set up a Task Force to ensure completion and implementation
- Ensure carbon neutral buildings in RBWM both new and retrofitted
- Improve education for children and adults
- Facilitate residents becoming greener
- Create schemes to help businesses become green
- Empower and release residents and businesses in Green Action Networks which are already being set up by forward thinking residents in the Borough
- Require reports on progress and successes including KPIs at all OSPs, Cabinet, full Council and on our website – after all, it is an Emergency
- Reimagine our environments by bringing the countryside into our towns up, down, side to side, inside, out
- And off course, create a greener borough by planting verges
- But it must be practicably ambitious and take the word Emergency seriously
- This will also allow us an opportunity to improve the well being of residents, reduce air, ground and water pollution, limit the effect of alien and invasive species, reimagine our urban spaces, improve our happiness index and save money and as well as saving local biodiversity and planting green verges
- We don’t want a piecemeal resolutions which might actually hamper biodiversity; we want evidence based strategies and activities
- Equally, we do not want this Borough to continue to fall behind other areas in the UK and the world.
- Madame Mayor, we must work collaboratively and put some high energy, intent and resourcing into our declared Emergency and resolve to create a Biodiversity Strategy fit for Royalty, that husbands well our ecosystem and, one that will be an asset for our children and future generations.
- They deserve better so, we must aim higher.