An environmental and climate change library: HERE
Climate change often feels an impossible thing to do anything about. The changes needed are so great and so urgent.
Even if one of us did everything in our power to help, none of us can achieve change alone.
So that is why we need action at every level. If we do not adapt our own lives then the efforts that so many are making will not accomplish what is needed.
In December 2019 Holbeton Parish Council resolved to declare a climate emergency.
That means that everything that the council does needs to take climate change into consideration, and to act in any way that can help the situation we are all in.
Part of the solution is to restore our natural habitat, seriously degraded in our own lifetimes.
So, climate change actions need to go hand in hand with improvements to our environment.
We have developed an action plan that addresses things that we can do ourselves and lobby for things we can see need to change.
We have partners in the shape of 4 neighbouring parishes (The 5 Parish Alliance comprising Yealmpton, Brixton, Newton & Noss and Wembury) led by Matt Chown.
It is worth looking at the websites of Sustainable South Hams, and the climate change programmes of South Hams District Council, Devon County Council and Plymouth City Councils.
Their links are on a separate page.
We have a climate change sub-committee, with a mixture of parish councillors and local residents.
We meet monthly on the first Tuesday evening in the month in Holbeton Village hall at 7:30pm.
We advise the parish council, which remains the decision making body, meets just a week after us, and which firmly supports what we do,
We always welcome parishioners, do just turn up and join us - it's informal and usually fun!
We are fortunate in having a budget with which we can support and encourage projects within the parish. Details are on a separate page.
Achievements to date include:
A forum of parishioners wishing to be kept in touch
A climate change Facebook forum
A parish survey of lighting and electricity suppliers
An environmental and climate change library
Monthly environmental ‘tips of the month’ in Holbeton News
A wild flower area by the Reading Rooms with a noticeboard “where have all the flowers gone?”
Surveys of early purple orchids and of a meadow last surveyed 35 years previously
Talks from Yealm Community Energy and South Dartmoor Community Energy
An analysis of energy performance certificates on houses in the parish
Letter to our MP about South West Water’s sewage leaks, signed by 150 parishioners
An open meeting on sewage discharges into the river Erme with SWW representatives
Responses to a number of public consultations
Supporting a number of local projects