Environment City eco emergency plan splits opinion
THE city of Bristol now has a plan to tackle the ecological emergency, which aims to reverse the decline in wildlife and manage and create ‘space for nature.’
The plan was launched by the Mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, at a council-owned nature reserve with volunteers clearing ther site.
But Green councillors in opposition at City Hall said while the plan was a ‘step in the right direction,’ there was no sense of an urgency.
Bristol City Council was the first local authority in the country to declare an ‘ecological emergency’ early in 2020, and now, more than 18 months later the council and its ‘One City Board partners’ have a plan with goals to work towards.
The Mayor of Bristol said he hoped the plan would now shape every decision the council makes.
He said: “Bristol was the first city in the UK to declare an Ecological Emergency in 2020 in response to the drastic decline in wildlife and developing the One City Ecological Emergency Strategy was our signal that we intend to meet this challenge, setting out the ambitious steps we as a city we need to take and how we intend to do it.”
The collaborative approach to the One City has seen charities, environmental groups like the Avon Wildlife Trust and big businesses and utilities like the YTLowned Wessex Water, come together to work on the action plan.
The council’s cabinet member for ecology, Cllr Nicola Beech, who was also at the launch event at Eastwood Farm in Broomhill, Brislington, told the Post: “We’re here today to launch our ecological emergency action plan, which is the coming together of about 12 months’ worth of work with ourselves, the Natural History Consortium, Avon Wildlife Trust and many other of our other city partners.
“We’re here at the farm because firstly what this shows is the value of our amazing green spaces across the city, but secondly, the importance of citizen action and hopefully you can see here just what it takes to maintain and restore some of our existing green spaces, which is a massive step forward in terms of the health of our city. Bristol City Council is committed to addressing the ecological emergency and there is a wide range of work going on within the authority, with partners and with residents, to help meet our One City Ecological Emergency Strategy goals by 2030.
“The council’s action plan outlines the action being taken in the four years up to 2025 and how we will also be supporting other partner-led city-wide actions to meet the goals. Some actions can be taken quickly, others will take years, but we can all do something, be it creating space for nature, reducing pollution in our everyday activities and reducing our environmental footprint in what we buy.”
One of the leading members of the One City Board that worked on the action plan is the Avon Wildlife Trust. One of the first impacts of their involvement was the sudden U-turn earlier this year on the use of a green space in Brislington for housing development.
Marvin Rees’ administration had acted on a 2014 decision to earmark Brislington Meadows land for housing, and persuaded the Government’s housing agency Homes England to buy the land for almost £15 million, so the council could develop 300 new homes, including 90 council houses on the land. But after Avon Wildlife Trust said the land had special ecological value, the Mayor of Bristol reversed that decision, 20 days before the election in May, and said it would not be built on.
Avon Wildlife Trust’s chief executive Ian Barrett said: “We warmly welcome the publication of the
council’s Ecological Emergency Action Plan. It’s great to be working with a council who are seriously looking at what they can do to tackle the ecological emergency. There is a lot of work still to do if we are going to reverse wildlife declines.”
The next big test for the council’s commitment to its ecological action plan and collaborative working with Avon Wildlife Trust comes on the other side of south Bristol. Developers are about to submit a planning application for homes on the Western Slopes, between Knowle West and Bedminster, while the council itself is working on plans for another 360 new homes on the rest of the slopes.
Avon Wildlife Trust has told the council the Western Slopes is a significant area for Bristol’s ecology, as campaigners continue to fight to preserve the land.
At May’s election, Mr Rees was re-elected as the city’s Labour mayor, but Labour’s councillors lost overall control of City Hall, and ended up with equal numbers of councillors as the Green Party.
The Greens’ shadow climate and ecology lead, Cllr Lily Fitzgibbon, said of ecological action plan: “For an Emergency Action Plan, there’s not much of a sense of this being an emergency response. When these proposals came to scrutiny, Green councillors on the committee called for a sense of urgency, more practical actions the council could take, and a ‘baseline’ report of the state of Bristol’s ecology in order to measure future progress. It appears none of these proposals have been taken on board.
“While there are plenty of goals in the plan - which is important – there is little in the way of practical action to achieve these. Those steps that are proposed are often quite weak and have a long timescale.”
She added: “The Labour administration still supports the expansion of Bristol Airport, with its car park on green belt land, and is progressing steps to develop on the city’s green spaces, such as the Western Slopes. As with the Climate Emergency declared in 2018, it’s what you do after declaring an emergency that counts.”
Danica Priest, a founder of the Friends of the Western Slopes group, said the proof of the council’s emergency action plan would be in what the council does next. She said: “If they respond by quoting the housing waiting list instead of promising not to build on a site where mitigation is not possible, like the Western Slopes, they are obviously not interested in wildlife and this was just a PR move,” she added.
You can read the Bristol One City Ecological Emergency Action Plan at