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Posted by South Gloucestershire Liberal Democrats on Monday, 18 January 2021

South Glos Liberal Democrats welcome declaration of Ecological Emergency

South Gloucestershire Liberal Democrats have welcomed the statement by the authority’s majority Conservative group, following pressure from the Opposition Liberal Democrats, that the Council has declared a formal Ecological Emergency.

South Gloucestershire’s neighbouring West of England local authorities of Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset and Bristol declared Ecological Emergencies earlier in 2020, however Conservative-controlled South Gloucestershire had, until tonight, made no formal statement on the subject.

Following the submission of a motion to tonight’s full council by the Liberal Democrat Group calling for the declaration of an Ecological Emergency, the Conservative group gave notice to the opposition groups of their intention to move an amendment including the phrase: “this council notes that a formal Ecological Emergency has been declared”.

Following this acknowledgement that South Gloucestershire Council has already declared an Ecological Emergency, and the statement by the Leader of the Council during the discussion on Climate Emergency Update Report, that tackling the Ecological Emergency had been fully integrated into tackling the Climate Emergency the Liberal Democrat Group decided it was no longer necessary to move the motion at Council.

Speaking after the meeting, Councillor Adrian Rush, who had been due to move the Liberal Democrat motion, said:

“I welcome the administration’s acknowledgement that, through it’s work on the Climate Emergency, this Council has already declared an Ecological Emergency.

“Declaring an Ecological Emergency is an important step forward. The administration now needs to demonstrate that it takes the Ecological Emergency, which it has acknowledged, seriously.”

Declaration of climate and ecological crisis

At its meeting on 25 Feb Yate Town Council adopted a "declaration of climate and ecological crisis and commitment to action" - and agreed its action plan. The action plan covers every aspect of council work to deliver net zero carbon by 2030 - but with an emphasis on doing as much as possible as soon as possible. As a very simple first step the Council is abolishing paper at meetings. Just by doing that a whole box of paper was saved by not printing papers for Tuesday's meeting - so as a symbol of the commitment councillors gathered round the box of paper that had been saved. Of course that is one small step on what is a very big scale of change. But building the future we want has to start somewhere.

Here is the text of the declaration: