Issue - meetings

To consider the report by the Sustainability Team Manager, Environment, Policy & Partnership Manager and Corporate Sustainability Officer.

The Sustainability Team Manager introduced the Climate and Nature Progress Report. The report had a greater focus on quantitative information and nature recovery. The committee received a presentation which outlined the progress towards climate targets.

Committee members discussed the report and asked questions of officers. The following topics were discussed:

·         The local and national target dates for decarbonisation and why they were different.

·         Progress towards county-wide decarbonisation and measures to get back on track for council emission targets.

·         Concerns about meeting targets for certain emissions where the council has limited or no control over them.

·         How carbon emissions are estimated and measured.

·         How the council could compare its progress towards reducing emissions with progress by other councils.

Following the discussion on climate, the Environmental Partnerships Manager outlined the council’s nature recovery work and the relevant parts of the progress report related to nature recovery. In relation to this part of the report, committee members raised and discussed the following topics:

·         The definition and criteria for doing nature recovery.

·         Community projects for nature recovery and the use of a map for tracking these initiatives.

·         Opportunities for involving town and parish councils in nature recovery projects, such as tree planting, and which organisations and groups were already doing nature recovery projects.

·         The scope to include nature recovery in the local plan.

·         The risks to continuing nature recovery work if funding from central government was cut.

·         The DEFRA reporting metrics for nature recovery and the frequency for reporting these metrics locally. It was suggested that these metrics were included in the progress reports.

Following the discussion, the Chair set out the recommendations raised during the discussion:

1.    Including more comparisons to KPI’s in the next quantitative Climate and Nature progress report.

2.    Ensuring it is clearer where progress is being made towards a climate target.

3.    Including nature recovery and the nature recovery map in a future member webinar.