Tackling Climate Change: Ensuring a Just Transition for Rural Communities

As extreme weather events become more common, it is clear that reducing future impacts on people and businesses arising from changes in our climate has become a priority. But this means we have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions considerably. These gasses arise wherever we use fossil fuels such as petrol, diesel, home heating oil or domestic gas or in the way we generate electricity, so reducing them will have implications for how we travel, how we heat our homes, and many other aspects of daily life.

Government is legally obliged under the Climate Change Act to find ways to lower greenhouse gasses and move Northern Ireland to a green economy. However, some of the ways this is done might unintentionally disadvantage people living in rural areas. ‘Just Transition’ is an additional legal obligation for Government that says any measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must be fair, so that the effort to tackle climate change and the benefits that might arise are shared equally across society. A new ‘Just Transition Commission’ will oversee that this is done and it is encouraging to see that there will be a rural representative on this Commission.

As well as ensuring equity, Just Transition also recognises the potential there may be to address stubborn problems of poverty and disadvantage; fuel poverty for example, or food poverty, or the energy costs of accessing services. Responding to the challenges of Climate Change needs fresh, creative thinking alongside protecting our more vulnerable members of rural communities.

To help this endeavour, Rural Community Network has been commissioned by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to carry out a study to help policy makers better understand how rural communities work and ensure this is taken into full consideration in designing policies to achieve a Just Transition.

As an important part of this study, we are gathering the experiences of people living in rural communities through one to one interviews. Four communities have been selected to carry out these interviews, located different distances from urban centres. These are Plumbridge and Cranagh, Toome, Castlederg and Waringstown. We want to be sure we hear from a broad range of people; older, younger, working in the community or commuting to work, involved in farming or running a small business for example.

If you live in one of the study communities and would like to contribute to the interviews we would love to hear from you. Perhaps you are sitting in a café right now drinking your coffee and thinking about whether to take part – if so please do !

If you live somewhere else but have a view you want to share on Just Transition, Climate Change or the future for rural society please let us know. We would be very interested to hear from you. Email Nick or Kelly at the email address below.

If you would like more information on our research or would like to hear about the findings drop us a line.

The future for rural communities could be amazing if we help get things right !

Nick Mack nick@ruralcommunitynetwork.org

Kelly Donaghy kelly@ruralcommunitynetwork.org