Calling all LSA members!

As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on towns and cities across the UK intensifies, there is an urgent need to link business resources to the needs of communities – in the right place, at the right time and at the right scale. In response Business in the Community (BITC) is launching the National Business Response Network (NBRN).

The NBRN will use BITC ‘boots on the ground’ to work directly with communities across the UK to identify where and what the greatest needs are, focused on the following areas: access to food, keeping people connected through technology, social care for the vulnerable, and support for small businesses.

Find out more here.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

International cooperation on ozone-depleting chemicals is helping to return the southern jet stream to a normal state, according to a study published in the journal Nature that reinforces the scientific view that human action can halt global heating. The powerful wind shapes the weather and ocean currents in the southern hemisphere. It was sent off course – tracking southwards and disrupting weather patterns – by depletion of the ozone layer due to manmade chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons. The chemicals, found in fridges, aerosols and industrial processes, were phased out from 1987 under the UN Montreal protocol. The jet stream has since stopped moving south and the “hole in the ozone layer” has shrunk to its smallest size since 1982. Alexey Karpechko, a reviewer of the study, said: “This is good news, definitely. It shows our actions can stop climate change. We can see coordinated action works … we can manipulate the climate both ways: in a wrong way and by reversing the damage we have done.”

See more here

(From the Guardian – 25.3.20)

A recent study (published 3 March) by Project Drawdown forms a comprehensive update to list of policy, business, community and individual actions needed to achieve ‘Drawdown’ – the point at which greenhouse gas (GHG) levels in the atmosphere peak and begin declining.

Drawdown’s first comprehensive analysis in 2017 was based around the Paris Agreement, listing refrigerant management, onshore wind and reducing food waste as the top three climate solutions. The updated version details the changes necessary to meet the IPCC’s call to climate action, made in its landmark report on global warming of 1.5C vs 2C above pre-industrial levels – an assertion that has seen the rise of net-zero national, state and business-level pledges accelerate rapidly across the world.

According to the updated report, it would be “feasible” to reach Drawdown by the early 2040s and global net-zero by 2050 without the use of any technologies and practices which do not currently exist – so long as simultaneous transitions towards stopping emissions at the source and sequestering them are made quickly.

More on this from edie.net here

Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash

The Department for Transport (DfT) will double its EV charger funding to £10 million, with a focus on residential chargers, as it seeks to encourage more urban dwellers to go electric.

This is the second time the Government has doubled its EV infrastructure funding allowance; last August, £2.5m was allocated to the installation of EV chargers in residential areas, matching a £2.5m pledge made in 2017.

The latest cash injection will go towards installing an additional 3600 streetside chargers across the UK. It could also fund the development of a publicly accessible charger monitoring platform that would show whether individual facilities are in use or out of order.

The DfT says such a system “could then be used by developers and incorporated into sat-navs and route-mapping apps”.

Read more on this here.

Listen to Planet Pod’s podcast on smart cities 

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Photo by Fabrizio Verrecchia on Unsplash