Nature does a lot for us… we now need to work together to do a lot for nature …
Cornwall is establishing itself at the forefront of environmental leadership, having become the first place in the country to launch an Environmental Growth Strategy in December 2016. Now everyone needs to work together to help deliver environmental growth; this will ensure Cornwall has a sustainable future, where environmental, social and economic prosperity is all achieved.
This was the clear message to everyone at the Environmental Growth Challenge event, held at the Eden Project on 8th March. Organised jointly by Cornwall Council and the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, the event was focused on generating collaboration across private, public and third sector partners with local communities to deliver the actions needed to generate environmental growth over the next 50 years.
The Challenge event was officially opened by Matthew Thomson, Co-Chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership; Kate Kennally, Chief Executive of Cornwall Council and Cllr Edwina Hannaford, Cornwall Council’s Cabinet Member for Planning and a member of the Board of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership. They all stressed the importance of working together to create an environment for Cornwall that is naturally diverse, beautiful and healthy and supports a thriving society, prosperous economy and abundance of wildlife by 2065.
Keynote speakers included Professor Kevin Gaston, Co-Chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership; Nick Bruce-White of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and Manda Brookman, from the CoAST project who all spoke on the importance of “Inspiring Action for Environmental Growth”
If you would like to see videos of the speeches, you can go click here!
Delegates took part in a series of workshop events and an environmental growth challenge competition. The event ended with the formal launch of the Cornwall Environmental Growth Challenge 2017, which is about inspiring communities to work together to transform local spaces and bid for money from a fund in order to take action, and the annual launch of Cornwall Sustainability Awards 2017, which is about celebrating all the great work that businesses and organisations are doing on sustainability and environmental growth.
Matthew Thomson, Co-Chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, summed up the day: “This has been a fantastic collaborative event, with everyone working together to help find solutions to some of our environmental challenges in Cornwall. Our rich plethora of speakers showed us some best practice examples from the global to local level and macro to micro scale which inspired us to think outside the box about how we can find solutions together.”
The applications and nominations for the Cornwall Sustainability Awards are now open, and the deadline for both is October 16th, 2017!
You can apply here, and nominate here.
The awards ceremony itself will be held on 1st December at the Headland Hotel, in Newquay.
Here’s a look at the video for the Environmental Growth Strategy, this video was shown at the event, and now you can see it too:
