News

New money needed for sector climate change work

Finance | Tania Mason | 18 Mar 2009

The government must find some new funding to help the voluntary sector tackle climate change if the £4m already spent on the Every Action Counts project is not to be wasted, the head of the project has said.

The lack of a long-term strategy to ensure climate change is ‘mainstreamed’ into the wider work of the sector through organisations such as Futurebuilders and Capacitybuilders, puts the work already done at risk, Mark Walton added.

Every Action Counts (pictured) was set up as a three-year programme with £4m from Defra in 2006, as part of the UK sustainable development strategy.

Its remit was to engage voluntary and community organisations that are not part of the environmental sector, in activities around environmental sustainability. More than 2,250 organisations and individuals signed up to the programme during the three years.

The programme will wind up at the end of this month. The guides, publications, and factsheets produced will be distributed among its partner organisations, along with the copyright and the right to use EAC branding.

At the end of March the website will be stripped of its interactive parts, although the main pages will remain up until the end of September. No decision has been made about the site’s future beyond then.

Lost momentum

Walton has warned that there is a danger the “momentum will be lost” if nothing is put in place to continue the work started. “EAC resources gave straightforward basic guidance that was practical and enabling, and lots of organisations need help with that first step. There is a need for continuing access to and promotion of those materials.”

Every Action Counts will now pass the baton back to Defra, and its new ministerial taskforce being established together with the Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Office of the Third Sector. Walton said the taskforce is expected to continue promoting the Third Sector Declaration on Climate Change which came out of the EAC programme, as a way for the sector to show its commitment.

But the climate change agenda is a long-term one and needs a long-term strategy to ensure it is “mainstreamed” into the wider work of the sector, he said. This will require new money, yet “I don’t see any new £4m pot coming from anywhere”.

Capacitybuilding organisations such as Capacitybuilders and Futurebuilders should be demanding that organisations they support have climate change action in all their strategies, and should be allocating their own budgets to programmes that help investees achieve progress “so they are not just left with lots of criteria to meet and no help to meet them”.

But Futurebuilders and Capacitybuilders told Charity News Alert that they didn’t require investees to be addressing the climate change agenda, except for Capacitybuilders' capital grants programme.

Who's Who: Tania Mason