Portsmouth Climate Choir is part of a national movement called the Climate Choir Movement, which was founded with the intention of using the power of music to draw attention to critical environmental issues and mobilise public opinion. It also stressed the importance of collaborating with other organisations in the fight for climate justice while celebrating the power of nature, with the firmly held belief that ‘together is stronger’. With this in mind, two of the choir’s members attended the city’s most recent Green Forum held in Victoria Park. Viola Langley reports.
Also in attendance were representatives from Portsmouth Tree Wardens, Friends of the Earth, Portsmouth City Council and the Portsmouth Conservation Volunteers. Tree wardens Trish and David spoke about their work around the city: planting trees, tending to their orchards and community gardens, and working with schools to nurture a love of nature among young children.
As we all know, Portsmouth is celebrating its 100 years’ city status this year and Pompey Friends of the Earth are hoping to commemorate this with a series of walks and talks with environmental themes about how Portsmouth has changed over the last century. Rachel, from the group, also outlined the work that they had been doing, including depaving in some areas of the city, and spoke of hopes for strategic urban garden development in the future.
Portsmouth City Council has been awarded Nature Towns and Cities funding after a successful bid to the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Rachel, an officer from the council, related their plans to transform the city’s green infrastructure over three years for the benefit of residents and the natural world, paving the way for Portsmouth to become an officially recognised Nature City.
Two matters that the Climate Choir particularly wanted to highlight at the Forum were the Climate Scorecards and the National Emergency Briefing film. Members of several of Portsmouth’s environmental groups were in attendance at Climate Emergency UK’s event held in the autumn in Southsea to discuss Portsmouth Council’s Scorecards. The Scorecards assess each council’s action taken towards net zero and, while gaps need to be highlighted and public pressure built to push for faster progress, we also consider that not enough promising work that IS being done gets recorded or communicated.
Some members of the Portsmouth Climate Choir were in the audience for the National Emergency Briefing which brought together leading scientists, security specialists, economists, health experts and environmental researchers in London last November. The message was clear, urgent and grounded in evidence: climate change is a present reality that affects security, health, food, infrastructure, nature and the economy. The information from the National Briefing can be found here and a short film has been made which will be available in the spring. The Climate Choir would like each member of the public to watch this as a matter of urgency. At the Forum it was asked if interested parties would be able to make this available for public viewing and the Big Screen in Guildhall Square was suggested.
The meeting closed with a wonderful talk by Lindsay Clifton, a member of Portsmouth Conservation Volunteers, who spoke enthusiastically about the latest Butterfly transect that has been carried out along the Tipnor Coastal Walkway. Out of 59 butterfly species in the UK, Hampshire has 43!
While we left the Green Forum celebrating all the wonderful nature we have on our doorstep, we were given a stark reminder of all we could lose if measures aren’t taken now to preserve what we have. The need to collaborate, to find a better way to communicate all the wonderful projects and events that take place every week and disseminate vital information about our climate emergency has never been greater.
More volunteers and members for each of these organisations are very much welcome.
Portsmouth Tree Wardens have a Facebook page here.
Friends of the Earth can be found here.
Portsmouth Climate Choir are on Facebook and Instagram and are part of the National Climate Choir movement.
Information about Climate Scorecards can be found here.
Image ‘Victoria Park, Portsmouth – geograph.org.uk – 4435290.jpg’ reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 licence.
