This again took place in the city centre venue of St George’s Church Hall. Wolfgang Kuchler who took on the role of Coordinator of the group last autumn Chaired the meeting. Wolf welcomed Cllr Suleman Sarwar who has been the PCC Cabinet Member for Climate Change for the last12 months. He was pleased to briefly introduce the Council’s recently approved Climate Strategy and Action Plan 2026-30.
Key aspects of this are decarbonising the council estate, climate education, adaptation and taking positive action on biodiversity. Other priority recommendations from the 2024 Climate Jury which feature in the plan include improvements to public transport, promotion of active travel and increasing support for locally grown food. A Climate Forum to bring anchor institutions together has gathered twice. The most recent one was on local solar energy.
Short reports of some CAP activities over the last year were shared by members present. These covered a stall on Fishergate for ‘Buy Nothing Day’ and one at the Valentine’s Day ‘Love not Hate’ community day. This contrasted with the COP 30 Climate Action march in Manchester in November where Preston Greenpeace and CAP members witnessed abuse and harassment by individuals from the far right.
Five members were elected to the Committee and a few amendments to the Constitution to reduce the requirements for a set number of meetings, were agreed.
After enjoying a good ‘bring and share’ spread, a talk by Joanna Fianu the Chair of Fairtrade Lancashire, followed. Her map of Fairtrade exports and imports demonstrated colonial connections. Pinpointing cocoa and coffee, she showed how the changing climate was negatively affecting producers, but how the Fairtrade premium was supporting them to adapt.