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Campaigners revitalised by Local Democracy Day

SECA's annual gathering brought together more than 100 people to share campaigning experience and expertise and to meet in person for the first time since before the Covid pandemic. A wide range of speakers offered sage advice from their differing perspectives on how to engage with local officials...

Top tips on how to engage with and influence councils

How do you put pressure on local councils to take action on the climate? When SECA members met at their 2023 annual gathering they compared notes on which tactics had worked best. These are the nine ‘top tips’ that emerged from a rich discussion, a distillation of many years of campaigning...

Methane campaigners highlight ongoing emissions

Despite the commitments made at the COP26 climate summit in November 2021, methane and other gases continue to be released from onshore oil wells. This blog by Emily Mott of the Weald Action Group describes a recent site survey and calls for corporate action to follow government words. The...

Good COP? Bad COP? COP out?

While the COP27 talks in Egypt did not deliver any dramatic new initiatives to address the climate crisis, moving the debate to Africa delivered a more inclusive COP and an agreement to help the most vulnerable cope with the impacts of climate change. Thalia Griffiths asks what happens next. With...

Attendees Informed by Nature at Summer Gathering

SECA Co-founder Nicola Peel brought like-minded people together in early September to discuss how we can learn from nature. In this blog she describes what participants got up to, and how we can find out more about the topics discussed. Over the first weekend in September Nicola Peel held a Summer...

New online tool puts local data at campaigners’ fingertips

Friends of the Earth have developed an online tool which gathers data from each Local Authority area to help campaigners identify the key areas where action is needed. This blog describes how the Near You data tool was developed and how campaign groups can use it to push for change from local...

We want affordable green energy, not fossil fuels!

Divest East Sussex is campaigning to put pressure on East Sussex County Council to stop investing its pension fund cash in fossil fuel companies. Supporters organised a fast and vigil outside County Hall in Lewes in the run-up to July's vote. This blog by Gabriel Carlyle outlines the issues...

Further, Faster, Wider, Louder

How can internal Scrutiny Committees help to drive climate action within councils? This was a question posed by West Sussex County Council recently when they invited Geoff Barnard to speak at an orientation day for scrutiny committee members. This blog explains how he approached it and sets out...

Can a new computer tool combat human silo thinking?

On 6 June 2022, sustainable living expert Pooran Desai OBE gave a talk in an online Knowledge Sharing event hosted by the South East Climate Alliance (SECA). Pooran summarised his work in sustainability over the past quarter of a century and then talked about his latest online tool, the OnePlanet...

“The Big Conversation” – Local Democracy in Action!

Horsham District Council’s Big Conversation has opened a discussion across the whole district about climate change, the environment and development pressures. This proved a good initiative, but, as this blog from Tony Whitbread argues, much more needs to be done. Three separate meetings in Horsham...