The Countryside Climate Network formed by UK100

A new group of rural councils from every region in England, under the banner of the Countryside Climate Network, will be campaigning on climate change issues.

The cross-party group of 21 councils is warning that ‘rural communities are at the frontline of feeling the effects of climate change’ and that ‘the countryside offers far more than a place to plant millions of trees to offset carbon emissions’.

UK100 says that, with the launch of the Countryside Climate Network, it is shifting its view from solely metropolitan regions, and making an active decision to ensure that the rural voices are part of discussion about climate action, spotlighting the role that more rural councils play in creating climate solutions.

The group will campaign to ensure that the voice of rural knowledge and experience on climate action is listened to in Westminster in the face of lower budgets and funding rules which favour large urban conurbations but may have less overall carbon reduction. The Countryside Climate Network is urging the government’s delayed £100 billion infrastructure fund to 'support the ambitions of rural areas and the opportunities countryside can provide'.

Steve Count, chair of the Countryside Climate Network and leader of Cambridgeshire County Council, said: “Cambridgeshire may be low-lying and vulnerable to sea level rise, yet far from a rural backwater, it has the highest ratio of entrepreneurs nationally, many focussed on advanced clean tech. It can be hard to meet our sustainable ambitions when unlike urban areas we have additional pressures of needing to fund essential bus services to remote communities or invest in broadband because the market doesn’t reach isolated areas. These examples of typical rural disadvantage combined with a funding gap in rural areas twice that of our urban counterparts, diminshes our stretched resources further.”