Edinburgh Climate Change Strategy

The City of Edinburgh Council has set out its vision for Edinburgh that “by 2015, Edinburgh will lead the most successful and sustainable city region in Northern Europe and sustain the highest quality of life of any UK city.” This is a major challenge not just for the Council but the City, its partners and communities. The ESDP has identified that the facilitation of the development of a Climate Change Strategy for Edinburgh is a vital and key contribution that it can make to the City and its partners in pursuit of this vision.

The UK Prime Minister recently called climate change the world's greatest environmental challenge. Certainly human induced climate change is already widely believed to be at least partly responsible for a number of recent unusual climatological events. The 10 warmest years on record have all been since 1990. Over the last century average global temperature have risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius. This is thought to be the most dramatic rise in the Northern Hemisphere during the last 1000 years. There is good evidence that human induced climate change played a part in the hot summer of 2003. This heat wave resulted in 26,000 premature deaths in Europe, cost $13.5 billion and was calculated to be 1 in 800 year event. There is widespread international scientific consensus that such events are likely to become more extreme and more frequent presenting real challenges to societies across the globe. There are also a number of possible climate suprises that could occur, although unlikely there is the remote possibility of a cooling of the UK's climate.

Climate change presents significant challenges to the democracies of Europe and the US as well as potential major social and economic impacts in many developing nations. There are in general two approaches to this issues. Both need to be pursued urgently. GHG emission reduction and climate change adaptation. These actions need to occur at the local level, but in a way that is co-ordinated and integrated, both nationally and international

The process which has been initiated by the ESDP will engage key businesses and organisations from across Edinburgh and the UK to develop a Climate Change Strategy for the City. This strategy will enable significant local action, on the foundation of best scientific advice and shall be integrated into a UK response to this large and growing environmental challenge.

A workshop will be held in Edinburgh in the early part of 2005 to further develop this issue. Further information shall be posted here. If you would like to be invited or involved in the further development of this initiative then please contact us.