Trewin Restorick

Like many people, I have been struck by the level of devastation and personal misery caused by the floods in Cumbria. Obviously, it is impossible to pinpoint any one weather event on climate change but the scientists have been telling us that rainfall such as this will be more frequent and intensive in the future.

Whenever I talk about climate change I always stress that we have already locked a certain amount of carbon into the atmosphere and that we need to be prepared for the implications of this. Sadly I think that we are being let down by politicians and that we do not have a coherent adaptation strategy. We need to make people more aware of the increased risk of flooding and crucially we need to help them cope with the implications.

On a practical level this could involve ensuring that when houses are repaired they are made more food resilient for instance by placing plugs and electrical circuits higher up the walls, by changing the type of flooring, etc. We need to educate people about how they can reduce the impact of flooding before it happens. For example, many small businesses place their servers in the basement – the worst place this essential piece of equipment could be in a flood.

We also need to encourage people to start planning ahead in the case of a flood. We have already helped a number of charities start to do this. In an old peoples’ home it could make the difference between life and death. In a school this planning could be part of an interesting and innovative educational exercise. However it is done I think that this sort of planning needs to be significantly higher up the political agenda.

Copenhagen

I have been asked to give a number of presentations on Copenhagen recently which I can assure you is a great cure for insomnia both for me and the poor recipients of the talks. Whilst researching the presentation I was struck by a photograph of the delegates at the Bali event which is part of the series leading up to Copenhagen. There were literally thousands of people sitting in a room.

Copenhagen will be an even bigger jamboree with a reported 20,000 people attending. I am baffled as to how it has become this juggernaut of an event. Surely we would be all better served if just world leaders got together to agree on the course of action. What difference can those attending make as I am sure that the key protagonists will be guarded by an impenetrable wall of security?

What we do need to do is ensure that before they attend the event, the leaders are aware of the huge level of desire there is for them to reach a meaningful agreement. As part of this process we have recently launched COP-Art which is an opportunity for people to create a visual petition of environmental images which we can present to the leaders demonstrating the level of public concern for action.

Green Awards

I was a judge for the Green Award awards this year and went along to the awards ceremony on Wednesday night. Normally I find judging an inspiring experience unfortunately this wasn't the case this year. Some of the applicants were exceptional but overall the quality and quantity wasn't great.

I know that a number of award schemes have suffered this year with sponsors dropping out and fewer organisations finding the time needed to complete application forms with a recession biting. I think that there is a role for Awards but there does seem to be too many and perhaps the recession will ensure that only the ones that are truly valued survive.

Frustration

Life running a charity is bloody frustrating. You can spend ages developing an idea and writing a funding bid. This bid is then sent off to the funder and you usually wait a number of months before getting a short letter telling you that your bid has been either successful or unsuccessful. I am not superstitious but decisions often seem to go in cycles of good or bad news.

Last week we had a couple of knock-backs. One was for a really interesting practical research project that we wished to run with a Housing Association and the other was to develop some environmental initiatives in partnership with Premier League Football clubs. I thought both bids were great (mind you I usually do) and am disappointed that they were unsuccessful. What is really frustrating is that there is never enough feedback to learn why the bids failed which makes it incredibly hard to develop and learn as an organisation.

Green IT

During the week we had a stall at the Green IT Expo event at the Barbican Centre and I gave a couple of presentations linking Green IT to the development of the Low Carbon Transition Plan. There is no doubt that companies are slowly waking up to the huge energy guzzling impact of their data centres and servers. There is also no doubt that vendors see this as a massive sales opportunity and are piling into the space like there is no tomorrow.

As with any relatively new area of work it is a complete free-for-all at the moment. There are very few recognised standards, finding any pure and accurate data is near impossible and the imagination of some of the green claims is a tribute to ingenuity rather than reality. What also surprised me is that the sector is still predominantly concentrating on what it can do to cut costs and build efficiency rather than exploring the huge impact IT could make on cutting other carbon emissions – for example through reducing the need to travel.

Trewin Restorick is chief executive of environmental charity and advisory body Global Action Plan

This article first appeared on his weekly blog Trewin Says