At the start of the 2020, the Alliance and many of its members were gearing up for a year of sustained action on climate, after having learnt that the annual UN Climate talks were on their way to Glasgow in November. Since then, things have changed immeasurably due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe. Many of our planned actions ahead of COP26 have understandably been delayed.
However, the climate crisis remains ever present and climate justice ever important. At the Alliance, we think we should use the extra lead in time to next year’s landmark climate talks in Glasgow to ensure we do even more to make sure they deliver for people and planet. Let’s reignite our collective efforts!
Where had we got to before the pandemic hit Scotland?
By February earlier this year, the Alliance had held a number of planning meetings with over 50 of its member organisations to discuss our shared priorities and how we could most meaningfully engage with COP26 coming to Scotland.
As a result, we collaboratively developed our COP26 Strategy, set clear priorities for what we wanted to achieve and launched a number of working groups to begin taking specific areas of work forward. These areas included communications (messaging, social media and events planning), developing a climate charter, and organising a public photo and film exhibition to raise awareness of climate justice issues.
But for many of us, work on these areas paused, as organisation had to ‘pivot’ their work in order to deal with new and pressing short-term challenges brought on by COVID-19. For the Alliance, that meant completely changing our calendar of events by moving them all online, re-purposing some and delaying others.
What’s the plan now?
As things have settled, time has allowed us to look beyond the immediate challenges of working from home and delivering our services online, and think about what comes next in our road to COP26.
We’ve now refreshed our COP26 strategy with new timelines for the actions we wish to collectively undertake along with our members. Our changed timeline includes:
- 15th March 2021 deadline for our climate justice themed photo and film competition
- April/May 2021 public photography and film exhibition entitled ‘The Climate Crisis from The Front Line’
- September 2021 Annual Conference themed around the Climate Crisis
Throughout August and September, Alliance staff will restart planning on all areas of our strategy through each working group. Alliance members can log in to the Alliance Community to join these working groups or get in touch to find out more details.
What can you do to get involved?
Here are a few ideas:
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Keep an eye on our events page, and join our working groups to be involved in further shaping our climate action.
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Write a blog for us on a climate related issue
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Enter our photo competition which is now open
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Lead a session at our annual conference in 2021
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Get involved with our Policy Committee and work with us on new climate policy asks
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Talk about climate justice with your friends and family and raise awareness!