GLOBAL ISSUES, LOCAL SOLUTIONS

Speech by Cllr Steve Reed, Leader of Lambeth Council. 

New Local Government Network fringe meeting at the Compass Conference, Westminster Central Hall, London, 9 June 2006.

Two of the biggest global challenges we face today are migration and climate change.  Two big issues that create challenges for those of us on the ground in local politics or as active members of local communities.  It’s remarkable in a place like Lambeth how quickly a global issue becomes a local one.  You watch an item on the news about a conflict in another part of the world, and it’s often not long before you see people from that place out on the streets in our Borough.  Globalisation has a particular immediacy in a place that already has a global population.  

The national Government sets the rules for immigration.  The job of local authorities is to integrate the new arrivals into our communities and make sure they get the services they need to support them.   The scale of immigration into places like Lambeth is itself a major challenge.  Over 150 languages are spoken in our schools; one third of our population changes every year.  This is an extraordinary level of diversity and change.  It represents a challenge to community cohesion when there’s a constantly changing community and, in many cases, new arrivals who are poorer and have different needs to the population they replace.   But its also what people who live in Lambeth like about it.  Every time we survey people and ask what they most like about living in our borough, they tell us it’s the diversity of our community.   

I have been trying to find a link between two of the themes we’re discussing today -  climate change and migration.   In poorer and hotter countries, climate change will destroy the livelihoods of populations that rely on subsistence farming.  That will inevitably create more migration.  But that’s not currently a primary cause of migration into the UK.  The link is that, in an interdependent world, as global issues have an impact on local communities it’s only local authorities, on the ground, that are close enough to communities to support them in finding solutions.   

I’ll look at climate change first.  If we’re going to cut carbon emissions, we have to find new ways of conserving or replacing energy sources.  It’s easy to see this only as a problem, but we can only really deal with it if we understand that it is an opportunity too.  Those opportunities are best seized when councils empower and support local people and local communities to create their own solutions, because that’s where the real innovation comes from.   

Climate change is a less immediate issue than immigration.  But it’s widely understood as a looming disaster demanding national and local action.  Right now, with growing public interest in finding solutions, there’s an opportunity to innovate and be at the cutting edge.   

Lambeth’s already agreed a plan to cut our own carbon emissions by 20% by 2012 – the most ambitious target in London.  We’re making our buildings more energy-efficient.  We’re looking at running part of our fleet on bio-fuels.  And we’re using sustainable models of design and energy use in our new buildings.  We’re boosting recycling and we’re promoting sustainable transport.   

We were one of the first councils to introduce an emissions-based policy on parking permits and we lead London in the use of car clubs that encourage people to use a pool car instead of owning their own.     

All of this makes a difference and it shows the Council setting an example on sustainability.  But it’s only a start and it only makes a limited impact on the community as a whole.  There’s much more we can achieve when we harness the enthusiasm and creativity of our citizens.  As an example, I want to talk about a group of small business owners and residents from in Brixton who have put together a proposal called ‘Brixton Green’.  To make it work, they need the Council to support them.  

Their aim is to work with the public authorities to shift the perception of Brixton from a challenging inner city area to one of the most desirable destinations in the UK for businesses and people keen to live and work in a sustainable, active community.

They want support for initiatives such as community gardening and food growing, community and business composting, waste exchange centres, dry shelters for bikes and rainwater collection facilities.  By taking action to promote sustainable development, sustainable businesses, energy conservation, sustainable transport and higher levels of recycling, they believe they can turn Brixton into an example of how a community can transform itself and take direct action to combat climate change at the same time.  This would make Brixton a leader in creating a sustainable community.  It's a model that offers much we can learn from.

Climate change is one of those big issues that makes people feel powerless.  That sense of having no control is a danger.  It breeds cynicism and disengagement that, ultimately, prevents change.  But here’s a proposal that challenges that.  While no single community can solve the problem alone, we can make small ripples, and enough small ripples can create a tidal wave of change.   This is communities working out their own solutions, with local authorities helping them to do it.  It’s a bottom up model.  It almost doesn’t need national Government intervention at all, other than to make sure the regulatory and legislative framework exists to let it happen.  

I’m interested, too, in what more councils can do to stimulate and support people’s desire to act locally against climate change.  Can we, for example, turn the council into the ‘custodian’ for local households’ carbon footprints and help them, through information and access to funding – to change their behaviours and lower their household carbon emissions, promoting sustainability across the Borough?  If we can develop this as a local model, then we can invite the Government to look at it as a possible model for use elsewhere.  As local authorities innovate, Government’s role is to identify what works and spread best practice.   

I want to touch briefly on immigration.  With new and often poorer communities arriving in our Borough over time, we need to find ways to build social cohesion by networking the new arrivals into the existing community and into existing support mechanisms.  We need to connect them with local services some of which will have to change to meet the new arrivals’ cultural expectations.   

Community cohesion is, at heart, about how we all live together.  That becomes easier when citizens feel they have a stake in the community they’re part of.  With levels of population churn that are very high, this becomes more difficult.  We need to build the infrastructure that makes communities want to stay as they become more prosperous.  That means good schools, affordable housing, high quality public services, access to skills training and jobs, and high quality leisure facilities.   

This creates social sustainability.  But there is a link back to environmental sustainability.  There’s the obvious point about how we build energy efficiency into the new buildings.  But we can also use the regeneration opportunities of projects like ‘Brixton Green’ to develop businesses and social enterprises that will provide the jobs and services our citizens need.  We can also link support for ‘green’ business start-ups with a requirement on them to offer, for instance, gateway employment and training opportunities to the long-term unemployed or kids leaving school without qualifications.  We can harness young people’s natural interest in sustainability by helping them to create businesses and social enterprises that will benefit them, the community and the environment.  There’s a similar point to be made about cultural and creative industries.  In a diverse community where different cultures rub up against each other, you get a vibrancy that often creates new forms of music or other art forms that make the place buzzy and exciting.  This is also a form of glue that holds communities together.  

There is an opportunity for communities and local authorities to really set the national pace.  By unleashing people’s own creativity, we promote innovation that offers solutions to global issues at a local level that no layer of Government acting alone can achieve.  It’s our closeness to communities and citizens that gives local government its edge in this respect.  Not by controlling, but by facilitating.  Our power is the power to create a framework for our community to find and deliver solutions on the ground.