WHAT ON EARTH WINTER 2020/21
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Director’s view Dr Richard Dixon, Director @Richard_Dixon
The FoES team working from home.
One year to go. By the time you read this we will be coming to the end of our Just and Green Recovery Week of Action and an online Global Gathering of talks, workshops and strategy session on climate change will be well underway. The delay of the UK Budget and resulting uncertainty about the scale of the Scottish Budget for next year has meant it has been hard to talk to the Scottish Government about making sure the recovery from COVID-19 is both just and green. The Week of Action has involved working with many of the groups who sent a letter to Nicola Sturgeon in May, and saw hundreds of people from across the country telling politicians of the need to create a better Scotland as we emerge from the pandemic. Mid-November marks the mid-point of the UN climate talks in Glasgow, if they had gone ahead as planned. Now postponed until late 2021, this means the world’s governments have escaped the global scrutiny these annual talks always bring. We are already central to what will happen around these talks, having helped create the coalition of civil society groups that is working together across the UK, and we host the Scottish coalition co-ordinator Quan who you’ll hear from inside this issue. We’ll be helping organise whatever mass demonstration can take place and also looking after the international Friends of the Earth delegates who come to the conference – COVID-19 permitting – to speak up on behalf of people and nature around the world. With this issue of What on Earth you will find an appeal asking you to help us work, over the next year, to make sure that politicians cannot forget about climate change, and activists and campaigners are well prepared to make the most of the global talks coming to Glasgow.
Hundreds of people from across the country have told politicians of the need to create a better Scotland as we emerge from the pandemic
