Integrating local authority climate policies
Changes in how we farm and what we eat are needed to meet the UK’s net zero targets. This transition must continue to support jobs in the food and farming sector, and ensure people can access healthy, affordable food. For the changes to be successful, people from different organisations will need to work together. This project will explore the barriers key partners face when trying to work together on this issue in Gloucestershire. It will identify the most important plans in the county related to food and farming, and give the people involved in making these plans happen the chance to talk to one another about their work. The work will help identify actions that local councils and their partners can take which will support positive changes in the food and farming industry, and people’s health and wellbeing, whilst ensuring the most efficient use of public money.
Project lead: Aimee Morse (University of Gloucestershire)
Project collaborators: Gloucestershire Food and Farming Partnership; Climate Leadership Gloucestershire; Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group South West; Cotswolds National Landscape, Janet Dwyer (University of Gloucestershire), Daniel Keech (University of Gloucestershire), Fahimeh Malekinezhad (University of Gloucestershire), Philippa Simmonds (University of Gloucestershire)
Findings
- Local authorities can support change in the food and farming sectors through new and existing collaborations, including supporting innovation in food system transformations. The positive value of local authorities’ activity in these sectors should be recognised and appropriately resourced.
- Food for the Planet’s Every Mouthful Counts Toolkit is a useful framework for assessing existing and potential activity at the local level. Its use in the project helped overcome a sense of pessimism at the constrained resources many local authorities face and supported the development of actions for the county.
- The transition discourse at a local level is dominated by activity in the energy and transport sectors. Participatory workshops with local authority staff can raise awareness of existing activity in the food and farming sectors and result in the development of feasible actions to support transition in these sectors, which are generally under-represented in climate emergency strategies and discussions. Implementing such actions now may trigger positive feedback loops, which could ensure that there are fewer barriers to change in these sectors during local government reorganisation.
Suggestions for further research
- Employing the same phased approach to identifying feasible actions for local authorities across the country, through which they can support the transition to net zero in the food and farming sectors. The exact actions will look different in each county; however, the Every Mouthful Counts toolkit provides a positive starting point for discussions which can both raise the profile of the need for transformation in the food system, and support local authorities in identifying the actions most suitable for them given their current context and capacity.
