How does a community respond to the challenges of extreme weather and an uncertain future? That was the subject of the Climate Conversation the Biosphere organised in December, as part of the Welsh Government’s Climate Week programme. Read in Welsh.
We chose to hold our event in Tal-y-bont where there is already an inspiring example of community action. After a serious flood in 2012 drove many people out of their homes for up to a year, the Talybont Community Flood Group was set up to support those affected. Later it began to research natural flood management, including tree-planting. Out of that came Coed Talybont, which has about 60 members and has so far planted over 30,000 trees. The Woodland Trust provide most of these, some locally sourced, and funds a part time coordinator.
Working in small groups and coordinating lift shares and cake, the volunteers go out once or twice a week over the autumn and winter. For the past few years they have been working with the Lloyd-Williams family at Moelgolomen, who are planting 80,000 native trees in hedges to break their fields up into smaller plots for rotational grazing. They are also planting ‘leaky dams’ made of living willow on a nearby smallholding to slow the flow of surface runoff.
Our event, which drew a mix of farmers, community volunteers, NGO staff, artists and academics, began with a walk up the hill at Moelgolomen. This was the ideal setting to discuss how to manage the flow of water through the landscape, not just preventing floods but also storing water against drought. This work is most effective when all the farms in a catchment work together with other agencies, which is the aim of a series of co-design workshops for the Ceulan catchment supported by Tir Canol.
The tree-planting work both requires and builds trust and understanding, as the costs and responsibilities are shared out between community volunteers, landowners, government, the Woodland Trust and other NGOs. Several farmers had come because they were interested in planting more trees themselves, and in connecting with their communities, and many of us left with plans for future activities.
It’s not just tree-planting that can bring people on to farms. The community potato-weeding sessions that came out of the Biosphere’s Tyfu Dyfi project were also very rewarding. Maybe this has something to do with the need to do something positive in the face of an uncertain future. “I can’t even think about climate change as a parent, because there is a lot of pressure around it and the science feels so bleak,” as one person said.
Volunteering of course has its limits, and farmers will often prefer to pay a contractor. But people talked enthusiastically about the benefits of getting out into nature, exercising and especially being part of a group with a purpose. There is great value too in the shared learning that arises when farmers and community members come together, allowing new ideas to surface.
“What inspires me is that a group of people comes together who really enjoy the experience of being outdoors and working together to create something important for the future. And over three years we are already seeing the results of our work transforming the landscape,” said Linda Denton, Coed Talybont coordinator who helped organise the event.
The conversation at our event ranged widely, as people shared experiences from as far afield as Australia and Ireland, and covered topics from archaeology and minority languages to grassland botany and breeds of sheep. The conversation continued over lunch in the local pub, and further thoughts arrived by e-mail afterwards. “Things like this energise me!” was a typical response to the event.
One person wrote afterwards about some of the topics we hadn’t had time for: poor public transport, the role of wind farms and pylons in the countryside and the need for wildlife corridors, adding: “We are as disturbed about the way governments are responding to the climate concerns with short term decisions, as the climate change itself.”
Another, inspired by the event but also seeing the scale of the challenge ahead called for more radical action:
“The event at Moelgolomen was a good first step in starting to create a community willing to do more than talk. We could try and meet on a regular basis with more of a focus on what we can do locally to make our communities more resilient to the coming shocks… Another group could look at resilience at household and parish level….and create a network for caring for the more vulnerable members of their community and work on preparedness for power outages and future pandemics.”
This could be a job description for the Dyfi Biosphere. Our task is to create spaces where people can connect with nature and cultural heritage, and the Climate Conversation was an example of this. The ingredients for success seem to be an open invitation, a clear intention, getting outdoors, grounding the big ideas in practical realities (trees, soil and water), and a good lunch.
The playful postcard sketches shared out at the beginning of the walk also played a part. When business as usual starts to break down, we need to engage the imagination and welcome fresh thinking. We have plenty of that in the Biosphere, and maybe now is our time.
Images: Naomi Heath, Jane Powell.
Comments