Environment action begins on your own doorstep: UK100 board member

A job with purpose and a passion for the environment is what drives our latest podcast guest Graham Duxbury, OBE.

Committed community campaigner Graham talks about all things climate in our latest podcast episode 15, The Decarbonisation Dialogue.

Graham has committed the last 15 years of his career to Groundwork charity.

The charity is a network of 15 organisations, working at national and local level. This means there is a spread of practical activities across the country. 

This includes work on behavior, approaches to sustainability, skills, prospects and supporting people into the green economy.

Much of the work involves helping people with their fuel bills as well as thinking about waste, recycling and how people travel. 

Members have been busy developing green community hubs which, for example, can be used by health visitors to run workshops to help people with energy bills. It initiates hubs for services, where people can volunteer their time to help make the community better, enabling people to enjoy that space.

Also, it provides a resource for those people who are not able to work for a whole variety of reasons, including young people not in education and training, helping people divert skills, for example into nature recovery and the green economy.

The charity is committed to building at a national level the partnerships and funding required to keep the vital work going.

Graham said: “Partnership really is in our DNA as an organisation. We were formed originally in 1981 out of a melting pot of ideas.

“There were some people at that point thinking about the future of our communities that were impacted by de-industrialisation, the decline of heavy industry and how that was leaving communities with job losses, with a lack of social infrastructure but also surrounded by dereliction and urban decay and blackened landscapes due to the closure of the coal mine and so on.

“That was mixing at the time with the first stirrings of consciousness about things like global warming. 

“People of the seventies and early eighties starting to understand what climate change really was and what it was all about.

“It was that mixture of influences that led to the experiment that Groundwork was originally. This asked; can you put professional skillsets at the disposal of local communities to support them to take action on the things that they can see and feel around them, that will make a difference to the quality of life around them starting with the local environment.”

The work began with simple projects, from litter picking which grew into sophisticated partnerships to tackling local community issues.

Regarding climate change, Graham added: “This is one of the biggest issues impacting communities and our quality of life. That is just going to ramp up as climate impacts become more obvious.

“I think we’re all aware also that climate change impacts first and worse on those people in society who have least, least choice, least protection, least power. 

“We’ve seen that on the global stage for decades, and it’s becoming evident in the UK when you have significant climate impacts. Whether that is extreme heat, flooding or air pollution, whatever it is, those people who are going to suffer the most are generally those people who are worst off.

“Also, they probably contribute least to the problem in the first place, so there is a clear injustice and inequity built in here and baked into the system.”

However, through his work at Groundwork, Graham understands that you cannot force people to change. He says it’s important not to ‘hector’ people but to understand where people are starting from, in terms of their own experience.

He said: “There is no point trying to lecture someone on climate change when they are struggling to put food on the table, or when they have not been in work for a long time, or they have a chronic health condition, or they are worried about knife crime on the estate. 

“That is not a conversation that is going to go anywhere.”

He says the journey of discovery is about understanding where people are in their lives and the issues they are facing. Graham is keen that conversations start which can ultimately lead to action.

“Help people think about what they want to change here and now in their lives and so many of those things actually start a conversation about the environment.

“Sometimes that’s about the environment you can see and feel and touch in your neighborhood. 

“For some people that might be about the quality of air that they are breathing, for other people it might be their energy bill and how to reduce that. If they reduce their energy bill, they are also probably going to be saving carbon along the way.

“People are starting to realise that it is a clear and present danger and there are dangerous impacts of climate change becoming evident and that is a good conversation starter in a community. How is this community going to change, how can we protect ourselves?”

Graham is positive about people’s ability and preference to change in the face of climate crisis.

He said: “I do think people care right across society, and I think people of all ages and all backgrounds care. 

“I think our biggest challenge is it’s so easy to be overwhelmed by the scale of the problem, that that leads to a degree of inertia; where do you start, what do you do, how am I ever going to be able to make a difference to these big challenging stories I read on the news?

“For some people that tips over from feeling overwhelmed into anxiety, genuine mental health issues, around worrying about the future.

“The antidote to that, I have always felt, is making sure people have agency to do something and to make some kind of change.

“That is also why working with a community to make that change is even more important because if you can do it in conjunction with others around you, that adds to that sense of urgency, and you’ve got some power and there is potential to make a difference.”

Throughout the work, Graham believes there is always a need to focus more on giving people a sense of power. 

“If everyone is doing it, it must be normal. The vast majority of people want to make the changes that are being talked about, or they see the positive potential of those changes.

“Life will be better if we get there.”

Graham understands that local government is integral, and he’s excited about the part he can play as a member of the UK100 group.

His passion however is to encourage and nourish the change makers of tomorrow. They are the leaders of the future. 

They will eventually pick up the work from Graham’s legacy. They will take on the challenges of building strong communities for the future and nurturing a healthy planet for the generations to come.

Let us know what you think of The Decarbonisation Dialogue. If you have ideas for guests or other podcast suggestions, please contact us at podcast [email protected]

We’d love to know what you think.

All episodes are available for streaming or download from your preferred podcast platform including Apple, Amazon and Spotify. The recordings are also available from our website.