The Battersea Society and Climate Change
By Jenny Sheridan and Clare Graham
In November, Wandsworth Borough Council sponsored the “Together on Climate Change” Festival, held at Battersea Arts Centre.
Led by the Battersea Society’s newest committee, the Community committee, we participated in this fledgling event. Our awareness of and involvement in environmental issues is more wide ranging than you may realise.
Our Planning committee has long emphasized the importance of sustainability and environmental factors when assessing individual planning applications and when evaluating and commenting on documents which are the basis for Council policy, such as the new Wandsworth Local Plan.
Our Open Spaces committee exists to protect and promote our local green spaces and represents us on the Wandsworth Environment Forum. The Forum aims to keep the Council up to the mark on its Wandsworth Environment and Sustainability Strategy, Air Quality Action Plan and similar policies.
The Open Spaces committee recently published our own walking guide, Discovering Battersea's Open Spaces and offered four popular walking tours as part of the 2021 Open House weekends.
Linking Battersea’s Open Space, a project to improve the connections between open spaces for pedestrians and cyclists, is in the works.
In Battersea Matters we encourage awareness of environmental issues and how we as individuals can make a difference, for example through the articles explaining biodiversity in Wandsworth Common (Summer 2020), Turning Grey to Green in Southfields (Summer 2021) and Debating the Impact of Mini-golf (Summer 2021).
We support public and carbon-neutral transport – most recently helping to save the 19 bus route and improve the dangerous pedestrian crossing at the north end of Battersea Bridge.