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A Climate Action Festival held in Newry by community group Newry 2020 has been proclaimed an outstanding success by participants.
Guest Speaker at the Newry City Climate Action Festival was environmental activist and TV presenter Duncan Stewart. Stewart who presents the programme Eco Eye took a keen interest in the Albert Basin Park development and the untapped potential for Newry Canal, and voiced his concern at the dire consequences for the Ship Canal of a fixed bridge as part of the Southern Relief Road.
On Sunday he saw the beautiful Carlingford Lough Greenway for the first time when he cycled the route from Newry to Carlingford and back.
Speakers at Newry Conference and Banqueting Centre on Friday night also included Michele Bryans, East Side Partnership who spoke on how the Connswater Greenway Project transformed Belfast, Adrian O'Hare, Narrow Water Bridge Community Network who gave a talk on the Narrow Water Bridge and proposals for a Cycle Expressway and James McConville, Newry 2020 on Why Newry Needs a Park.
Speaking on the Newry 2020 Albert Basin Park presentation Stewart said "I see wonderful potential in your town, I see wonderful heritage here. In some ways you say why hasn't this been realised, this wonderful vision that has been presented here by James [McConville] tonight, an incredible concept for this city, and you kind of say, at least you aren't damaged, your town hasn't been destroyed. You still have got the essence of a really good town here and it hasn't been damaged by the development that has been taken place all over Ireland that has done so much damage to our towns, and has taken the life out of them too. I do accept the criticism, like car parking dominating the town. It's a major problem all over Ireland."
Tremendous Potential
Stewart also expressed an interest in potentially basing an Eco Eye programme around the Park and Canal. "I do want to come back here, because I am inspired by what I heard. I have always seen this canal as having huge potential but really today it struck me the tremdeous potential of that canal"
Attendees on Saturday saw representatives from many groups and organisations talk about their projects including Social Farms and Gardens NI; Yellow Road Wellbeing Centre and Social Farm; Barcroft Community Garden; Farming Carbon; RARE - The Invisible Tree; Reusing Skips; U3A Community Garden; The Pocket Forest; Anna Kernahan, Youth Climate Activist and ACRE (Active Communities Restoring the Earth).
Co-ordinator of the event Maurice McConville, Newry 2020 spoke of the success of the Festival "We are now living through tremendous changes to our environment that are determining our future existence. The Climate Action Festival, highlighted over 20 different organisations and individuals doing their bit to address the crisis facing humanity. The success of the Festival demonstrated that voluntary groups and oranisation are addressing global issue locally. We are confident that the through the networks developed, we can increase collaberative actions and our effectiveness in mitigating climate change"
Adrian O'Hare of Narrow Water Bridge Community Network spoke of his groups idea of a Cycle Expressway on the existing Omeath Road to supplement the existing greenway, as an additional benefit of the Narrow Water Bridge.
Stewart could see the potential for that, pointing out that the main objective for Cycle routes should be to get more people commuting on bikes as part of their everyday lives and the emphasis shouldn't be just on the tourism potential of such routes. "I think that whole approach would be wonderful and I can see that idea going much further. When you get that done I can see that spreading in all directions."
He added "I'm a great believer in the concept, that it's the commuter cyclists. What we have got to do is give people the choice, give them the safe conditions for cycling that are needed so that families can cycle to school and people can go short distances to work on a bicycle. We have to move away from the car centric world that we have gone through looking at climate change and looking at biodiversity loss.
We are complicit in funding that war
Stewart spoke of how our actions here can have a knock on effect world wide "You are now looking at the situation in Russia/ Ukraine from the Russian invasion and we look at the fact that we are so complicit in this war, with the money that we spend every time we put petrol and diesel in our cars and when we use natural gas in our homes
"We are complicit in funding that war. Every day One Billion Euro goes to Russia [from EU] from money that we spend on our fossil fuels. We are funding that war!" he added.
Other events held over the weekend included Open Gardens at The Cabbage Patchers, Warrenpoint and Rostrevor Community Garden where those involved got the chance to show their projects off to a larger audience. Stalls were also hosted by Eden Project Communities and The Big Lunch and The Woodland Trust.
