Aire Action Leeds

What is Aire Action Leeds?

Aire Action Leeds, is a river management partnership in Leeds working to create better waterways for people and wildlife; now and in the future.

Aire Action Leeds focuses on the River Aire, the Leeds & Liverpool canal and the Aire & Calder Navigation that all run through Leeds.

The partnership involves a number of organisations working together to protect and improve the appearance, wildlife richness and encourage more people to actively use the waterfront whether they live, work or visit the waterways and their waterfront. A network of cleaner, greener and safer waterway will support and encourage more vibrant activity for all users. This will also benefit and enhance the wildlife of the waterways and waterfront; generating a sustainable green linear park. Working together will make the waterfront a more vibrant place for people to enjoy and a better place for wildlife such as ducks, swans, herons, salmon, trout, otters and watervoles.

The Partners Aire Action Leeds is part of the Leeds Initiative. The core partners who support and guide the work of Aire Action Leeds are: British Waterways, Environment Agency, Leeds City Council, Yorkshire Water. The environment forum is represented at Aire Action Leeds by Kevin Sunderland of the Aire and Calder Rivers Group and Ian Moore of the Inland Waterways Association. Kevin is focussed on imporvemnts to benefit wildlife and Ian on imporvemnts to benefit people (although both have a general interest in imporving the Aire for both people and wildife).

The partnership of Aire Action Leeds was previously SORM (State Of the River Management).

Three working groups are being set up to help deliver on Aire Action Leeds' objectives.

1. Communication & Publicity
Market and promote as a recreational and educational resource, promote events, accessibility, heritage, art, wildlife, signage and interpretation. Will work with businesses, users, volunteers along the waterways.

2. Planning & Policy
Influence planning and policy processes to improve the accessibility, character and environmental quality. Driving force for implementing the Leeds Waterfront Strategy. Will work with a number of different stakeholders along the waterways.

3. Stewardship
Operational delivery of improvement projects to improve the Environmental Quality and Appearance. Will work with businesses, users, volunteers along the waterways.

Currently our reps; Kevin sunderland of the Aire and Calder Rivers Group and Ian Moore of the Inland Waterways Association both sit on the planning and policy working group. This works well as Ian is particularly knowledgable about waterways users and their needs and Kevin has specialist knowledgeable about wildlife and it's needs. I am trying to bring voluntary sector people from the other working groups into the environment forum. If you would like to represent the forum on Aire Action Leeds please contact me jon.holland@leedsvoice.org.uk 0113 277 2227.

Linking Community Development and Environmental Justice

Linking Community Development and Environmental Justice

Meetings planned for 20 February and 12 March, Leeds .

Community development has always had 'social justice' as a core principle. As climate change starts to impact (more frequently and more severely) on our lives, with a social justice perspective we can see that it is the poorest and most marginalised communities that struggle the most. For example, many are still recovering from last year's floods. Broaden your focus to a global view and this pattern is repeated, the lifestyles of the 'haves' impacting greatest on the 'have-nots'. The largest carbon footprints are being paid for by people with the smallest footprints. We need to be looking at and addressing social and environmental justice in our community development work and developing tools and analysis that can help address these injustices through collective action, sharing of knowledge, learning from each other, reflecting on our practice.
- Are you involved in community development and/or environmental justice work?
- Do you have knowledge and experience that you are willing to contribute to creating learning materials?
- And would you like to help shape a conference on the links between community development and environmental justice in Leeds on the 2nd April? (more details of this conference will follow)
Then we'd like to hear from you!

As part of the Federation for Community Development Learning's continuing work on environmental sustainability issues (funded through the government's Every Action Counts programme) we would like to invite you to two morning meetings, followed by lunch, to:
- Meet others interested in environmental justice and community development
- discuss what we mean by environmental justice
- explore how environmental justice issues can be applied in community development work - share examples of good practice
- suggest and begin drafting learning materials and learning ideas for a 3 hour taster pack and for a day long conference in Leeds
- decide the aims and content of the conference on 2nd April (Leeds Library has already been booked) and who should be there.

The meetings will be held on Wednesdays 20th February and 12th March, 10.00am - 2.00pm at the Henry Moore Institute, next to Leeds City Art Gallery in the city centre. FCDL can support travel costs and childcare/dependent care costs. If you are interested in attending, please contact Sue Leach at FCDL: admin@fcdl.org.uk or phone 0114 253 6770. Places are limited, so please contact us soon.

These websites were mentioned by the organisers as providing useful background reading on the concept of Environmental Justice
.
www.redpepper.org.uk/article320.html

www.capacity.org.uk/resourcecentre/informationsources.html

Leeds Strategic Plan (Local Area Agreement)

Leeds Voice's wepage has a lot of information about LAA's and the Leeds Strategic Plan, including the report of consultation, the 135 national indicators from which Leeds must select 35 imporvement priority indicators.

See what the environment-related indicators are.

See: http://www.leedsvoice.org.uk/Current%20Issues/LAA.htm

I am looking at what our influence has been. Immediately I notice that reducing the Leeds' carbon footprint has been expanded to consider other environmental impacts. It now reads reduce Leeds' ecological footprint as was suggested in the forums' response to the consultation.