Bovey Climate Action – history in Bovey Tracey

Some background – a bit about our forerunner Bovey Climate Action

Climate Action: Bovey & Heathfield was set up in 2019 and was known at that time as Climate Emergency: Bovey & Heathfield. But the group was not the first in the area to be active about Climate Change, as back in 2007, many years ahead of other groups, Bovey Climate Action (BCA) was born.

The group comprised local, concerned residents and experts on climate change, and described itself as a community organisation which acted locally to reduce the effects of climate change on the people of Bovey Tracey and Heathfield.

There were three main areas of activity:

Local Action: Activities to reduce carbon emissions in the surrounding area, These activities included a very successful Community Garden, developed with the National Trust, which helped and still helps people grow local food, and a wood fuel group which used to meet regularly throughout the winter to fell and process wood from Dartmoor National Park’s woodlands.

The group mapped the levels of insulation in houses across Bovey Tracey, and found that levels were quite low. They also loaned out energy monitors to households through a scheme in which primary school children took the monitors home. In 2009 250 local households received a free energy saving light bulb and an energy condition report.

Public events, including films and talks, to let people know what climate change was doing to our planet, and how it would affect our futures. Locally issues included flooding, transport, energy supplies and potential power cuts. As the group said, the information could be scary – but the group would try to consider positively what could be done, so that the future would be better for everyone.

National lobbying (including the then MP), and locally to increase the work that public bodies did to make a difference. BCA couldn’t solve all the problems locally – for example, to reduce the carbon emissions from cars and lorries, which created about a third of Devon’s emissions, changes to the transport infrastructure would be needed. BCA was also a member of county-wide and national organisations such as the Low Carbon Communities Network (which the group helped to set up) which work on these issues.

BCA had connections to Tim Smit of the Eden Project and others with a national profile. One member of the group was instrumental in the development of the Devon Council Strategy on the Climate Challenge in 2005.

BCA left a powerful legacy for the community of Bovey Tracey and Heathfield. A number of its members remain active and supportive of CABH today and we hope to learn from their experiences and wisdom and build on what they achieved.