Key words:  Youth climate protest/ Monitoring data / DPC and Sewage Plant / Earth Hour and Permaculture

Recent events have illuminated once more how significant our environment is to us all. On the positives is the recent youth protest that took place last Friday by our schools supporting marches taking place elsewhere in the world. These regular protests were started by the very brave and determined young lady from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, who has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for her sustained efforts on raising support for action on Climate Change. It is hoped their voices will be heard and add more pressure for urgent action from every sector of society especially policy makers and the business community. The ESG supported the march as did other activists and interested parties – good luck to the students in continuing a sustained campaign!

The ESG lobbies for action on climate change year round with our monitoring of the development of renewable energy programme in Gibraltar as well as polluting sources and activity, commonly linked to production of greenhouse gasses. For anyone unaware of our core aims and objectives we invite you to visit our website at esg-gib.net   and click on objectives documents.

The ESG is having a series of mtgs over the next few weeks regarding Gibraltar’s traffic woes, air and noise pollution and more. We await publication of the data being gathered by the mobile monitoring units in place around Gibraltar to shed light on suspected air pollution hotspots. This data is extremely important to provide a broader and more accurate picture of the air quality around us.

Next weeks DPC agenda on Tuesday 26^th March carries a number of important projects for Gibraltar including the presentation on the Sewage, or rather, Waste water treatment plant. The ESG has presented its feedback on a number of aspects of the project so far including some concerns about visual impacts, and noise and air pollution from associated activity linked to the plant albeit sited elsewhere. If you have time why not attend the DPC session where this game changing project for Gibraltar will be debated. That’s next Tuesday 26^th at 9.30am.

Earth Hour, an important global environmental campaign, held to draw attention to energy and other environmental issues, will take place on the 30^th March. As well as the official recognition of this important event, by way of the switching off of lights at our key iconic sites locally, we plan a special talk and clean up for the campaign, and am sure we shall hear about other activity in the coming days. Check out earthhour.org for information on this inspiring campaign.

We would like to also inform you of a very special talk coming up, being given by one of our close colleagues on the subject of Permaculture – a highly interesting and positive approach and answer to sustainable farming – Jenny Brown will be giving her first public introductory talk on the subject on the 1^st April at the John Mackintosh Hall at 7.00pm.  

Thanks for listening. Email us at esg@gibtelecom.net and check out our website at www.esg-gib.net for further information