Everyone has a right to a clean and healthy environment. We know that climate change is a major challenge to this right, ours and future generations’. Climate change is not only about the environment. It can have positive and negative impacts on our ability to support a prosperous and fair society. Climate change projections continue to show that the UK will increasingly suffer from climate change and that it will also have a massive negative impact on the poor in this country and others around the world. So we need to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change now.

There can be no excuses for doing nothing. We need to just act.

Regardless of our mission and vision or how we define our organisation - voluntary community group, non governmental organisation or social enterprise - we know we need to take action, for the following reasons:

• climate change will bring around one of the greatest social, environmental and economic threats to society. Issues such as health, housing, transport, waste, food production and equality will all be affected by the impacts of climate change such as flooding or more extreme weather events
• injustice, poverty, exclusion and disadvantage all reduce the ability of countries, communities, families and individuals to respond positively to that challenge
• reducing our carbon emissions enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change will require a transformation in our economy and society, and it's essential that this transition to a low carbon future is fair and equitable

For those reasons we accept that we must:

• Act – on climate change because it is inextricably bound to our work on environmental and social justice
• Commit – to taking positive steps to reduce any negative impacts we may have on climate change
• Partnerships – work with our partners to communicate inspiring and effective initiatives
• Help – to create or support progressive national policies
• Reduce – the worst impacts of climate change specifically for the most vulnerable people in society
• Strengthen – as well as build our organisation’s, project’s or group’s resilience to climate change
• Adapt – our services, projects and campaigns to ensure that the people we work with and for, act on and are resilient to climate change

To achieve social, economic and environmental benefits of tackling climate change, we commit our organisation, group or project to a sustained, comprehensive and accountable response to the challenge of climate change whilst encouraging similar action amongst those we work with.

We therefore commit [the organisation] from this date to:

• Publicly support the need for urgent action to deliver behaviour change at all levels to combat climate change.
• Produce plans and appropriate strategies to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions.
• Make sure our plan is made public within a year.
• Ensure the plan is monitored and evaluated, at least annually, and the results are easily understood, accessible and published.
• Work with central and local government and others to advocate for, and support policies and initiatives that will assist the UK to reach or exceed the national target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
• Act as a leader in encouraging and enabling our members, service users and clients to adapt to the impact of climate change, to reduce their carbon emissions and take other relevant initiatives.
• Inform, inspire and encourage action as part of a wider movement that can make a real difference on climate change.
  

Signed by

Director/Founder/Trustee/Project Leader