From their lookout at Crooklets Beach, members of the Bude surf life saving club have watched out for beach-goers, trained new generations of lifeguards and become part of the fabric of life for this coastal community.
In the year they celebrate the club’s 70th birthday, those who are part of the oldest sea life saving club in the UK, have a lot of escapades and heroism to reflect upon.
But earlier this year the north Cornwall town received a profound shock when it was presented with a visualisation created by the Environment Agency of the impact of rising sea levels on Bude.
It left little doubt about the seriousness of the threat and made it clear that global heating-induced sea level rises will push the community into full-scale retreat.
If nothing is done, by 2050 rising sea levels will consume landmarks, such as the surf life-saving club, and the Bude seawater swimming pool, as well as cafes, businesses and car parks.
Josie Dean, the charity manager at Friends of Bude Sea Pool, said she felt overwhelmed when she saw the visualisation. “It took me a while to take it in,” she said. “It was very stark.”
For a relatively isolated town, where the economy is driven by tourism, which itself relies on beach access, the consequences of the climate crisis feel dire. And these possible fates are shared by not just other coastal towns and villages in Cornwall, but those across the UK and the world.
This year the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said the world would witness the movement of entire populations on a biblical scale as a result of rising sea levels. Translating that existential threat to communities that are directly in its path is difficult. What can ordinary people do in the face of a powerful natural world in climate flux? How can action be initiated, without terrifying a population into paralysis or prompting accusations from sceptics of being too alarmist?
In Bude, rather than waiting for action from a Conservative government accused of reneging on its climate pledge, people have formed the Bude Climate Partnership to address the threat head on. The strength and ambition of the group’s plans won it £2m from the national lottery climate action fund earlier this year.
Robert Uhlig, the partnership’s programme director, said: “Politicians show few signs of delivering on climate promises, let alone making crucial decisions on existential adaptations that communities like ours need to make. We can’t afford to wait, so we’re mobilising a community response to make our views and the resulting decisions clear and obvious to them.”
Over summer, the partnership delivered leaflets to the 8,500 households in the area seeking individuals for a jury to assess the climate threat, weigh up the options and choose the way forward, something being used increasingly around the world to help communities decide how to adapt and to ensure decisions come from the grassroots up. In the Maldives this year, three climate assemblies were run to allow the population of one of the most existentially threatened island communities in the world, to gather and try to work out how to adapt.
In Bude, the jury of 43 was selected with the help of the Sortition Foundation, an organisation that helps set up citizen assemblies around the world, ensuring they replicate the demographics of the area. Over the sessions held in the autumn, members took evidence from experts and advice from witnesses.
Their final report will be released in January, and aims to produce a set of recommendations which may range from building natural or human-made defences, such as vast dune systems or a sea wall, to moving bricks and mortar wholesale, and putting them somewhere else.
“These are decisions the community needs to come together to talk about, and to arrive at collectively,” Uhlig said.
Critically, Cornwall council has committed to receiving and considering the jury’s ideas, although there are still reservations about the process. Martyn Alvey, the council’s cabinet member for environment and climate change, said it was important the jury was truly representative. “I am very curious to see this because there is some scepticism about how these juries work. So I am looking forward to seeing what they come up with and how constructive it is.”
Those involved in the jury idea believe it has already been rewarded, with the granting of £3m for coastal flood defences in Bude by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. “The Environment Agency told us that they wouldn’t have been able to apply for the funding for Bude if the community hadn’t already been engaging with the issue through the jury,” Uhlig said.
Peter Bryant, from Shared Future, a community interest company which helps to facilitate the climate jury in Bude, said he believed citizen assemblies could work across the world to raise awareness, give local authorities a democratic mandate to take action against climate impacts, and access views from those in the middle of often polarised debates about global heating.
“From our work we can trust that citizens, when given a diversity of information, are able to work their way through very complex issues and identify recommendations for the public good.”
Walking around the Bude seafront earlier this year, from Crooklets Beach, past Middle Beach and on to Summerleaze, home to the Bude Sea Pool, the signs of the town’s vulnerability to the climate crisis are everywhere. At Crooklets Beach, the steps from the sand to the promenade have all but disappeared. The increasing frequency and strength of winter storms has pushed the sand and rocks laid down as sea defences up against the promenade wall. Where once a flight of steps led down to the beach, now there are just three.
On the River Neet, the Nanny Moores Bridge is closed as the Environment Agency works on building up the banks to protect the town from increased flooding. As we walk, a tourist stops to ask where the Bude storm tower, which sat on the cliffs above the sea pool, has gone. Uhlig explains that the 188-year-old tower has been taken down and is being reassembled further back from the cliff edge because of coastal erosion.
Amid such dramatic physical encroachment, the jury’s task was immense. Dean said she believed the stark visualisation of the climate threat helped make people sit up and listen, as well as bring them along on the journey to a solution.
“If we can take action as a community, if we can get enough people to understand what the possibilities are, then we can elicit real change for ourselves and that in turn could be incredibly useful for other similar coastal communities across the UK,” she said.
How much does it cost? Bude Climate Partnership was awarded a £200,000 grant from the national lottery climate action fund to develop its ideas. It was then awarded £2m to carry out its project. The jury is one part of the work. Forty per cent of the grant is being used to try to reduce the carbon emissions from tourism of at least 50 businesses by 50%, and to help residents reduce carbon emissions by making their homes more energy efficient.
Can other places do it? Yes. Bude is hoping its work will become a blueprint for other coastal areas. There have already been climate assemblies held in places like North of Tyne and Leeds.
Suggested reading: Knowledge network on climate assemblies, Shared Future, The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg.
