Mayo's First Decarbonising Zone - Community Workshop Series
Date: 26-03-2021
On the evening of March 25th, 60 people from over 20 Mayo communities attended Mayo’s first Decarbonising Zone (DZ) workshop.
This workshop is the first in a series of three designed to assist communities to apply to become Mayo’s first Decarbonising Zone; an area in which a range of climate mitigation measures can co-exist to address local low carbon energy, greenhouse gas emissions and climate needs.
Martin Keating, Head of Environment, Climate Change and Agriculture with Mayo County Council, introduced the workshop, welcomed all the participants and outlined that “although each Local Authority can only choose one DZ as outlined in Action in 165 in the Climate Action Plan 2019, Mayo County Council will work with all communities in Mayo in our journey to a Low Carbon future”.
Orla Murphy, member of the high-level roundtable on the New European Bauhaus initiative
spoke about how communities are central to reimagining and co-creating a decarbonised future and gave our response to the Covid-19 pandemic as an example.
“The response demanded solidarity, resilience, cooperation, care for the most vulnerable among us. What happened next may hold the key to the challenge of how to rapidly decarbonise our societies. Because while governments feared lockdown weariness and social unrest, instead the response in small towns has opened an extraordinary well of social cohesion, care and innovation.”
The final part of the workshop looked at what is involved in applying to become Mayo’s first Decarbonised Zone.
Workshops 2 and 3 which will assist communities with forming their Communities Vision for 2030, take place as follows:
Workshop 2 on Thursday, 1st April from 6-7pm will focus on Energy. Dr Orla Nic Suibhne, SEAI Sustainable Energy Community (SEC) mentor in County Mayo and Avril Ní Shearcaigh, manager of the Aran Islands Energy Co-Op will give insight into how to transition to a low carbon community.
Workshop 3, on Thursday, 8th April from 6-7pm with Dr Marcus Collier, Assistant Professor in Urban Nature-based Innovation in the School of Natural Sciences in Trinity College Dublin and Gary Goggins, Public Awareness Manager with Wild Atlantic Nature will look at nature-based solutions and give examples of how can nature help us decarbonise.
To learn more about Decarbonising Zones and the workshop series go to www.mayo.ie/ClimateAction/DecarbonisingZone.
Queries about the Decarbonising Zone initiative can be forwarded to Laura Dixon, Climate Action Officer with Mayo County Council at ldixon@mayococo.ie.