About Croydon Climate Crisis Commission

Croydon Climate Crisis Commission was launched in early 2020. The Commission’s primary purpose is to drive rapid reductions in the carbon emissions from activities in the Borough of Croydon, targeting carbon neutral by 2030. Critically, the Commission aims to ensure the transition to zero carbon happens in a fair way, providing good quality jobs, improving wellbeing, and reducing inequality.

Following their declaration of a climate emergency in 2019 Croydon Council partnered with the New Economics Foundation to set up the commission. The Commission is fully independent, and its membership brings together representatives from across the Croydon community. Key functions of the commission include:

Build on the momentum created by the school climate strikes, Extinction Rebellion, and many other climate campaigners and groups.
Carry forward the work of Croydon’s Citizens’ Assembly on climate, and develop an action plan for Croydon to go carbon neutral by 2030.
Bring experts from the community, business, science and politics together to design and fund new carbon neutral projects.
Bring together residents and businesses from across the Croydon community to get decarbonisation projects up and running, and to ensure they are sustainable.
Keeping Croydon on track to hit its 2030 carbon neutral target, and engaging with anchor institutions in Croydon and the surrounding area to ensure this is achieved.
Partnering with other Commissions and groups around the country to lobby for the changes needed from national and regional Government to allow us to achieve our ambitions.

The Independent Commission is an evolving organisation which will develop over the next few months. Throughout this time there will be many opportunities for Croydon residents to get involved. This will include engagement with schools, public engagement events, setting up working groups on particular themes, and creation of new projects.

Update

In March 2021 the Commission submitted its final report to Croydon Council. The work of the Croydon Climate Crisis Commission is now concluded. (See this news story.)

Recommendations on how the Council should continue to build on the momentum of the Citizen’s Assembly and Commission’s activities, and commit to deep on-going engagement with residents, community groups, workers, trade unions and businesses to ensure initiatives aimed at reducing emissions and improving quality of life in the borough are genuinely co-created are detailed in the report. This includes formalising a climate panel to review progress on the recommendations and developing an alliance of partners to drive a green recovery across the borough.