Glasgow City Council's open space strategy to tackle climate change

The City Council’s open space strategy aims to deliver many benefits while improving the health and well-being as well as life quality of Glaswegians.

Last year the local authority declared a climate emergency and set a target of becoming carbon neutral by 2030.

The open space strategy, which was introduced in February this year following the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019, was discussed at a planning meeting this week.

A council officer explained: “Lockdown has highlighted the importance of open space. The open space strategy was adopted in February this year introduces open space values and standards.

“Quality is assessed in its range of attractiveness and the ability to relax, play and promote biodiversity.

“We will identify spaces that will be used to meet the accessibility standard and provide an assessment of their quality.”

Councillor Martin Bartos questioned if the strategy was intended to help address climate change.

He asked: “Can we make use of the fact that the council has declared a climate emergency or is it the case you are using that as a backdrop to the strategies that are present?

“If we are to reduce our carbon emissions, we need to have a sense of where that carbon is going.”

Dr Bartos was informed that the council needed to use its open spaces to adapt to climate change and mitigate it.

A spokesman continued: “In order to address the climate emergency we are doing a number of things to try and get a better understanding of what each open space can do to try and contribute towards it.

“We have worked with the Glasgow and Green Valley Network Partnership and the flood management team. We will take all of that work, pull it together and put it into a delivery plan to set out how we will use each and every piece of open space in the city that will deliver the maximum benefit in relation to these aspects.

“The climate emergency working group report will feed into that process.”