Moosburg and Sawbridgeworth: City partners with similar experiences in climate protection

Created: 01/16/2022, 11:00 am

By: Andreas Beschorner

Reported to their virtual counterparts about climate protection efforts and goals in their towns: the city councilors Johannes Becher (left) from Moosburg and David Royle from Sawbridgeworth near London, England.

© Screenshot: currently

When it comes to climate protection, Moosburg and its English city partner Sawbridgeworth have had very similar experiences, as it has now turned out.

Moosburg

– climate protection has been a tradition in Moosburg for many decades.

And what about climate protection in the twin town of Sawbridgeworth near London?

In a zoom video conference on Wednesday evening, measures and plans were exchanged virtually - interpreters included.

And even though the Dreirosenstadt is already much further along than the community near London, it turned out that many things – problems and topics – are similar.

Johannes Becher (Greens) and partnership officer Erwin Weber (CSU) had the idea for this form of exchange, David Royle, Councilor - i.e. city councilor - in Sawbridgeworth, had suggested the topic of climate protection.

And so, after a brief introduction to their community, representatives of both municipalities explained what was happening at the municipal level in terms of climate protection.

Twin town grows by 6000 new houses

Sawbridgeworth has a population of around 10,000, but 6,000 new houses will be built in the near future, Royle reported.

According to Royle, after the association "Sustainable Sawbridgeworth" was formed from an idea of ​​the local Girl Scouts to avoid plastic and synthetic material, the climate conference "COP26" in Glasgow at the end of 2021 and the documentary film "Tomorrow" were used to raise awareness among the citizens To collect ideas from citizens on how to achieve the energy transition locally.

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)

From this - and we are in the process of doing so - we now want to create a kind of action plan that includes topics such as community gardens, cycle paths, regional shopping, waste avoidance and climate-friendly building. Important, Royle was aware of: You have to take the population, the local organizations, the schools and clubs with you, otherwise it wouldn't work. The city council of Sawbridgeworth has already agreed to this and the district has also declared a climate emergency - with all the consequences. There are, of course, problems with implementation because of the lack of capacity and also because of the lack of financial resources.

City councilor and MdL Johannes Becher probably spoke to the participants from Moosburg when he said: "Many topics sound familiar to me." "Energy transition in Moosburg": Stanglmaier presented a large number of concepts and initiatives from the past 20 years, plus even more individual measures.