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Community action/Somerset

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Location Somerset, United Kingdom
Coordinates 51° 9' 42.30" N, 3° 4' 31.39" W

The aim of this page is to recognise, celebrate and encourage the self-empowerment of community agency networks (CANs) and community groups' activism for climate, environment and many other sustainability topics across Somerset.

Somerset
South West England
UK
Europe
Cosmolocal
  • News Businesses face extinction unless they protect nature, major report warns, BBC News (Feb 09, 2026)
  • News Enlisting hearts and minds to save Somerset’s last eels, positive.news (Aug 18, 2025)
  • News New national forest to see 20m trees planted, BBC News (Mar 21, 2025)
Read more
  • News White storks: why introducing non‑native species in rewilding projects can be a good idea, theconversation.com (Jun 05, 2026)
  • News Citizens’ Assembly to invest £100,000 in West’s culture, westofengland-ca.gov.uk (Jan 16, 2026)
  • News ‘We found 23,000 worms!’ The soil project bringing life back to the land, positive.news (Oct 22, 2025)
  • News National Trust asks public to join call for urgent Government action after hundreds of wildfires break out, and full extent of nature loss at Dunwich Heath emerges, nationaltrust.org.uk (Aug 07, 2026) — “The climate crisis long predicted by scientists is happening here and now. Ferocious wildfires, unprecedented temperatures and record-breaking droughts are already hitting communities and nature across the UK – they are not a distant threat. Tackling this emergency must be a cross-Government priority because it touches every aspect of our lives, our society and our economy. So we’ve launched a petition to demonstrate to Ministers the strength of public feeling on this issue." National Trust Director-General Hilary McGrady. To sign the petition, visit: nationaltrust.org.uk/wildfire-petition
  • News All of England's rivers and lakes polluted with chemicals, officials say, BBC News (Aug 06, 2026)
  • News Firefighting aircraft aren’t enough – Britain needs to build a wildfire‑resilient society that involves everyone, Komal Raj Aryal, Lecturer in Crisis and Disaster Management, Aston University, theconversation.com (Aug 06, 2026)
  • News Europe’s rivers are running dry, and the knock-on effects are disastrous, Yiannis Baboulias, theguardian.com (Aug 05, 2026)
  • News How Australia combines modern tech and Indigenous knowledge to fight wildfires, BBC News (Aug 01, 2026)
  • News May and June heatwaves killed about 2,700 people in England and Wales, data suggests, theguardian.com (Jul 13, 2026) — Extreme heat led to 440 deaths a day during June peak, say scientists, with climate crisis ramping up temperatures
  • News Young activists in the Maldives confront climate threats to their island nation, seattletimes.com (Aug 06, 2026)
  • News Philippines steps up solar transition as Iran war hikes energy costs, eenews.net (Aug 06, 2026)
  • News South Korea's president orders all-out response to heatwave, reuters.com (Aug 06, 2026)

Networks and sustainability initiatives

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Cosmolocal discovery club

Each week 3 different short videos from across the UK or world.

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Poem about Manchester: 'This is the Place' - BBC News
Authors: BBC News, 4.50 mins.
Date: 2017-05-24
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This Colchester cohousing project will change how you think about community living
Authors: BBC Gardeners' World Magazine, 11.00 mins.
Date: 2026-06-20
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40 white storks now on Knepp estate in West Sussex BBC South Today Evening News 08/07/2024
Authors: autonomous weaponised drones, 2.00 mins.
Date: 2024-07-09

Community action/Manchester, Community action/Essex, Community action/West Sussex / ...This week's featured Global videos / ... read more about Cosmolocalism

UK and international events

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UK events

  • Event Aug 10 - 16, 2026 (Mon - Sun) — National Allotments Week, 2026 theme is “Grow to Learn.”, thenas.org.uk

UK community action events

Global or international events

  • Event Aug 09, 2026 (Sun) — International Day of the World's Indigenous People, observed on 9 August each year to raise awareness and protect the rights of the world's indigenous population, un.org
  • Event Aug 12, 2026 (Wed) — International Youth Day, awareness day designated by the United Nations taking place on Aug 12 each year, un.org

2021-2030, UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, International community action events

Somerset video

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Why are the British flooding parts of their coast?
Authors: Mongabay, 4.48 mins.
Date: 2025-03-19
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Somerset Climate Action Network; Feed Avalon by Rob Harris
Authors: Strode TV, 2.24 mins.
Date: 2022-11-10
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Woodspring Revealed
Authors: Skye Spring, 3.21 mins.
Date: 2022-09-07
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sfmdirect.mov
Authors: sfmdirect, 4.21 mins.
Date: 2008-11-27
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"Lawnmower Men" - Personal Project
Authors: Dan Merry, 3.44 mins.

Food activism

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Towards sustainable economies

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Health and wellbeing

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Somerset Active Living

Climate action

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  • Somerset CAN, Somerset Climate action Network, Somerset net carbon neutral by 2030, added 11:57, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Sustainable transport activism

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Long-distance footpaths in the county include: Coleridge Way, Limestone Link, Macmillan Way West, Mendip Way, Monarch's Way, Quantock Greenway, River Parrett Trail, Two Tunnels Greenway and West Deane Way. The South West Coast Path National Trail has its starting point at Minehead. W

Cycling activism

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The county has one of the first National cycle routes created in Britain 3, 4 and 24 provide cyclists with ways to minimise contact with motor traffic. The Bristol & Bath Railway Path is a 15-mile off-road cycleway, following an old railway track that forms part of Route 4. The path consists of a 3-m-wide tarmacked surface, and was used for 2.4 million trips in 2007, increasing by 10% per year.[90] Route 24, otherwise known as the Colliers Way, currently runs from Dundas Aqueduct to Frome via Radstock. W

Biodiversity

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In 2009, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, The RSPB and the Pensthorpe Conservation Trust, with funding from Viridor Credits, began a partnership project to re-establish a breeding population of cranes at a new wetland site. A rearing facility or "crane school" was set up at WWT Slimbridge; this consists of a 1-acre (4,000 m2) marsh garden designed to rear crane chicks between 2010 and 2014 in as close to a wild environment as possible. A pre-release enclosure was also constructed on the Somerset Levels. Although the cranes are hand-reared, all humans having contact with the birds wear special grey cover-all smocks, complete with hoods, and feed the cranes using plaster cast crane heads mounted onto litter picker handles. Approximately 20 cranes are reared and released each year. The first cranes were released in 2010 with annual releases planned up until 2014. The cranes are released in Somerset, on the Somerset Levels and Moors, where the project is also working with farmers and landowners to create suitable breeding areas for the birds. A pair of cranes from the project laid the first egg in 2013. W

Open spaces

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Somerset is a rural county of rolling hills, the Blackdown Hills, Mendip Hills, Quantock Hills and Exmoor National Park, and large flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels.

The county contains several-miles-wide sections of the Avon green belt area, which is primarily in place to prevent urban sprawl from the Bristol and Bath built up areas encroaching into the rural areas of North Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset, and Mendip districts in the county, as well as maintaining surrounding countryside. It stretches from the coastline between the towns of Portishead and Clevedon, extending eastwards past Nailsea, around the Bristol conurbation, and through to the city of Bath. The green belt border intersects with the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) along its south boundary, and meets the Cotswolds AONB by its eastern extent along the Wiltshire county border, creating an extended area protected from inappropriate development.

Wetlands

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  • Somerset Wetlands National Nature Reserve, information from gov.uk, published 19 May 2022

Rural sustainability

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CPRE Somerset

News archive

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  • News Enlisting hearts and minds to save Somerset’s last eels, positive.news (Aug 18, 2025)
  • News New national forest to see 20m trees planted, BBC News (Mar 21, 2025)
  • News Why the British are flooding parts of their coast, Leo Plunkett, Sandy Watt, news.mongabay.com (Mar 19, 2025)

2023-2024

  • News A new flow: pioneering UK river restoration declared a success, positive.news (Oct 21, 2024)
  • News Glastonbury gets 'climate action plan', BBC News (Aug 23, 2024)
  • News ‘It’s unbelievable the difference a path has made’: how volunteers are building a cycle network a yard at a time, theguardian.com (May 16, 2024)
  • News The plan to create a ‘nature recovery site’ in every English county, positive.news (Mar 27, 2023)

2018-2022

  • News With its digital community mapping, fungus-driven mill, and reuse of coastal buildings, the Onion Collective is a vibrant CAN, The Daily Alternative (Jun 14, 2022)
  • News Britain’s first wetland ‘super reserve’ offers boost to nature-based solutions to climate change, The Conversation (Jun 07, 2022)
  • Stream Farm – A New Model for New Entrants, Dec 21, 2018...Resilience
  • Ecological Land Cooperative purchases site in South Somerset to create new small farms, Oct, 2018...ecologicalland.coop. The Ecological Land Cooperative works to create affordable ecological smallholdings for new entrants to farming – those who would ordinarily be unable to afford a house in the countryside yet who wish to earn a living through farming.

About Somerset

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Past events

Campaigns

Somerset ( SUM-ər-set, -⁠sit), archaically Somersetshire ( SUM-ər-set-sheer, -⁠sit-, -⁠shər), is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Bristol, and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. The largest settlement is the city of Bath.

Near you

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Page data
Keywords English county
SDG SDG11 Sustainable cities and communities
Authors Phil Green
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 2 pages link here
Redirects Somerset, Somerset community action
Views 48 page views (analytics)
Created June 2, 2014 by Phil Green
Last edit February 9, 2026 by Phil Green
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