Category: News

  • Cargo bike library launch event

    Cargo bike library launch event

    Saturday 26th October 2024: a great time to launch the BANZAI cargo bike library. The sun was shining, the atmosphere was great, Halloween was around the corner, we enjoyed music from Freya and Dan, Callum from the Cycling Gardeners was here, Jamie from Cargo Bike Movement joined us with the Riese & Müller Packster, and we had just purchased our first community cargo bike — a Tern Quick Haul Long. The day peaked when Critical Mass arrived on Bruntsfield Links: an impressive sight with an estimated 50 cyclists in one crowd. We were happy to reward them with a hot drink and cake for their efforts every month on the quest to proclaim “We’re not blocking the traffic. We are the traffic.”

    It was exciting that so many people joined us to try out the bikes. The Riese & Müller (aptly named, since Riese means ‘giant’ in German) is big and can be a bit intimidating at first. The advantage is that it can carry lots in its front load box and children absolutely love riding in it! By comparison, the Tern is easier for novices and feels more like a standard bike. All the same, the Tern can carry a couple of children or another adult. It is great to have both two cargo bike options and we are looking forward to finding out more about what the community thinks of them!

    We are grateful to Cargo Bike Movement for lending us the Riese & Müller Packster. We could not have set up the BANZAI cargo bike library without their support and a huge load of advice. The library has also been made possible with awards from the City of Edinburgh Council Community Fund and Edinburgh Communities Climate Action Network (ECCAN).

    Performance by Dan Abrahams and Freya Rae


    Gallery of photos by Jenny Elliot 2024

  • Community climate action and alphabet soup

    There has been a considerable drive towards community-led climate action over the last couple of years. This has resulted in a good number of local groups being formed but also led to confusion and overlaps at the higher level where local and national governments want to support community initiatives. Within Edinburgh, we have been puzzling over the relationship between two organisations established by the council and by national government to help with community climate action.

    The City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) helped fund the creation of an organisation run by EVOC (Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations Council) with a name that has varied a little over the last year, but which has now settled (I think) as Edinburgh Communities Climate Forum (ECCF). CEC’s interest was primarily to provide an interface and support to the community action aspects of its 2030 Climate Strategy.

    In parallel, the Scottish Government has commissioned the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network (SSCAN) to set up a nationwide pool of community Climate Action Networks, intended as the first step towards Climate Action Hubs that will underpin a strategic, regional approach to climate action across Scotland. And so Edinburgh Climate Action Network (ECAN) has been born.

    Initially, the existence of ECCF and ECAN in Edinburgh caused a fair amount of confusion: were they overlapping (and thus potentially competing) or complementary? Agreement has finally been reached and the coordinators of the two organisations are now working together. The following summary was recently put out by ECAN:

    The Forum and Network share the goal of supporting community-led climate action, however the Forum’s remit is more specific than the Network’s. The Forum is primarily council-facing, and aims to support community groups to achieve the goals outlined in existing public policy strategies [e.g. the CEC 2030 Climate Strategy]. The Forum will hold events and offer resources, but will not have a membership. 

    The Network aims to support community groups in whichever strategy and direction is the priority for Edinburgh communities — any community group can be part of the Network and influence the specific goals of the Network. Community groups can then also define how the Network will relate to the Forum, depending on how much the Network feels the Forum’s strategy aligns with communities’ priorities. To summarise, [ECAN] is a broad commons, into which [ECCF] will feed, and through which [ECCF] will be able to widen its reach.

    OK?! We hope that we’re now entering a period of much more effective support for local groups such as BANZAI, and opportunities to influence both local and national government.

  • BANZAI Car Share has launched!

    Map of area included in BANZAI car share scheme
    Area covered by the BANZAI car share

    We have recently set up a local car share scheme covering the Leamington Terrace Area and parts of Bruntsfield. If you answer Yes to some of the following questions, that maybe the scheme is just what you’re looking for.

    • Are you concerned about climate change, or anxious about air quality?
    • Do you want safe, less polluted streets with plenty of space for walking and cycling?
    • Have you got a car which is unused a lot of the time? Have you considered whether you could share or live without it? 
    • Want convenient access to local cars without the restrictions and profit- making of commercial Car Clubs?
    • Would you consider hiring a car to a trusted neighbour (age 21–75 only) if it was easy, insurance was sorted and it helped cover the cost of ownership?

    Find out more on our page about BANZAI car share.

  • From Montevideo to Glasgow — via Bruntsfield

    From Montevideo to Glasgow — via Bruntsfield

    Hello dear Bruntsfielders!

    I’m a very recent and ephemeral resident, who reached Scotland thanks to the hospitality of Mimo & Ewan and Mick & family. My journey had its target in Glasgow, where the Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (COP26) is taking place. As a recently retired climatologist from South America, I felt that I could accomplish a role accompanying the youngsters.

    Doubts, regrets, issues around the pandemic, and relatively high expenses related to the stay vanished when the magic of goodwill of Bruntsfielders came to convince to me that things could be properly resolved. Then I set sail to Scotland from Uruguay. And here I am Bruntsfield, but attending COP26 in Glasgow.

    My activism at COP26 is linked to my membership of the international Climate Action Network (CAN), acting at the Latin American node, and trying to put on track Humanity against dangerous, worldwide climate change — dangerous for human beings and their current biospheric environment.  The functioning of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is very complex and is becoming more and more complex, because so many human activities are pushing the world climate evolution off track.

    Indeed, mankind has always changed climatic conditions: from the local climate when constructing a home, to the world climate by increasing the greenhouse effect and changing the reflectance of the surfaces reached by the sunbeam (the main input of energy for all atmospheric, oceanic and biological processes).

    The task of impeding human actions warming the world on a planetary scale hurts the short-term interests of big fossil fuel companies, transport corporations, huge real estate companies, and the geopolitical game of powerful nations. Nevertheless, Science explains that we are on the way to far too much warming, and the point where that warming becomes uncontrollable is getting closer and closer. 

    Since human behaviour and political issues mostly focus on other short-term priorities, then each group of countries, each country and even each personal leader tries, in each COP and in each inter-sessional meeting, to put its priorities first — this week, for instance, is the week when countries (“Parties”) vote on the general decisions and pledges. Our task as observers is to take note of possible deviations in the pathways, stigmatising inequities, setbacks in progress already made, and to denounce them publicly. Our goal is also to help push forward towards a cleaner and safer world. Our advocacy is expressed by bilateral discussions with delegates, by press releases, by articles in ECO (a CAN newsletter edited since the Stockholm Conference in 1972) — or by giving out a Fossil of the Day, a symbolic “award” that some countries deserve for proposing fake solutions that would put the world in an even worse situation, or for making unethical statements.

    Fossil of the Day award, COP25, photo by Connal Hughes

    The ambiance in Glasgow is far from favourable to our commitment: under the pretext of the pandemic, ECO is not allowed to be distributed on paper, the ceremony of the “Fossil of the Day” is forbidden for the first time, and most of the time observers are not allowed to enter the so-called “open meetings”. Even when our voices are occasionally authorized, the times allotted are absolutely minimal.

    But the warm friendship of our hosts in Bruntsfield, together with our stubbornness, are enough to keep trying.