The Mandate Is Already Here: Communities Showing Up for Climate and Nature
It's been a summer of extremes - wildfires prompting evacuations in the Cairngorms, a major moorland fire in Derbyshire, the driest July in two centuries, and people fleeing devastating fires across France and Spain. It's a reminder that the case for climate action isn't abstract, and neither is the response.
But it's not the only story of this summer. People are already taking action for a fairer, healthier, safer future. Last year, 5,000 of us signed up to lobby our MPs. This June, 1.6 million people took action during Great Big Green Week - the UK’s biggest celebration of climate and nature action. Communities up and down the country - and beyond it - are already building the future they want to see: cleaner rivers, greener neighbourhoods, stronger local networks. That's a public mandate, and it's growing.
The stories communities sent us from this year's Great Big Green Week show exactly what that looks like in practice, and provide an inspiring blueprint to build from. Here are just a few from this summer:
Rivers, Resilience and Reaching New People: Zero Carbon Guildford
In Guildford, the community charity Zero Carbon Guildford chose a theme for Great Big Green Week 2026 that felt close to home: Rivers. With the River Wey running through their community, the charity - run by volunteers - built a programme around it, from wild food foraging and bat and butterfly walks to nature surveying, creative writing and growing workshops, alongside a presence at Guildford Green Day raising funds for community-led water quality monitoring.
Image: Sharing information about conserving the River Wey; Credit: Zero Carbon Guildford
For Zero Carbon Guildford, Great Big Green Week isn't a stand-alone event - it's the annual high point of a year-round programme covering home energy advice, a Library of Things, community food initiatives, river monitoring and nature restoration. "The week helps us reach people who might not normally engage with environmental issues," the team explained, by offering "a diverse programme of activities" that meets people where they are. Many who show up for a butterfly walk or a river talk go on to volunteer with the charity's other projects throughout the year. As a small charity with a one-person comms team, they credit Great Big Green Week's ready-made national resources with helping them "deliver a consistent and professional campaign" - proof that local action and national momentum reinforce each other.
Image: Participants take part in the Wild Food Walk; Credit: Zero Carbon Guildford
Caring for Creation: A Church Community Cleans Up Its Local Park
In South Tottenham, the St Ann's Church Walking Group marked Great Big Green Week with a community litter pick in Chestnuts Park - the same green space their weekly walking group has enjoyed for years. Volunteers from the group and wider congregation turned out with pickers, gloves and bags, clearing 15 bags of litter in a single hour.
For St Ann's, this work is rooted in faith as much as habit: the church's Eco Committee works year-round on biodiversity, active travel and reducing waste, believing that caring for creation is part of living it out. Great Big Green Week added a national frame and a shared moment of celebration - some volunteers, organiser Emma Archibald noted, joined precisely because it was part of a bigger campaign. The group is already planning further clean-ups and looks forward to taking part again in 2027.
Image: Taking part in the community litter pick; Credit: St. Ann’s Church
Climate Ambassadors: A School in Pakistan Building Young Changemakers
Great Big Green Week's reach goes well beyond the UK. At Central Model School in Khanewal, Pakistan, Principal Muhammad Nadeem Akhtar has spent nearly three decades building climate education into daily school life in an underserved rural community in South Punjab - with a particular focus on empowering girls to lead.
For Great Big Green Week, students ran awareness sessions on climate change, water pollution and hygiene, organised tree planting and recycling drives, and went door to door across their community - surveying households and talking to families about safe drinking water and sustainable habits. Parents and neighbours became part of the effort too, with students acting as, in Akhtar's words, "climate ambassadors" in their own streets. The results: over 1,000 community surveys completed, more than 500 families engaged, and three ongoing community projects launched. "Even small community actions," Akhtar says, "can create meaningful and lasting change."
Image: Students at Central Model School in Pakistan taking part in GBGW; Credit: Central Model School
Communities aren’t waiting for permission to act
A riverside charity in Surrey, a school in rural Pakistan, a church walking group in Tottenham - different countries, different starting points, but the same underlying story. None of these communities waited to be asked.They organised, showed up, and built something that will carry on long after Great Big Green Week ends.
That's the public mandate in practice - and it's exactly what needs defending right now. As wildfires spread and reports suggest new PM Andy Burnham could approve new North Sea oil and gas, the case these communities are making couldn't be clearer: people want a clean, affordable energy future, and that call hasn't gone anywhere.
Inspired to take action? Here are two ways to get involved:
Join our free training programme
Join a community of over 160 organisers already building that future - over six months, we'll support you to build or strengthen a community group that can take action all year round, grow its own leadership, and arrive at Great Big Green Week 2027 ready to make it the biggest and best yet. You'll finish in December with real skills, connections to fellow organisers across the UK, and a concrete plan that's yours to own.
Sign up here and join the community→
A new prime minister - the same mandate
A government decision on Rosebank could come within days. Coalition member Uplift have made it quick to email - or call, meet or send a postcard to - your MP or MSP asking them to pledge to oppose the Rosebank oil field and back real solutions to energy security and affordability: renewables, home insulation and a properly funded transition for oil and gas workers and communities.