Following last year’s successful Callander Climate Fringe Festival which ran to mark COP26 being held in Glasgow, a small group decided to explore further actions to develop resilience in our Callander community. Building on this momentum, we want to renew the Callander Climate Action Plan with the support of the Community Council and Callander Community Development Trust.

The need for Callander to have a Plan grows as the planet warms. We already experience regular flooding and mudslides in wet weather, lochs drying and danger of forest fires in drier seasons. Our stone houses are energy inefficient, and we are a rural community with poor public transport connections and insufficient electric vehicle infrastructure.

The timing of this links well with the Local Place Plan about to be published.

The work builds off Callander’s previous Climate Action Plan developed a decade ago. Some actions were successfully delivered, including the large community hydro scheme, but many remain to be tackled. Technological advances make it timely to revisit earlier feasibility work on energy and heat.

Separate projects exist to tackle climate change, in addition to the hydro, but we need a holistic plan and understanding of funding opportunities. For example, Callander has peatland restoration projects, and is tackling river water cooling to improve fish survival.

Building on our festival work with McLaren High School we want to take the opportunity with this plan to work closely with young people and also draw on the wider catchment area. The school covers all the National Park including several neighbouring communities. This will enable us to look e.g. at catchment and ecosystem scale solutions to flooding, or sustainable transport.

We have already prepared a resilience leaflet which is available on this website and has been posted to all households and we wish to expand that to build a resilience team to prepare Callander for future emergencies.

Download the resilience leaflet >>>

We will directly encourage community engagement in Climate Action through this website, social media and promotional material with expertise to facilitate discussions and develop actions.

If you wish to be involved in developing this project, we would be delighted to hear from you.

There is a questionnaire on the leaflet that has been posted to all households for you to complete or you can:

- download a printable version here

- complete and submit the form online (also accessible from the QR code below)

- email your expression of interest in helping the team to callanderclimatefringe@gmail.com

- message us on Facebook@callanderresilience

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