Green Calderdale is produced jointly by Calderdale Sustainability Forum and Calderdale Friends of the Earth.

The aim is to provide a single online space for a wide range of environmental and sustainability activities, which previously did not exist; a web resource for those organisations or environmental causes without their own sites; and to connect together people and opportunities.

Calderdale Sustainability Forum (or CSF as a shorthand) is what is called the Local Agenda 21 or LA21 body for Calderdale. LA21 emerged from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and although the momentum behind the idea – that the sustainability agenda of Rio needed local implementation into the 21st century – has waned somewhat it’s still as necessary as ever. In the late 1990s Calderdale FOE asked the Council why we didn’t yet have an LA21 body for the area; in due course it was set up as CSF, first under the wing of the Council and then as an independent not-for-profit company. Its activities have evolved over time and principally works by developing partnerships with all sorts of organisations, public and private.

Read more about current CSF activities here

Calderdale Friends of the Earth (FOE) is one of the some 200 local groups linked to the national organisation FOE England, Wales & N Ireland, which in turn is part of the federations of FOE Europe and FOE International. So the FOE ‘brand’ – like our motto: local to global, global to local – allows us to reach out from Calderdale to the wider world. We campaign on local, Yorkshire region, UK and international issues (such as climate change). In 1998 Calderdale FOE set up Calder Future – the partnership to improve the River Calder its tributaries and banksides – as an independent body with other organisations and, after a period of independence, Calder Future is now part of CSF.

Read more about current Calderdale FOE campaigns here

Green Calderdale (like both CSF and FOE) is non-party political; whilst its campaigning section inevitably and necessarily touches on politics this is to argue the case for a more sustainable future. Some of its pages represent the views of other organisations (for which they are responsible) but we will expect them to follow the same protocol. It’s managed for CSF and FOE by Anthony Rae and reflects their positions about sustainability.

If you’d like to find out more, or have comments or suggestions to make, about Green Calderdale, CSF or Calderdale Friends of the Earth just contact info@greencalderdale.org.uk