On 4 November 2026 Moniaive Initiative co-hosted a screening of the People’s Emergency Briefing in St Ninian’s Church, Moniaive. Some 44 people watched the film, including Mid & Upper Nithsdale Councillor Tony Berretti, who was attending his fifth screening. Following the film, 30 people participated in group discussions, and 13 people completed a short Questionnaire.
The film presented clips of speeches made by leading experts to a National Emergency Briefing in London in November 2025 (Keynotes from these can be found at the bottom of this page). These talks covered topics ranging from weather extremes and tipping points to energy transition and food security. The aim of the film is to ensure that the nation is fully briefed on the scale of the climate and nature crisis and equipped with the information they need in order to act.
Following the screening, the audience divided into small groups to discuss what they had seen. Each group then summarised their discussions. The responses included feelings of anger, frustration and fear. Many felt the film to be thin on solutions. Others pointed to wasted opportunities to address climate issues. It was generally felt that we need to focus on climate impacts locally, particularly flooding. There was discussion on how to reach those who still misunderstand or deny climate change, and many people stated they would like to see the film shared more widely.
Our Questionnaire asked two main questions. The first was “Which of the issues that you have seen today do you think might impact you in the next 5 years?” The answers were quite clear:
We followed this with: “What could Moniaive Initiative do, on a community scale, to lessen that impact?” Here the answers were not so straightforward but did clearly point to specific community-level actions.
Possible actions raised in those responses included:
- “Prepare community buildings to accept temporarily displaced residents”
- “Upstream land management to increase resilience”
- “Locals writing to Forestry Scotland to stop small area woodland clearance up the glen.”
- “Reintroduce a weekend Nature Festival.”
- “Hydropower”
- “Allotments”
- “Campaign to improve the local energy grid”
- “Community wide solar programme.”
- “Form a Community Energy Group”
The responses given will be used in the coming months as we review our Glencairn & Moniaive Action Plan to cover the next five years.
Thanks go to St Ninian’s Church for hosting this event, to Jude for the refreshments and to Kate and Debbie for chairing the post film discussion.
You can read the Experts’ Keynotes to the Natonal Emergency Briefing here:
