Britain’s wildfires, extreme heat and drought can leave us with a particularly frustrating question: what, exactly, are ordinary people supposed to do about any of this? Well, you can review these 6 UK Climate Change Petitions now.

Because watching another hillside burn does not equip a fire service. Sharing another photograph of a dried reservoir does not create a national heat strategy. And worrying about the loss of wetlands, peatlands and woodland does not automatically translate into government policy.

There are, however, organisations currently campaigning for very specific changes.

Some are asking the UK Government to improve wildfire preparedness. Others want protection for people during extreme heat, greater investment in climate adaptation, restoration of damaged ecosystems or new laws requiring government to treat climate, nature and food security as interconnected issues.

So this page is deliberately simple.

If you have arrived here asking “what can I actually do?” — start here.

TAKE ACTION: 6 UK CLIMATE AND WILDFIRE CAMPAIGNS

🔥 1. National Trust — Protect Nature for the Future
Calls for climate resilience to become a national mission, greater investment in natural landscapes and better resources for Fire and Rescue Services.
SIGN THE NATIONAL TRUST WILDFIRE PETITION

🌡️ 2. Greenpeace — Demand Action on Deadly Heatwaves
Calls for a UK extreme heat strategy, including workplace temperature protections and heat-proofing for schools, hospitals and care homes.
SIGN THE GREENPEACE EXTREME HEAT PETITION

🌧️ 3. Friends of the Earth — Stop Extreme Weather Destroying Lives
Calls for the UK’s National Adaptation Plan to provide stronger protection from heatwaves, drought, wildfires and flooding.
SIGN THE FRIENDS OF THE EARTH PETITION

📢 4. UK Parliament — Hold a UK-Wide Briefing on Climate and Nature Risks
Calls for an emergency national briefing led by experts explaining climate and nature risks to the British public.
SIGN THE UK PARLIAMENT PETITION

🌍 5. WWF — Support a Living Planet Act
Calls for a new Westminster law requiring joined-up government action on climate, nature and food security.
SIGN THE WWF LIVING PLANET ACT PETITION

🌱 6. Plantlife / Peat-Free Partnership — End Peat Sales
Calls for the Government to turn its commitment to end horticultural peat sales into legislation.
SIGN THE PETITION TO END PEAT SALES

Campaigns and petitions can change or close. This page was last checked on 15 August 2026.

To support more causes and campaigns where you can make a real difference, please check out My Activism.

1. National Trust: Protect Nature for the Future

Of all the campaigns on this page, the National Trust wildfire petition is the one most directly connected to the fires Britain has experienced this summer.

The campaign followed the July 2026 wildfire at Dunwich Heath in Suffolk, where approximately 104 hectares of heathland were burned.

But rather than limiting its response to restoring one damaged site, the National Trust is calling for a much broader change in how Britain prepares for climate-related hazards.

Its petition makes three principal demands.

Make climate resilience a national mission

The National Trust wants responsibility for climate preparedness to be led by a Cabinet-level minister, with coordination across government and long-term investment.

That matters because wildfire is not simply a fire-service problem.

Extreme heat can affect healthcare, transport, agriculture, water supplies, housing, infrastructure and the natural environment simultaneously. Preparing for it therefore requires considerably more than responding once an emergency has already begun.

Treat nature as essential infrastructure

This is perhaps the most interesting part of the campaign.

The National Trust is asking the Government to invest in peatlands, wetlands, rivers, woodlands and heathlands as infrastructure that can help communities adapt to climate change, reduce environmental risks and support wildlife.

We are accustomed to thinking about infrastructure as roads, reservoirs, electricity networks and buildings.

But functioning landscapes provide infrastructure too.

That idea deserves an article of its own — particularly the question of how restoring Britain’s ecosystems could improve resilience to wildfire, drought, flooding and extreme heat.

Give firefighters the resources required for a changing climate

The National Trust also wants Fire and Rescue Services to receive greater funding, specialist wildfire skills, equipment and public-awareness resources.

Its wider statement specifically highlights the importance of being able to obtain rapid access to aerial support when required.

Sign the National Trust Protect Nature for the Future petition

2. Greenpeace: Demand Action on Deadly Heatwaves

Wildfire is one consequence of prolonged hot and dry conditions.

But extreme heat can affect people long before anything catches fire.

Greenpeace is currently campaigning for a dedicated UK extreme heat strategy.

Its proposals include maximum workplace temperature protections and measures to make schools, hospitals and care homes better able to cope with extreme temperatures. Greenpeace also argues that stronger taxation of fossil-fuel companies should help finance those adaptations.

This shifts the conversation from simply telling individuals how to behave during a heatwave towards asking whether the places in which we live, work, learn and receive medical care are actually designed for the climate Britain is increasingly experiencing.

It is an important distinction.

Emergency advice may help people survive an individual hot day.

Climate adaptation asks whether our systems are prepared for those hot days to happen repeatedly.

Sign Greenpeace’s petition for an extreme heat strategy

3. Friends of the Earth: Stop Extreme Weather Destroying Lives

The Friends of the Earth campaign takes an even wider view.

Rather than concentrating solely on wildfire or heat, its petition explicitly identifies extreme heat, drought, wildfires and flooding as interconnected climate risks.

It asks the UK Government to ensure that its National Adaptation Plan provides meaningful protection from the impacts of the climate emergency.

Climate adaptation is sometimes overshadowed by the debate about reducing emissions.

But these are two different — and complementary — tasks.

Mitigation concerns limiting future climate change.

Adaptation concerns preparing for the climate impacts that are already happening or are now unavoidable.

That can mean everything from resilient homes and healthcare systems to water management, farming, flood protection and emergency preparedness.

The Friends of the Earth campaign is essentially asking government to treat those vulnerabilities as a national planning problem rather than waiting for each extreme-weather event to become an individual emergency.

Sign the Friends of the Earth extreme weather petition

4. UK Parliament: Hold a National Climate and Nature Briefing

This campaign is slightly different because it is an official UK Parliament petition.

Created by Chris Packham, it asks the Government to hold a UK-wide emergency briefing in which independent experts explain the risks posed by climate change and nature loss and what those risks could mean for health, food, the economy and national security.

The reasoning is simple: if the country is expected to prepare for a changing climate, people first need a clear understanding of what they are preparing for.

The petition has already passed the 10,000-signature threshold required for a Government response. At 100,000 signatures, a UK Parliament petition is considered for debate in Parliament.

It remains open until 20 November 2026.

What I particularly like about this campaign is that it addresses an often overlooked part of climate resilience:

public information.

People cannot make sensible decisions about homes, travel, water, gardens, health, farming, fire safety or community preparedness if the risks themselves are poorly understood.

Sign the UK Parliament petition for a national climate and nature briefing

5. WWF: Campaign for a Living Planet Act

WWF is campaigning for something more structural: a new law.

Its proposed Living Planet Act would require the UK Government to approach climate stability, nature restoration and food production as connected issues rather than treating them as separate policy problems.

That principle becomes particularly interesting when viewed through the experience of drought and wildfire.

Land is simultaneously used for agriculture, housing, nature, water management, carbon storage, recreation and infrastructure.

Decisions made in one area inevitably affect another.

WWF argues that government therefore needs a legal framework requiring those competing needs to be considered together.

The organisation intends to use its petition to demonstrate public support for legislation requiring the Government to stabilise the climate, restore nature and support healthy food production without simply exporting environmental damage overseas.

Sign WWF’s Living Planet Act petition

6. Plantlife and the Peat-Free Partnership: End Peat Sales

This campaign might initially appear less directly connected to Britain’s wildfires.

It is actually part of a much bigger question about what we do with the landscapes that help regulate our environment.

Peatlands are important ecosystems and enormous stores of carbon. Yet peat continues to be extracted for use in gardening and horticulture.

The UK Government announced plans in 2025 to end peat sales, but Plantlife and its partners are campaigning for that commitment to be translated into legislation and a clear timetable.

Their petition therefore has a very specific objective:

turn a government promise into law.

And it illustrates something that sits underneath several of the campaigns on this page.

Responding to climate change is not only about building more technology.

It is also about deciding whether the ecosystems we already possess should be protected, restored and allowed to perform the functions upon which human communities depend.

Sign the petition to end peat sales

What Are These Climate Campaigns Actually Asking Britain to Do?

Taken together, these campaigns are not all asking for the same thing.

They are operating at different levels of the problem.

The National Trust is asking Britain to become better prepared for wildfire and invest in resilient landscapes.

Greenpeace is asking for protection from extreme heat.

Friends of the Earth is asking for stronger national climate adaptation.

The parliamentary petition is asking government to explain the risks clearly to the population.

WWF is proposing a legal framework connecting climate, nature and food.

Plantlife and the Peat-Free Partnership are pushing for the protection of one particularly important ecosystem.

And that distinction is useful.

There is no single petition that “solves climate change”.

There are instead hundreds of decisions concerning how Britain manages its land, buildings, emergency services, energy, water, food systems, infrastructure and natural environment.

Public campaigns provide one mechanism through which ordinary people can tell governments which of those decisions they want prioritised.

From Fighting Fires to Preventing Them

There is another question sitting underneath all of this.

What would Britain look like if we designed our landscapes not simply to recover from environmental disasters, but to be more resilient to them in the first place?

Wetlands can hold water.

Healthy soils can retain water.

Woodlands can provide shade and influence local temperatures.

Peatlands store vast quantities of carbon and water.

Rivers, floodplains, grasslands, heathlands and forests are not isolated pieces of scenery. They form systems.

And centuries of drainage, development, agriculture, forestry, river modification and habitat loss have altered those systems.

That does not mean there was once some perfectly fireproof British wilderness. Wildfire is complicated, land management matters, different habitats behave differently and human ignition remains extremely important.

But it raises a fascinating question:

Could restoring natural landscapes become part of Britain’s climate-defence strategy?

That is the subject I will explore separately, because it deserves much more than a paragraph here.

[INTERNAL LINK: How Nature Could Help Protect Britain From Wildfire, Drought and Flooding]

You Don’t Have to Do Everything

One of the problems with environmental campaigning is that the scale of the issue can make individual action feel almost ridiculous.

So don’t try to fix everything.

Pick an action.

Sign a petition.

Send an email.

Write to your MP.

Support an organisation whose objective makes sense to you.

Share a campaign with someone who might otherwise never see it.

Five minutes of deliberate action is more useful than another hour spent scrolling through images of a crisis feeling powerless to influence it.

The fires themselves may be enormous.

Our response does not have to begin that way.

It can begin with one action.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Current Campaign Links

National Trust — Protect Nature for the Future
Sign the petition

Greenpeace — Demand Action on Deadly Heatwaves
Sign the petition

Friends of the Earth — Stop Extreme Weather Destroying Lives
Sign the petition

UK Parliament — Hold a UK-Wide Briefing on Climate and Nature Risks
Sign the petition

WWF — Living Planet Act
Sign the petition

Plantlife / Peat-Free Partnership — End Peat Sales
Sign the petition

Last checked: 15 August 2026.