Christian Aid bid to cut carbon emission is overshadowed by its poor record on air travel

BRITAIN'S longest ever protest march is being planned this summer to demand cuts in the pollution that is creating climate chaos.

The leading charity Christian Aid is organising a 1000-mile ,11-week trek via all the UK's capitals. Marchers will be calling on the government to reduce emissions of carbon by 5% a year to help protect the world from the storms, floods and droughts threatened by global warming.

"Climate change is the most serious threat to the future of all of us, but the shocking truth is that it's poor people in the developing world who are already on the front line," said Paul Brannen, head of campaigns at Christian Aid. "We have a moral duty to stop this now and where better to start than at home."

Embarrassingly for the charity, the unveiling of its campaign plans coincided with an admission it has taken more flights within Britain than other non-governmental organisations. Travelling by air is three times more polluting than travelling by rail.

Christian Aid's 15 staff in Scotland made 30 flights to and from London in 2005-06. At a rate of two per member of staff, that makes it one of the most frequent fliers of campaign groups surveyed by the Sunday Herald.

The charity, however, accepted this much flying was no longer environmentally acceptable, and is aiming to eliminate "most" flights within Britain. A detailed assessment of its "carbon footprint" has shown 32% was due to staff air travel in this country and abroad.

"Christian Aid realises it has flown too much in the past," said Dominic Brain, co-ordinator of the carbon footprint work. "It was often the cheapest way to travel and we look after our money carefully."

But now managers are insisting all travel planning is undertaken from an environmental perspective. "We are installing video conference facilities in our Glasgow office to reduce the need for staff to travel to London for meetings," Brain said.

Christian Aid hopes that the Cut The Carbon march will have an impact similar to the Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh in 2005.

The protest will start in Belfast on July 14 and end in London on October 2. In between, it will visit Edinburgh on July 21, as well as taking in Newcastle, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff and the Labour Party conference at Bournemouth.

Twenty marchers are expected to walk the whole way - 10 from the UK, 10 from the developing world. One will be Risolat Saidmuradova from Tajikistan, who said she wanted to know how other countries were going to combat global warming.

She will be joined by Rosalía Soley from El Salvador and Rachel Tavenor from Newcastle. Christian Aid is looking for a volunteer from Scotland, and is planning to announce celebrity backing soon.

The march will spend two weeks moving through Scotland, via Troon, Kilmarnock, Glasgow, Falkirk, Dunfermline, Edinburgh, Dunbar and Berwick-upon-Tweed. On July 21, in association with the Stop Climate Chaos iCount campaign, Christian Aid will stage a major event in Edinburgh.

Prior to the march, the charity has been running a major advertising campaign in newspapers and magazines nationwide. One, showing a woman and children struggling through a flood in Mali, is captioned: "Be a love and switch your computer off at the end of the day."

Christian Aid was congratulated on its "ambitious" plans by Dr Richard Dixon, the director of the environmental group, WWF Scotland. "These events around the country will help to raise climate change protest to the levels that Make Poverty History achieved for development issues," he said.