Alsager town councillor Jane Smith is travelling to Glasgow to represent the Animal Welfare Party (AWP) at COP26 this weekend

Jane, who is deputy leader and the party's first elected councillor, will join representatives from AWP's Dutch sister party PvdD (Party for the Animals) which currently has five MPs, three senators and an MEP as well as over 85 councillors.

The two parties will be co-hosting a COP26 fringe conference to discuss a global transition to plant-based food.

Activists from around the UK will be attending, and the event will also be live-streamed, with speakers including Animal Welfare Party leader Vanessa Hudson, Oxford University professor Joseph Poorer and Animal Think Tank co-founder Dr Laila Kassam.

Jane said: "COP26 represents a pivotal moment in world history as leaders convene around climate breakdown, and I feel it's important that our messages of transition are heard, especially as the links between animal agriculture and climate breakdown are so huge and yet often wilfully ignored.

"These messages will be a key part of both the Fridays for Future march and the big Saturday march as well as the focus of our own conference."

She added: "While many of the key events will be live-streamed, it's important to me to be there in person to support others but also to galvanise my own resolve for the difficult years ahead."

Today (November 5th) Jane will attend the Fridays for Future march where fellow speakers will include Greta Thunberg.

Jane said: "I've always supported Fridays for Future and I think it's a very sad indictment of mainstream politicians that they ignore this movement of visionary young people who badly need our support – at local Fridays for Future events I've often been the only speaker from local or national government, which is a real shame.

"COP26 is an opportunity for like-minded people to come together to voice our grave concerns at the lack of courage among elected leaders in facing the huge challenges of climate breakdown, and to demand change."

Jane said she hopes the summit of world leaders will spur governments worldwide into action.

She did, however, raise concerns that some of those most affected by climate change did not have a strong voice at the event.

"I'm very concerned that many indigenous peoples and communities who are on the front line of climate breakdown – those in the circumpolar north, for example, or Polynesian islanders, or the Tibetan people, to name just a few – have not been granted proper representation at COP 26.

"Those communities should be a key voice at this event, and what's more we should be looking to indigenous peoples who have lived sustainably all along, unlike ourselves in our consumer societies."

Jane added: "To date, the national government has been a disgrace around climate breakdown, the opposition has failed to hold them to account whatsoever on this most important of issues, and it sadly falls to the people at a grass roots level to force the change we need – and to face together the tough decisions we have to make as a responsible world community."