Session 2 of the Environmental Advisory Panel met on 4th June to continue cross sectoral talks on the advancement of the Climate Change. It was a really useful, frank and open discussion with a presentation by Marc Hudson on the Call to Real Action. Discussion focused mainly on the direction in which the formulation of the Climate Change Action plan. It was understood that marketing was key in it’s delivery and that working groups should be set up with specialist from across the CVS, the public sector and private business. These groups would be tasked with the writing of topic specific sections of the plan.
Following on from this, members of Manchester Climate Forum met with Councillor Cowell on 10th June to discuss matters further. The result of this is that the council is adopting the C2RA model for developing the Action Plan. MCC are producing a ‘grid’ of themes which is to be produced via the EAP Forum http://eap.beproudlovemanchester.com/ The themes are to include areas such as behavioral change, technology and infrastructure.
The initiation of the process will begin immediately with suggestions for the themes being submitted to the EAP Forum (membership is closed however, nominations for new members are welcome – please get in touch for list of members or to nominate); these will be decided upon and published in the next two weeks. The working groups as mentioned above will be established to write each of the themed sections.
The Action Plan is not to become a policy document – it will be a working document with the aim of competing for a larger share of the mainstream MCC budget and will also be used to lever larger contributions from MCC partners.
The responsibility of writing the Action Plan will lie with MCC, with the final sign off being from within the council. Although there is a desire from Councillor Cowell that the ownership will be wider than the council and the names assigned to each theme will not be inclusively councillors.
The Environmental Strategy Programme Board met for the 6th time on Monday 8th June. SNAG notes from this meeting can be viewed here. Official council minutes are available here.
Best Wishes, Tim.
